The early days of the internet were a trying time for the coupon, as it was questioned how the transition could be made from print ads to cyberspace. Now, according to Coupon.com’s data, $858 million was saved in 2009 due to digital coupon use, a 170 percent increase over 2008. Comparing digital coupons to printed coupons, the difference was astronomical. Newspaper inserts and other printed coupons only saw a 8-16 percent growth; showing digital coupons outpacing print by nearly 10 to 1.

Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com had this to say about the 2009 numbers, “For the first time in almost two decades the use of coupons increased in 2009, in part due to the growth of digital coupons as more consumers made them part of their shopping routine and more brands tapped them to engage with their consumers.” He continues, “We expect the adoption of digital coupons will continue to accelerate in 2010 as consumers and brands alike increasingly adopt them, and as we continue to enable companies to engage with their consumers with coupons in innovative ways, including mobile and social media initiatives.”

Consumers actively searched for coupons in 2009 as coupons/rewards was the 5th fastest growing category for internet visits. According to Google Insights, the terms “printable coupons” and “online printable coupons” increased at rates of 186 and 178 percent. Yahoo listed “coupons” as the #1 economic related search term in 2009.

If you’re looking to geo-target your coupon marketing, here’s a Top 10 list of US cities who used coupons most frequently:

1. Atlanta, GA
2. Tampa, FL
3. Cincinnati, OH
4. Saint Louis, MO
5. Minneapolis, MN
6. Nashville, TN
7. Charlotte, NC
8. Cleveland, OH
9. Pittsburgh, PA
10. Kansas City, MO

When developing your online presence this year, factor coupons into your business strategy. Obviously, this marketing tactic can’t be used for every business but for those who can viably use coupons, remember these numbers.

Facebook has more combined traffic than Amazon and Craig’s List combined – just a tad bit over the two web sites right now according to Compete.com meaning if you carry items that people want, this could be one of the more significant market places to work with.

While the interface is more Craig’s List in format – where you actually need to meet up with the seller somewhere – there is no reason why you could not include a link to a payment gateway and turn this into an extension of your eBay or Amazon market place. If anything, the addition of a payment gateway would be a brilliant move on the part of Facebook so that online sellers could simply do the transaction without having to meet up with anyone in real life. Craig’s List has made a great name for themselves in this space but taking on Craig’s List directly might not be the only thing that can be done here. There are just a couple of components missing to make this a truly block buster way for people to buy and sell – with Facebook taking a cut of every transaction to help fund their operations.

The payment gateway is a critical component to making Facebook Market Place viable to sellers and buyers. Sometimes the thing you want might be too far away to drive. While Facebook Market Place lets you search by zip code – it is missing many of the touchy feely UI components that are needed to make this viable. Craig’s List has made a good name for themselves in this space with a stripped down UI, but we expect more from Facebook and it just is not there. What if what I want is many miles away, I would have to arrange payment and shipping separately outside the Facebook system – meaning Facebook loses a share of the transaction. There is also a lack of a feedback mechanism for the seller – you don’t know if the seller is a good or bad seller. Feedback is a very important way to vet sellers and buyers and is used universally across almost all the online market places, regardless of what people think about feedback.

Add those two components to the Facebook Market Place and Facebook would have a killer competitor to Amazon, EBay, Bonanzle, and a host of other online retailers including Wall-mart. They could literally alter the face of ecommerce over night with a feedback mechanism and a payment gateway. They have the traffic to support a robust market place and they have the knowledge with the acquisition of Ooodle to make something like this happen. Tie this into fan pages and the rest of the sharing Facebook eco-system and Facebook Market Place could really take off and be a huge player in the ecommerce online shopping world.

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This is a very simple process and we explain each step with this video tutorial.

Transcript:

Signing Up For PriceGrabber / Yahoo Shopping for Yahoo Store Owners

We are on the PriceGrabber sign-up page for Yahoo Stores and we are given two different options.

Do we want to join the Yahoo Shopping network only or Yahoo Shopping and PriceGrabber?

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will sign up for both.
The first thing that we are asked is to give our merchant member name and this is the name that shows up next to our products. You want to make sure to put in the name of your company. We also need to put in our website URL. One of the things I like to do when I’m putting in my website URL is to actually go to our website, copy the URL, and paste it into the URL field. This is something that you don’t want to mess up and I like to get it exactly as it should be. We are going to go ahead and fill out the rest of this information for account and billing and skip this part for you guys. We will come back when we are all done.

