Beginner’s Guide To Coupon Marketing For Small Businesses

For a small business, attracting more customers and keeping them engaged is one of the important yet critical tasks. 

In the world of tight competition, holding your customers for too long is not possible. After all, they have a lot of offers, coupons, and discounts, etc from different brands. 

Coupon marketing is one of the useful ideas that can help you in holding your customers. In fact, people like coupons the most. 

According to A.C Neilson Co, a market research company reported, around 60%  of customers look for coupons and 95% do favorably. 

Coupon marketing is cost-effective and easy to measure ways to get more customers and do better sales. 

To understand how you can use this marketing for your small business, here is what you might need. 

What Coupon Marketing Means?

Coupon marketing means the coupon codes, discounts, vouchers, etc that are used for attracting the new and old customers for dong the purchase. 

The coupon carries a certain percentage or price reduction which helps the customers to save their money. 

However, coupon marketing also has some points that you need to consider : 

• It’s important to limit the number of discounts, so you don’t end up damaging your brand image. 
• There are chances to get more one time buyers instead of boosting the brand loyalty
• You might get price-driven customers, instead of targeted customers. This leads to fewer repeat sales and increasing acquisition costs

Also, there are different types of discounts, codes, and coupons that you can choose depending on what you are offering and to whom. 

It’s crucial to understand how coupon marketing works so you don’t end up having negative results. 

How The Coupon Should Look For Getting Better Results?

To understand the right coupon that you should offer so you can get the audience. It’s important for you to understand how effective coupons look. There are few basic elements that you need to consider. 

Well follow these steps to keep it better and hassle-free for you : 

Step 1:  Design  Of Your Coupon 

In today’s marketing, you are going to need something that can attract the eyes. The same thing applies to your coupon design too. 

It should be something that can attract attention. It includes no mistakes such as spelling errors,  poor graphics, and wrong color choices. 

If you don’t know what to choose or how to do it, you can hire professionals. It’s important to keep your coupon attractive and good for marketing purposes. 

Step 2: Add The Expiration Date 

The expiration date is an important part of the coupon. You don’t want your customer to not know when the date will end. 

Provide a coupon that has a clear date of expiration. It saves you from situations like customers are using coupons anytime they like. 

Also keeping the time frame in mind. If you are keeping the long frame, this will affect your budget. 

Step 3:  Keep The Clear & Concise Message 

The message is important but keep it clear. Also here the less you are keeping it, the better it is. If you are doing too complicated steps,  promoting hard rules, using extra text, etc can make your audience lose interest. 

Step 4:  Keep Your CTA Tempting 

When you are designing the coupons, CTA is one of the elements that should be clearly visible and easy to find. 

CTA or call to action guides your customer to take action. This should be clear to notice. Also, don’t be lazy or add anything that doesn’t make sense

It’s important to keep the CTA attractive and something that can boost the sense of urgency.

To keep your CTA attractive and fast,  for example, you can use : 

• Claim your  deal 
• Start saving now 
• Reval  today’s hot price 
• See the amount you are saving 

Step 5: Choose Trackable Codes 

Here you can either choose two options, depending on what fits your requirement. You can go with unique codes based on the individual, or you can get a universal code that can be applied to any user. 

Both are good for consideration, however, you should know how you are tracking the codes.  

Before you choose any system that can help you in tracking, make sure you are getting the easy features that let you get in detailed and redemption data. 

How do Coupons work For The Small Business?

Coupons play an important role in creating a base for your customers. For a small business, it’s not just effective but also increases the benefits of visiting the store or buying the product. 

There are some important ways in which the coupon works for small businesses. It includes : 

Recruiting New Consumers For Business

With the help of coupons, the business attracts the audience. When you do that, the coupon is a discount for the buyers. So the buyers use the coupon to do the purchase for the products they want and use it to reduce the price for final payment. 

This boost the reach, and include even those people who are not interested or aware of to brand but looking for some kind of products and services, 

Also, it gets more people to visit the store or website. 

Your business can’t discount on every purchase. But strategically using this, you can get the marketing for your products. 

Pro tip: use the discounts smartly on products can increase the purchase and get more demands.

Getting Previous Customers Again 

Coupons are an effective way to get your previous customers back. It helps reactivate your customers. 

