Sales, Creativity, Innovation, Reputation: special offers have a much deeper effect on your business than what you might think. Find out what they can do for you and how to make the most out of them.

1. In the past 3 weeks, I have been explaining you how to
engage your customers. You understand now that the
point of engaged customers is to have customers that
will not only buy from you but only from you. That means
that they will directly think about you to fulfil specific
needs. So far, we focussed on improving the human
dimension of your business, simply because it is easier to
bond with an actual person than with an inanimate
object. However, once you have created amazing content,
once you have
responded to
your customers
and that your employees have given the best shopping
experience ever, you still don?t have fully engaged
customers. There is no need to worry about it, at least not
now. At this point, your customers know you and they
appreciate you, but that doesn?t mean that they will keep
buying from you. So in addition to building good
relationships with your clientele, you should make sure
that these relationships have a positive impact on your
sales. How? Publish special offers.
"Consumers?impulse
buying behavior ishighly
motived by the Rebate &
Discount offer".
Nagadeepa, Tamil Selvi and Pushpa,
2015
Part 4?Special offers
Howtoengageyour
customersin 7 steps
Engage
- Am
plify - Convert
Pictawall

2. Making special offers doesn?t only increase
your sales to existing customers, they also
attract new customers into your store or
website, increasing your chance to build an
engaged audience. But promotions go much
further than just increased sales. They can
impact your business in a way you probably
wouldn?t even think about.
Promotion can enhance your brand reputation.
?You draw customers to you, because they read
the signal of increased advertising and
promotion as increased success of your
business?(Johntson, 2015). The best example
of such promotion might be Pampers. The P&G
diaper brand partners with UNICEFto fight
maternal and neonatal tetanus in 3rd world
countries. For one pack of pampers purchased,
he company finances one dose of vaccine to
combat the disease.
Promotion also helps you to be more creative
and reactive. Think about it: with a promotion,
your product will sell faster. That means that
you have to think about the next collection or
concept that will keep customers coming to
you, so that the promotion has a long-term
beneficial impact to you. In a way, promoting
your products helps you to be more innovative
and thus to always be ahead of the competition.
For example, by discounting its ending
collection by up to 85% , Julep doesn't only lure
more customers to try their products. The brand
also makes sure it remains dynamic, launching
new collections to stay ahead of the
competition and propose new innovative
products to its clientele.
Last but not least, special offers are also great
ways to test new or renewed products.
Sometimes you might be unsure of how the
public will react to your latest product or if they
will like the change you have made to the
products they have been buying for the last 10
years. Launching these through a well-designed
promotion campaign can help you attract the
attention on your products and assess their
future success.
Theadvantagesof
Promotional offers:

3. Bundling packages:
One very common type of promotion is offering
bundling packages. You can increase the
attention on a new product by combining it with
an already popular product. The key when
offering bundling packages is to still propose
the products individually. I guess you have
already bought candies. You can either do your
own mix or you can purchase an already
prepared pack. Once you buy an already
prepared pack, there?s a high chance that you
might not like all the candies in the pack. On
the other side, if you have the opportunity to
do your own mix, you know you will choose
only the ones you love (HBS, 2013). So if you
want to bundle your products, never forget that
some of your customers simply don?t want to
have a pack but rather a simple unique product.
If you forget that, the risk is that you might lose
sales since people that don?t want the rest of
the pack will not even purchase from you
anymore.
Free products:
Free products have a dual advantage. First of
all, they increase the attention of potential
customers on the products you want to sell
them. Second, it also helps you to empty your
stocks faster and thus innovate faster as well. If
you intend to gain the loyalty of your customers
by giving them free products away or using the
typical buy one get one free strategy, you
should make sure that the product you give
away is of a high value to your customers. Give
them a reason to talk about you and how
amazing you are to their friends. It might be
painful to pay the costs of products without
receiving any revenue from them, but if you
play it well, the return can largely surpass the
costs.
Coupons: The main advantage of coupons is
that they are extremely easy and quick to
implement. You don?t need to communicate
about your actions, it?s clear enough that you
offer a reduction on the price of specific
products. In addition to an increase in your
sales, coupons also give you the opportunity to
track sales effectively. Thanks to their bar-code,
you can identify where your products are the
most successful and to which clientele.
Different types
of offer
Seeyou next week
You should never underestimate the effect
of promotional offers on customer
engagement anymore. The advantage is that
you probably already know how to promote
your products or services. The challenge for
you is to take advantage the temporary
effect of these offers and make sure they
serve the long-term interests of your
business.
Next week, I will discuss the way that picture
contests can help you engage with your
audience.