Now that we have finished putting in all the information for account and billing information, we get into payment options. You can choose to be charged the initial deposit one time or enroll in the auto pay plan. The difference - With the first option, whenever your account balance gets low they’re going to e-mail you and let you know. Then you can choose to add more funds. The auto pay plan will automatically charge your card whenever your balance is low. The choice is yours.

Then you have to agree to the referral marketing agreement and decide if you want to add a logo next to your listings. If you want to add a logo, you will be charged $.10 per click. Understand that it will cost you $.10 per click to have your logo next to your listing. Should you do that? Is it going to increase your conversion rates? The only answer to give you is test test test. But once you decide either way go ahead and click on the continue button.

For step two we do quick e-mail verification and click continue.

Now we’re going to be asked about our feed format. Do you have a product data feed? Yes. Is the feed visible? Yes. You see the Yahoo Store sets up this feed for you. What we want to do is go into the back end of our Yahoo Store and go to the bottom left-hand side underneath promote. Click on search engines. What I want you to do is look under Enable and Submit Your Product Catalog and Shopping Search Engines. Make sure those are enabled then go to the catalog.XML. Copy that URL and go ahead and paste that URL into the feed URL. Click on save and finish later.

This is going to log you out completely. That’s okay because the next step is logging into your account and verifying that the URL for your feed works.

So how do you know if that feed URL works? You click on analyze feed and if it doesn’t work you’ll get this big red box that says please correct the errors marked in red. Now if you get this error, don’t worry. Go back into the store and grab the objinfo.XML link info instead. Paste the URL and click analyze feed.

Everything should be complete. No red box everything looks good we can go ahead and click on the continue button.
We are given a little warning here that says our feed doesn’t contain any shipping costs. Now that’s not a problem because we can actually go in and enter our shipping information right here. The formula we use is a flat fee and we’re just going to put in zero as our shipping cost because we have free shipping.
For our taxing rates the shipping is not taxed because we have free shipping. We are going to go ahead and click on our state which is Michigan. Put in the tax rate of let’s say 6% and once you’re done with that go ahead and click continue button.

Everything is done. Your registration is completed. Within 1 to 2 business days you should see your products in PriceGrabber. If you don’t see your products after five business days, go ahead and give their customer service a call.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial on setting up PriceGrabber and Yahoo Shopping. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. Make sure to visit www.1choice4yourstore.com for more Yahoo Store tutorials.

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The data covers the entire November through December time frame. There were some contributing factors that lent to the overall numbers being in the black. Here are some comScore observations.

“The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year of marginally negative growth,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Among the highlights of the season was the first $900 million online spending day and a strong late season spending surge, propelled by effective retailer promotions, guaranteed shipping and a major snowstorm on the eastern seaboard that convinced many to shop from the comfort of home. It’s possible that this better-than-expected end-of-year performance is a harbinger of renewed vigor and optimism for 2010 as the consumer economy seeks to rebound from one of the worst years in memory. At the same time, we need to remember that consumers’ spending power remains constrained by high unemployment levels, substantial debt and a new-found desire to save.”

Drat that new-found desire to save! Wonder if the government is catching on yet but I digress. The chart below shows just how consumers were willing to wait longer to make their purchases. That may be attributed to waiting to see if any deals would show up or just that people waited to make sure they could afford to actually buy things.

There were a few categories that made significant gains over last year’s really crappy results. Here’s a ‘look see’ at some of the top performers.

At this point in time I think anyone will breathe at least a small sigh of relief when any shopping numbers have a plus sign in front of them these days? What do you think?

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Sadly, none of the above. Nope, it was some no name: Tuesday, December 15. Coming from behind, that all-but-forgotten day of the week topped the online revenue charts for the first time with $913M in sales. That’s right, nearly one billion dollars in revenue online in one day—and yes, that would be the record for the most online spending in a single day, ever.

*Corresponding days based on corresponding shopping days (November 2 thru December 21, 2008)

As you can see, overall, spending is up just 4% over last year. The peak day is up 6% over last year’s peak, Green Monday (December 15).

Wait a minute. December 15, 2008; December 15, 2009. Coincidence? I think not.

