Ask any sales person and they will tell you that they love running special offers. Having a reason to contact a customer and giving them an extra opportunity to close a sale makes their jobs a lot easier. But ask a finance director and they will probably groan and hold their head in their hands. Because running special offers should never be taken lightly, and should always be planned thoroughly – or you may end up giving away more than your product or service at a lower price. Fail and you may damage your reputation, your customer loyalty and ultimately the money in your pocket.
What is the key to success with special offers?
Firstly, make sure your offer is unique and genuinely special – there is nothing more frustrating than getting excited over an offer but realizing that it in fact offers you nothing much at all. Always make sure the offer is targeted at customers you would not usually have the pleasure of doing business with (not those that you already do business with and will just substitute a normal order, hence you losing margin). And make sure your timing is impeccable –you want to discourage customers from simply waiting for a special offer as they know you are always running offers every Monday for example, and absolutely no use running an offer when you have not enough stock!
What is the best medium in which to run a special offer?
Well that depends on who you are and what you do. With the rise in social media and the internet being used more than 36 million times by brits per day, it may suit your business to try promoting your special offers online.
An example of a way you can use social media is through Facebook Advertising. Most online advertising reaches only 27% of its intended audience, but with Facebook the average is a staggering 91%! For consumer based businesses this provides the ideal platform to get your business noticed and in front of a huge number of people, considering that more than half of the people on Facebook visit the site every day. However, it can be a costly exercise – not one that many small businesses can afford to try – and not one that guarantees success. So even with that much exposure, can you benefit from combining Facebook or social media with more traditional methods to enhance your offering?
The European carmaker, Volvo, used Facebook adverts to help launch its new V40 model across three countries, and the results were astounding. A rise of 6% in purchase consideration due to Facebook exposure.
But interestingly, when combined with their more traditional method of TV advertising, the manufacturer found there was a staggering 13% increase – more than either of the two methods used alone.
That led us to think about a few ways in which you can combine your special offers with labels to increase your promotional success:
- A good example of how this can be achieved would be with loyalty discounts. Loyalty discounts are popular ways to run special offers, whist also ensuring repeat business. This is a method used by many coffee shops for example, a free coffee when you have visited 8 times. See here: https://www.costacoffee.ae/loyalty-card/loyalty-card/. Another example could be a free play at softplay for your child once they have visited 8 times. A cheap way to run this promotion is to give them a card and attach a branded sticker each time they buy.
- You could use labels to stick onto your invoices or order acknowledgements with details of your
special offer to reach all your existing customer base.
- If you sell a product which also has consumables, how about designing a special “Trial Pack” deal, so your customer can try the product out? Labels can be used on existing packaging to help promote the special offer or you could design a new box using a new label.
- Could you run a competition whereby you can get discount if you display the sticker on your car window or use a label to stick on a keyring and that is shown at time of purchase?
Do you have any other ideas of how you can utilise labels to maximise your special offers or promotional campaigns? We would love to know here at AA labels.
References:
https://www.facebook.com/business
https://www.theguardian.com
