How To Promote Small Businesses With Discount Coupons

The internet offers quite some benefits for businesses, including but not limited to low cost, global reach, good ROI on marketing, and so on. However, there’s a huge downside of running a business in the cyber world, and that’s … an ever increasing competition. With hundreds and thousands of websites going online on daily basis, you need to have excellent marketing skills to sustain. Millions of websites are fighting for the ranks at Google for any given keywords e.g. “1and1 discounts” or “Network solutions coupons”. Customers are spoiled by too many choices, and you need to pull off something special to catch their attention. By something special, I don’t mean some sort of a stunt; the something can be as simple as offering a discount. After all, what’s more special for a customer than a price-cut?

For years, discounts and coupon codes have managed to be a magnet for new customers, and if used wisely, this technique can work equally well in this time and age.

Following are four easy ways to use promotional codes and special offers for your online business promotion.

1. Newsletter:

I know many businesses that flaunt having lots and lots of mailing list subscribers, only problem is that hardly 10% of these users bother to open the email, let alone clicking on some links, regardless of how creative you get in your titles. But there’s one way of making those subscribers respond, and that is to offer a special discount and use it as bait for subscribers to open the email. Customers love discounts more than anything else, and when they see a title promising 30%-Off coupon inside, many of them will be tempted to take a look, and once they are in, they won’t mind taking a quick glance at other contents of email, as well.

2. Social Media:

There are many ways to use discounts or coupon codes to bolster your social media presence. You can use them to increase your Facebook likes (or +1′s in case of Google). For example, you can use the coupon code as hidden content that will be revealed once they click on the like button at your Facebook page (not sure if Facebook recent terms and conditions allow these tactics). Even if you are placing no such restrictions, and offering discounts straight away, chances are that the consumers who get the products at special prices will go on and like your page. Not to mention, people will share certain discounts with their friends or contacts, which means free marketing.

3. Special Offer Section:

When a visitor lands on a website, the special offer section is one of the most likely pages that he/she will visit. Providing them a special offer or discount deal at this page can increase your conversion rates. You might not make much profit from the first sale (at a discounted price), but there’s a chance that majority of them will be returning for more purchases at normal prices. Doesn’t sound like a bad deal, eh?

4. Introducing new product:

When you’ve got a USP (unique selling point) you can use it to attract customers, but most of the times, the products are pretty much the same. In this case, it can be very difficult to attract customers who won’t see a reason to try another name. You need to give these customers a reason, and more often than not, a tempting discount can be a good enough reason for customers to change vendors.

Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon

Arba is a marketing student and a young entrepreneur. She manages many coupon code and discount websites, featuring discounts for everything from domain registration to web hosting, like 1and1 or Network Solutions. You can make the most of these discounts by visiting 1&1 coupon or network solutions special code .

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