Of course, there’s always room for the last minute shoppers to set another record. Polls indicate that, as of Sunday, the average shopper has 38% of their Christmas shopping left, with 17% who haven’t even started yet. That’s one in six Christmas shoppers who left it to the last four days before Christmas to even get started. (via)

Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Did you win big on December 15 again this year, or did you help drive up that total spending?

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By now you should know that free shipping is a sales driver—it always has been and likely always will be. But for some, a good refresher helps. A quick view of Google Trends shows you the weight that free shipping plays especially during the holidays.

Here’s some more proof that free shipping is high on customer want lists. And here’s a post that shows the sales results generated from testing various types of shipping promotions (although there were tested during none holiday seasons.)

Shipping Best Practices

1. Don’t Make Customers Login to Get Shipping Rates: How would you feel if you went shopping on the internet and found that you had to login just to view shipping rates? Lousy huh? It’s not right, and your customers won’t go for it. The questions of “how much does shipping cost” and “how fast can I get it” are top of the customers mind and to make them login in order to get it will cost you precious sales. Customers should be able to see the cost for shipping on the shopping cart page and it should be an option on the product pages as well. If you base your prices on the location where the order will be shipped, give people the ability to enter their zip code for a quote.

2. Include Shipping Info on all Product Pages: The product info page is one of those pages where shipping questions often arise. Customers want to know if “I add this item to my cart, how much is it going to cost to ship it.” As a result, giving the customers the ability to see shipping times and costs from or on the product pages should be an option. Offering a link to the shipping rates and policies is a good idea but an even better one is using something like AJAX or a tabbed view to enable the customer to get their shipping rates without the need to leave the page they are on.

3. Link to Shipping Page from Shopping Cart: In the shopping cart where customers select the shipping method, be sure to provide more information regarding each what they can expect with each option.

4. Don’t Try to Make a lot of Money off Shipping: Customers are shoppers and can find shipping rates for similar items (on competitor sites) very easily. They are often sensitive to high shipping prices. Don’t attempt to make “more money” (profit from) raising shipping and handling rates. It will backfire on you.

5. Consider Offering Free Shipping at Level Above your Average Order Value: If your average order value is $45, consider offering free shipping at $55 in to increase that average value. Here are 4 more tips for increasing for increasing your average order value.

6. Show Delivery Estimates by Region: On your shipping page, show a map of UPS or Fedex estimated delivery times based on region. These graphics are often provided by your shipping carriers and can easily be downloaded and placed on your site.

7. Ship Next Business Day as a Norm. Ship Express Orders Same Day: Customers want things fast. Even if they purchased 3-5 day shipping, you need to make sure you get all orders out the door the next day (that being at least the day after the order arrived.) In general, make it a point to process orders within 1 business day. There is no reason to sit on orders and doing so increases your chances of the order not arriving on time—and that leads to unhappy customers.

For those that choose “1 Day Express”, “2 Day Express” etc… shipping methods (if you offer them), consider shipping these orders the same day you get the order in (up to a certain cut-off time.) Express means that and you should treat the shipment that way. An example of terminology for this type of method might be “All orders received before 1:00 PM EST are shipped the same day”.

8. Provide Tracking Numbers: You should be doing already this but it needs to be mentioned. A critical time to start building customer relationships is directly after an order. Customers want to know that the order they placed has in fact been received, and want to be able to track that package’s progress to their doorstep.

As soon as you receive the tracking numbers and shipping information you should promptly email your customers promptly and relay that tracking info to them. If your system enables it make the tracking number a link directly to the carrier’s website (or your own) which pulls up the delivery schedule for them. It provides an extra layer of usability and that small gesture will be appreciated by your customer in the long run.

9. Don’t Ignore or Point Fingers on Lost Shipments: If you ship any level of items over the Internet it is bound to happen at some time. A shipment will get lost in the shuffle. Although it may not be your fault, you need to work with the customer to correct the situation. Don’t point fingers. Instead help solve the problem. If that means re-shipping the order then do it.

10. Under Promise, Over-deliver: Don’t try promise something you can’t back up. Give yourself a shipping cushion. To avoid unrealistic delivery times, you may want to add 1 or 2 (or even 3) days padding on to your delivery times estimates (except for overnight, 1 and 2 day options of course.) Companies like Dell and Amazon.com tend to do this pretty well (for the most part). They say “3-5 day shipping” (for example) and you get the package in 2 days.

