Both online and offline small businesses can create and distribute product and service offerings very cost effectively through the use of coupons distributed to their niche market.
Here are the layout and form ideas that others have used most successfully in coupon campaigns for small businesses:
1- Rather than just mailing, delivering, or offering a coupon at your web site or in your newsletter, add a personal direct mail letter from the business owner with the coupon. This two-pronged strategy (letter and coupon) allows you to personalize the "granting" of the coupon so that it seems like a gift, like the owner is giving the receiver a special deal that no everyone is offered.
2- Be sure to make the coupon time-sensitive. Deadlines have a way of "forcing" response or action on the part of the coupon holder. Deadlines also give the impression that there is a truly limited quantity available ("and if you don't hurry to get your . . . they will soon be gone!")
3- Boring one-sided, one color coupons will be the least effective. Try to design your coupon to be more memorable, more attention-grabbing, more unique. Adding photos, color, exciting headlines, unique shapes, etc, all work to make your coupon stand out from those you typically see in the newspaper or the back of magazines.
4- Be sure to put your logo, your business tag line, and full contact and redemption information right on the coupon itself - both for branding purposes and so that the prospect can hold on to the coupon for later mailing (or redemption from a web site.)
5- Try oversized coupons that are folded to make them easier to distribute. They tend to stand out and are easier to keep track of than a tiny coupon that easily gets lost among other papers.
6- Coupon books often work well if they are somehow targeted to the right niche (which most are not). General audiences are OK for pizza coupons, hair salons, and oil changes, but they are usually way too broad for small niches and highly specialized products.
7- One exception to the rule in #6 above is this: many people have their own businesses or work for a firm that is a small business. Sometimes small business products and services can be marketed effectively to wider and broader audiences because so many people are somehow attached to a small business in many different niches.
8- Don't forget to add the scarcity factor to the coupon. Some of the ways to do that are to include phrases like: "One coupon per person," "Good while quantities last," "Good only for the first 100 customers," "Coupons are not transferable," "You may not combine this coupon with other offers," and "This offer may be pulled at any time." The overriding idea is to plant the notion of very limited quantities of this offer being available.
In our next installment, we'll discuss a few tips about executing your coupon campaign for the best chance of success. Stay tuned . . .
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