There are chances that there are some customers who are not doing the purchases, simply they don’t remember your brand or just not in their mind. 

Also, you can use this for reminding your former customers. You can use it for telling about your product and take the incentive to your store. 

After you get the reactivating, here you don’t even need a coupon. You can simply remind yourself to get more customer retention. 

Pull More Traffic From Competitors 

Discounts and special offers can get a more effective way for having more traffic and channel it from a competitor.  You can use several mediums to get more access to a larger audience. 

You can increase your reach, for example, you can do commercials and ads on newspapers and TV. However, it can be expensive and time confusing. 

Coupons comparability has a better way, especially for small businesses. You can better communicate with competitive offers. This can steer more people from the special business.

Pro tip: it’s important to have hyper-local business control, so your coupons won’t get lost to the wrong kind of consumers, 

Selling Expenses And Related Products 

The coupon is helpful for small businesses as you can use it for selling more of your products. 

There are lots of times when the coupons are the reason behind your customers. Some customers do shopping on items because they have a coupon for them. 

This is more understandable if you take the restaurant or food industry for example.  When a restaurant offers coupons, they get more people to order the better dining just to redeem the coupons they have. 

Attracting The New Movers 

Coupons are helpful for small businesses targeting the important segment that includes the new movers. 

Since new movers are not familiar with the area, they bring better opportunities for developing the business relationship. 

Coupons are more offered by the retailers to get the new movers attracted, for example, Dollar Generals have better opportunities to get seen by these segments of the customer. 

Here you get a better opportunity in building loyalty and selling the products. 

How To Create Effective Coupon Marketing Strategy?

Coupon marketing is a beneficial idea if you know how to plan it properly. It includes the strategy that helps in taking the best of the opportunities you get from this marketing. 

To make your strategy on point so you won’t miss any opportunity, here is how you can create your strategy. 

Start With Offer That Compel Customers

No matter how amazing an offer you do, but if it’s not relevant it won’t work. This is an important aspect to understand your audience first. 

You are going to do some basic research including what your customers want. Using the data for offering the coupons that actually help. 

Since your ultimate goal is to influence their behavior, no matter if that means getting them to visit the store or purchase more. 

Make sure your offer is assigned with the results you are looking for. 

For example: If you recently launched the online store, and you want to boost the audience more towards online instead of retail, you can offer coupons that will be in effect when the customer will do the checkout. Or offer free shipping for first-time buyers.

Choose More Than One Channels 

When it comes to coupons, you don’t want them to restrict to certain channels. Customers want to have coupons that are easy to find. 

Well, it means your coupon should be on every channel where you can get potential customers. You can leverage from websites and print media. 

But you can do direct mail,  social media, and email campaigns too.

With this, you can cast a wide net and stay on top, so whenever your customer is looking or not looking for coupons, it gets easier for you to access in approaching them. 

Customizing The Coupons 

The coupon is also a clever way for doing brand advertisements.  So when you use coupon marketing, make sure you are adding your company’s logo and graphics to get people’s attention. 

If your logos or graphics are appealing, the potential customer will naturally notice.

Pro tip: If you have a limited budget, you can use free tools available online. Or if you have too much load, you can hire a freelancer to get some help. 

Appeal To Your Unique Segments Of Customers 

Make sure your coupon is not a one-time deal, you should keep your prime goal to attract new consumers but also for building more loyalty. 

This should be including the old customers with promotions and periodic discounts. 

For example, you can use the coupon for rewarding your best customers or clients. Also, you can use it for bringing them back to your store or website for doing the shopping again. 

Limit Your Numbers Of Deals 

The coupon is a great way for attracting new customers as well as keeping them satisfied.  However, it’s important to keep the limitation on deals too. 

You don’t want to offer too many deals that are making your product free or your buyers are not paying the full price ever.

Also, offering the deals too many times can make your customers used to it and they will wait for the next one to make a purchase. 

Pro tip: Coupons should be treated as a unique opportunity, that’s why offer it randomly or choose days when it’s special. 

Pick The Expiry Day 

Expiry day or deadline, whatever you feel like, it’s important to have one. Your coupon strategy should have a date fixed, and also add a call to action.

This can help in creating more urgency and push the buyers to choose the purchase. Setting a date also reduces the time to think and people make rash decisions in purchasing to get the benefit. 

