In the previous article, we began our discussion of some marketing tactics that fall under the title of "piggyback marketing."
With the strategy, you have the opportunity to "piggyback" your marketing message with other products, sales messages, a service, or a bill. Your marketing "piggybacks" with something else that is going to be delivered anyway and can be thought of as a "bonus" or gift by the prospect.
Free coupons are a perfect example of the piggyback marketing strategy. You come up with an idea for a free coupon to something in your business and offer it as an "include" in the mailing being done by your partner.
Here's an example: let's say you are a solo business owner. Your business is one of creating online graphics and you want to offer your logo creation services to other small businesses.
You decide you want to do some local piggybacking to generate some additional prospects that you can eventually sell your logo design services to. You think of the ways you can target your audience; that is, limit your marketing to small businesses.
One logical idea to explore would be to contact the local Chamber of Commerce. They do periodic mailings to all their membership and even to businesses that don't belong when they have their membership drives.
You develop a coupon for "Valued Friends of the Happy Valley C of C." For a limited time, you tell them, your premium logo service will be 50% off with this coupon, but they must first contact you by . . . (set a date) . . . for a free custom quote and a copy of your booklet "Branding Your Small Business with a Professional Logo."
The coupon is small and lightweight and can be added to a Chamber of Commerce mailing without any additional postage.
Why would the Chamber be willing to do this for you? Because you have convinced the Chamber administrator or marketing person that what you are offering is a valuable service to their membership, from one of their own (you have joined already, right?).
This coupon is worth $150 to every member that takes advantage of the offer. Every business should have a professional logo, right?
Even if the members don't use the coupon, you have given each of them the opportunity to get a valuable free gift in the mail (your branding booklet) that will help their individual businesses and there's no obligation or cost.
If the Chamber management still balks at the idea, suggest that you will make a donation to the Chamber in the form of splitting the cost of the mailing. That offer would be hard to turn down because Chambers usually have very tight operating budgets.
Even if you end up picking up half the cost of a stamp (they are providing the envelope and the overhead that it takes to do the addressing and stuffing), it is still a greatly reduced cost to doing the mailing yourself. Besides, you might not have access to their mailing list of customers and prospects.
You will also benefit from the association factor - your business will be a partner with the Chamber of Commerce, a trusted business community member.
What are the advantages to your business? Here are a few:
- free or reduced mailing cost,
- access to a new mailing list of prospects,
- association (implied endorsement) with a trusted company,
- no overhead in preparing or delivering the message (all you do is prepare your coupon and deliver the predetermined number of copies that are needed for the mailing),
- additional logo design work that comes as the result of the coupon, and
- a source of business leads that you will receive as prospects request that you send them your free branding booklet.
Yes, chances are good that you will have to adapt this strategy and example so that it can work for your business model. But you can now see how the strategy of piggybacking with coupons can work for you.
In our next installment in this series, we'll look at piggybacking with inserts. Stay tuned . . .
 |
Post#312 |
