Tis the Season for Coupons

Ever wonder if a coupon could help bring in new customers?

From internet coupon codes to printed coupon books, the past few weeks have been filled with coupons around here. So, can they work for you? And how can you get the most out of this marketing tactic?

Let’s start with coupon codes. I am sure you all have used them-the sometimes abstract alpha-numeric number you enter to get a little more bang for your buck when shopping on line. So, do they work? Our clients have found the biggest benefit they offer is providing a fantastic way to track where your purchasing visitors are coming from. The trick is to put a unique code on each of your coupons – unique to each venue your coupon appears. When that code is entered in on your Web form, you now know where your visitor found your ad – and, more importantly, which ads to renew because they worked. You can also use unique coupon codes to test the effectiveness of different layouts, colors, headlines, images, etc. within a controlled audience. Try placing two ads with a slight variation in the same publication and see which yields the higher response. You can then rerun the more beneficial ad in the next issue and change the weaker ad to test another aspect, such as the headline.

The next bit of coupon frenzy around the office has been coupon books. We recently started working with Paperboy LLC to produce a new coupon book for retail businesses in geographic specific areas. While the proceeds will benefit college-bound students, the coupons feature a print version in the book as well as on-line access to all coupons in the system. This is a great way for retail shops to gain exposure to local shoppers in their area, and the Web benefit provides a link back to the retail owner’s Web site – that’s another valuable link for Google to read when ranking the site!

So, a coupon book is great (especially with the added Web benefit) – but how do you get those shoppers into your shop if they are not already looking for your product? The Original Shopping Districts have developed a very powerful tactic to do just this. I had the pleasure of attending the Ladies Only Sample Tour in Golden last week. We were given a bright pink bracelet, a map of the area, a coupon book with coupons for each participating store, and sent on our way to visit each store to collect a special ladies only sample! The samples included wine, cookies, branded ad specialties, samples of store products, etc., and most importantly – the activity got shoppers (with a mindset to spend) into the stores! Every shopper went home from the event with a memory of each shop, a “sample” to remind them about what the shop sold, and coupons to bring them back to the store. If your business has the opportunity to take part in an event like this, we definitely recommend it. A note on the samples: we noticed that some stores did not give out samples that related to their product line – a big negative in our book. That sample is a huge tool for you. It establishes a memory hook for your potential repeat-shopper to think back on. Make sure your sample is going to remind the shoppers about what your store offers them.

Tags: brand implementation, coupon design

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Branding, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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