I like to provide the cushion so that if it gets to the customer in 5 days they are still happy. If it gets there early they are excited. But if you offered 2 day shipping and they got it in 3 they would be mad. Get the idea? Give a window and deliver asap. You’re customers will thank you for it.

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Our discussion went into what type of demographic insights should online retailers be considering.

You have to remember that the person who is looking for the product, may not necessarily be the person who is buying the product.

Every year I tell my children to give me a list of items they want for Christmas. My boys will go online and find the items they are wanting. Then hand over the list to me.

Now let’s say that you are selling the item that my 18 year old son wants.

You have the ability to set up your PPC campaigns with premium biddings for mom.

Perhaps you are only spending $0.50 a click on a normal basis.

However, when a woman who is between the ages of 38-58 in Chicago looks for this particular item you want to bid $0.75 or $1.00.

Using the power of demographic settings in your PPC campaigns, you can target customers that you know convert far better than others.

How do you know who converts and who doesn’t? By looking at your analytics.

Listen to the entire interview now with Andy Cotten on Ecom Experts.

You will get tons of fantastic last minute holiday search marketing tips!

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1. Ensure your checkout process is stable and the shopping cart is streamlined.
You should be aware of this part of your site all the time, but take one good look at it and make sure it is working (and across multiple browsers) before the holiday shopping season hits big. It does you no good to get an customer who is interested in your product(s) put items into their cart and then abandon due to circumstances that could have been avoided.

2. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
If your website is working and is smooth, now is not the time to try new programming alterations etc… You might risk introducing a bug or problem into the current process and if it can wait, you should put all your major changes off and sit tight until the holiday season passes. Instead, focus on sales efforts. Sales are more important than new innovations during the 4th quarter.

3. Ensure your search marketing and ads reflect the holiday things people are looking for.
Free shipping, big discounts, buy one get one free, etc… are all big items people consider during the holidays especially. Also consider running ads during the holiday season only that reflect products people are looking for (that you offer).

With the major engines you can easily schedule your ads to run during a given period (I recommend creating a new campaign(s) and calling it “holiday” or something like that.) You can break this new campaign into various ad groups that all target different holiday products.

Schedule it to run during the holiday season only and end it when the holidays are over. This is something that can really help boost sales.

I recently worked with a retailer that had some holiday products (limited time) which just arrived. A quick search of Google Trends told me the exact points in time each of these products was in it heaviest demand on the internet and thus we setup a number of ads targeting those keywords and products. The results were immediate with new sales coming in within a few hours.

4. Utilize your Social Media channels to ensure you spread the word about your offers.
Viral marketing during this time of the year is something you simply can’t overlook. Good news (and offers) spread fast!

5. Tweak navigational elements to cater to the holiday shopper.
Consider adding the following temporary categories to your navigation during the holidays.

Gifts by Price: Organize and suggest gifts by price range. For example, highlight gifts under $10, 25, 50, 100 or whatever price points are appropriate for your business. Maybe try a “Gifts Under $10″ category or something.

Gifts by Person: Organize gifts intended for different people groups such as kids, teens, parents, and grandparents. Consider a “Gifts for Him” or “Gifts for Her” category as well as “Gifts for Boys” and or “Gifts for Girls.”

6. Showcase stocking stuffers.
Be sure to highlight low cost products that would make good stocking stuffers. You may even want to utilize these types of items for “cross promotional selling” as a way to increase your average order value.

7. Make sure your shipping and return info is clearly marked on your product pages.
Again, this is something that I say should be there all the time anyhow, but during the holidays you better have it. Shipping and return issues will be top of mind for your customers at this time and one of the first places the begin to seek answers to these questions is on the product page. Be sure you display or link to your shipping and returns pages from your product pages.

A favorite way I like of doing this is to provide a “tabbed” experience as is the case with many big online retailers and providing tabs for the product description, shipping info, returns info etc… This is a super way to keep the user on the product page and still provide them with the information they seek.

8. Consider offering gift wrapping.
If your business can do it, consider offer gift wrapping services to your customers. You can add this as an “upsell” on the product page (and remember to cross sell it on the shopping cart page in case they missed it) but be sure to add enough additional charge to cover any labor and materials associated with this.

9. Create product bundles.
Product bundles are a great way of increasing average order value and sales across the board. Consider taking several related products and grouping them into a “gift package” at a discounted rate than if the items were purchased separately (this too will encourage sales.) Gift selection is much easier when related items are grouped together in some sort of gift basket or bundle.