Pro tip: Keep your expiry date clear on coupons so buyers know when the coupon will not be in use. 

Do Your Calculation

Well, the last but the important factor is understanding the numbers. It’s important for determining the deals as well as discounts. 

If you keep the discount on products without increasing sales revenue, at some point you might end up losing money. 

No matter what strategy you choose, it should not interfere with the operating profitable ability. 

How To Use Coupons For Driving Sales & Repeat Purchase?

You can use coupon marketing in different ways to attract your customer. Also, it can play a huge role in driving more sales and repeat purchases from your business. 

To understand how you can use this, here are some options to consider : 

Offer Weekly Or Monthly Coupons 

You can use the coupon for the monthly or weekly deals. This is one of the traditional sales that are used for driving more sales. 

Well, it mostly happens at the end of the month or quarter for increasing the revenues, also to accomplish the business to meet their needs. 

Pre Launch Offers 

Pre Launch offers are an idea when you are launching new products or maybe your business. With this, you can offer coupons for piquing the interest among the consumers. 

It’s also helpful in driving more sales and turning new customers into loyal ones. 

Abandoned Cart Offers 

According to the research,  more than 70% abandon their carts when they are about to checkout.  

This is not just harmful to business but also you are losing the important sales and customers. Using the coupons to push the customers to complete the last step can help you. 

You can offer coupons that will only apply when customers complete their purchasing stage. 

Incentives For Social Media 

If you want to boost your engagement or you are running a business online and want more people to visit,  you can ask your customers to share about the purchase on their social media. 

For that, you can give them incentives and in return, they will get the coupons for doing their next shopping with you. 

First Time Offers 

To get the best out of the people who are visiting your store for the first time and going to be the first time purchase, you can offer coupons that can save their money. 

Not this will help you in increasing your sales but also you can get more repeat customers. This will also promote your brand and you can get new sales. 

Referral Coupons 

People tend to do more shopping if the brand is suggested by their close friends or people they know.  You can use this advantage for boosting your sales and attracting more customers. 

You can use the coupons for the referral programs. Ask your customers to share about the brand and invite their people to do the shopping. In return, they can receive the coupon for the items. 

Minimum Purchase Offer 

You can offer the coupons based on the total value of the shopping cart. Not just this is an effective upselling technique and it can encourage more people to do spending extra 

But with this, you can encourage people to get more engagement with your brand. It’s an overall positive and helpful technique that you can use. 

You can put the minimum purchase offer on certain items or collections as well. 

Customer Loyalty Coupons 

When you reward your customers, you are increasing your customer loyalty. It helps in creating a greater and stronger bond between you and your customer. 

You can send a personal email with the coupon offers pr use automated ones.  For a business, it’s really important to make sure that their current customers are satisfied and loyalty rewards are helpful. 

Also, you are boosting your repeat purchase with this too. 

Exit Intent Offer 

There are a lot of cases when customers visit your store but don’t make a purchase. However, you can save this by offering a last time offer. 

You can use your exit inter pop up for offering the coupons and presenting the final offer for purchasing the items from your store. 

Not with this, you can save a lot of customers and sales but also it can give you more repeating purchasing which is good for the business. 

In-Person Purchasing Coupons 

If you are looking for ways to increase foot traffic to your brick and mortar location, you can use in-person purchasing coupons to attract more people. 

You can offer the coupons to the people and ask to come with at least one person to get more and apply the coupon. 

Not just it will help you in reaching out to more customers but you are getting a new audience too. 

This method can also be used for different programs, events,  fairs, trade shows, etc. 

How To Measure If It Was Success?

To understand if your coupon marketing was successful or not, here are a few limits that you need to understand  first : 

• Only one person can redeem the coupon 
• Redemption is for the holder of a card
• Allowed invoke redemption are X, Y, and Z

It’s important to keep your coupon and budget safe, so you don’t end up getting misused by the customers. 

Also, check your coupons on the basis : 

• Who redeemed the coupons?
• When and where they did?
• Which channel, campaign, or code they used?

It might be tough if you are doing it manually, there is a lot of information and it’s better to consider the ready to analyze metrics as well as the stats system. 

Also, make sure you short the information based on the category so it can be easier for you to get access for next time. 

Keep learning from the experience and make sure you use the information for your next campaign. 

Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)

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