10. Consider gift messages.
If you r cart enables you to do so let your customers add a personal message to their gift. For simplicity, you can have the message appear on the packing list which will already be included in the box. If your cart doesn’t enable that, consider using the “Additional Comments” box (which many carts have by default) as an opportunity for them to add their gift message. Just ensure this message appears on the packing slip as well.

11. Determine shipping cut-off dates.
This is probably one of the most important pieces of information to communicate to customers during the holidays. Check with your shipping carriers to determine what the cutoff days are for the various methods of shipping. Ensure you add a “guaranteed arrivel in time for (name your holiday here) if ordered before (name your date here.)”

12. Prominently display your return policy.
As mentioned above, your return policy should be easy to find. Consider re-wording it as a “no hassle” policy in order to calm the fears of first time buyers (if you are not already doing so).

If your current policy is stiff, consider loosening it up during the holiday season. While a 30 day return policy is commonplace for the rest of the year, it may scare off early shoppers during the holidays. Make it clear to your visitors that you will accept returns and exchanges on all Christmas (or name your own holiday) gift purchases. This ensures them that they can expect total satisfaction.

QVC always does a super job of wording their return policy during the holidays—Why? because it works.

13. Show holiday spirit in your graphics.
Go ahead, decorate for the holidays! Consider redesigning some of the artwork on your site with a holiday theme. If you do any shopping (or searching) on the internet you’ll see all the big players do this. Even Google decorates for the holidays by reworking their logo to get you in the buying mood.

14. Ensure your server can handle any increased capacity.
If you don’t host in-house, talk with your web host about how you can increase your server performance during the holiday rush. The quickest way to lose sales is to have a website that is not online or is very slow. This will not only cost you holiday sales, but will likely cost you many future customers as well so the effect can be long term.

If you are on a shared hosting platform and looking for hosting, I recommend Media Temple as an option.

If you are looking for a dedicated hosting solution, no one beats Rackspace in my opinion. (I would not recommend moving your site to a new hosting platform if you are in the midst of the holiday shopping season though!) If you weren’t prepared for the rush then you’re just going to have to wait till next year to make the move. Lesson learned.

15. Enable customers to ship to alternate locations than the one they are buying from.
If a customer is buying a gift for someone that does not live near them they may want to have it simply shipped to to the recipient’s address as a holiday gift surprise.

16. Communicate with fulfillment & customer service.
Make everyone involved in the order process aware of any promotions etc… you plan on running. Don’t surprise your customer service and fulfillment staff with an unplanned 24 hour blowout sale.

Taking 10,000 orders in a day is great, but if your warehouse can only ship 5,000, you’re in for trouble.

17. Ensure your email campaigns promote the holiday offers and your website backs those up.
If you are running any email campaigns you need to ensure that offers presented in the emails are easily found and similarly presented on your website. Consider using similar graphics and pushing the traffic to specific landing pages on your website that are setup to convert that traffic.

It’s all about relevancy here. The more relevant the site is in comparison to the email offer, the more success you’ll have generating sales.

18. Consider offering gift certificates.
Even if you do not offer gift certificates any other time of the year, consider offering them during the holiday season. These often provide an added option for shoppers who may not have a “wish list” but know someone they are buying for likes to shop at your store.

These might also be a way to get “last minute” shoppers to buy—that is, providing your cart offers the ability to generate “digital gift certificates” that are sent and redeemed online (rather than printed or sent in a traditional “gift card”.

Comments

Our discussion: Improving the Shopping Experience & Increasing Sales

An article posted in Yahoo Tech News yesterday states,

“U.S. online sales are expected to rise 8 percent this holiday season, with mass market retailers who can offer discounts performing best, according to Forrester Research Inc.”

This is great news for online retailers. This news also means that online retailers need to make sure their website is ready for conversions.

Now, let’s discuss some other interesting information.

First - download a free copy of the white paper eCommerce Web Site Performance Today.

It is a fascinating study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Here are some of the findings:

• 88% of online shoppers indicated they are likely to return to a site that is easy to use
• 74% of online shoppers want assurances that their information is safe
• 57% of online shoppers want a rapid check out process

As Chris Malta discussed during our interview, you want to relate the online shopping experience the same as when you go into a retail store.

Imagine yourself in the following scenario:

You head to your local electronics store to purchase an item for your computer that you need right away. You need to get in and get out. You are not sure which item to purchase and there is clearly no help in site. You look for someone to assist you, but they all seem to have disappeared.

You decide on an item anyway and head over to check out. The first thing they ask you is if you belong to their rewards program. When you say no, they try to convince you to join and be a part of the club. You have to sign up and be a member. All you wanted to do was purchase the item and get out of the store.

The next time you need an item from an electronics store, will you go back to the members only store or go find a new store? Will you go find a new store that has placed customer service representatives where you can find them? Will you find a new store that allows you to check out quickly?

Now let’s turn this around and think about our own online stores. If a customer needs help, make sure your customer service phone number or links are clearly visible. Make sure the customer can easily find this information without having to search. When the customer finds what they need and they are ready to check out, do not require them to log in or create an account. Get the sale! Then after they have completed the check out process, offer them the opportunity to create an account and save the information.

Want more great tips on improving the customers shopping experience?

Then you have to listen to our show

It’s only 30 minutes long and you can play it in the background while you work. I guarantee you will learn lots!

Comments

I personally recommend sitting down and developing a 12 month plan consisting of at least 2 different promos per month with room for a “spontaneous” third if needed. If only running two promotions, I recommend running one during week one, and the other during week three. More on why I do that in my next post.

Planning out a promotional calendar is a critical element toward increasing your sales. When properly implemented, a promotional campaign can win new customers and keep your current base coming back for more. If you have continued to put off this part of your business, you are hurting your chances to capitalize on big opportunities. There should be no excuses … you’re only hurting your business by not doing it.

What good promotions do

On a general level, good promotions have several things in common:

1. They have an intended audience in mind.
2. They generate interest.
3. They create urgency.
4. They create excitement.
5. They generate sales.
6. Provide great value to those who redeem them.
7. They are planned with a clear objective that the business owner desires to achieve.

Intended audience: A well thought out promotion has an audience it wants the attention of. Whether that audience is targeted or open to the masses it makes no difference, all good promotions have some audience they want to reach.

Generate interest: Good promotions have the ability to generate the interest of their intended audience. This interest is generated through the look of the ad used for the promotion, the copy used in the ad, the offer, and even the placement of the ad itself.

As a simple example for illustrative purposes, if you decided to increase your “new business” base then it would be considered a “targeted campaign” toward “new customers”. Your offer might be a “15% off your first purchase with us” and placed in a prominent location throughout your site. Likewise, if your promotion was a “mass targeted” campaign to “move inventory” then you may want to develop a promo that is “Get $25 off the purchase of $75 or more” (which does not show favoritism to any one demographic.)

Create urgency: Good promotions have a time limit to them. Once it’s over it’s over and the offer is gone.

If you’ve ever participated in a promotion that “expires on xxx date” then you’ve been exposed to the “urgency factor”. Putting a time limit on promotions creates buyer urgency. Urgency generates sales.

When developing promos with expiration dates, don’t extend the promotional period unless you have a good reason for it. Once your buyers understand that when you say “it’s gone” … “it’s gone”, they’ll respond in droves providing your product meets their needs.

Create excitement: A well planned promotion will generate some excitement. That excitement can oftentimes lead to “referral” business where one person tells others about it and you get the domino effect. I’ve seen instances where a very well planned promotion gets listed on a board by an “excited” customer, and the sales that promotion generates goes through the roof. It can and does happen.

Generate sales: Good promotions generate sales. Whether the objective is to attract new customers, win back past customers, or get current customers to repeat buy, the direct result of a well planned and implemented promotion should be sales in the end.

Provide value: A promotion is only effective if it’s worth the buyer’s time. It must provide enough value the intended audience that they perceive it as the best choice. Although not the sole options, internet only discounts, free shipping offers that save on gas and travel time, and buy one get one offers can be big.

Planned with an objective: You should plan a promotion with an intended objective in mind. Whether the objective is to move inventory, get new customers (first time buyer discounts), introduce a new product or line of products, or meet monthly quotas, every promotion should have a plan. This plan usually “leads the charge” in the development of the promotion in the first place and oftentimes can assist in determining what the exact offer will be.

No matter your store’s size, no matter your market, if you haven’t yet planned a promotional campaign for the coming months, you really need to get started. You could be missing out on some enormous opportunities.

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