How Discounts and Promotions Can Help Reignite Interest in Your Business

Sales can slow down for any number of reasons. For businesses in 2020, one of those factors is COVID-19. The shutdowns and other impacts of the pandemic left businesses struggling to connect with customers. A few months is enough for consumers to develop new buying habits or even forget about your business. Discover the benefits of offering discounts and some tips for using promotions to recapture the attention of your customer base.

Discounts and Promotions: A Proven Marketing Strategy

Deals have been around since the beginning of commerce, but the first official coupon came from Coca-Cola in 1887. The fledgling beverage brand wanted to make a big splash with its namesake beverage — then only a year old — so it created a voucher for a free bottle of Coca-Cola.

The result was powerful. Within 8 years, the beverage had been distributed across the entire nation. And the role of the coupon in marketing was cemented. As of 2020, 90% of people use coupons regularly.

Benefits of Offering Discounts

Science even stands behind the concept of discounts and promotions. An US research study on the impact of coupons notes that they can literally make people feel happier.

The study tested whether receiving a $10-off coupon while shopping for groceries impacted people versus not receiving the coupon. Those who received the coupon experienced a 38% increase in natural oxytocin levels. That’s a chemical in your body that helps produce feelings of happiness.

Researchers also noted that people who received the coupon showed signs normally associated with decreases in stress levels, including lower respiration and heart rates and less sweating.

When people feel happier thinking about your brand, that’s good news for you. And if you can increase people’s happiness or decrease their stress with a simple offer during uncertain times, they’re more likely to remember your business and choose you when it’s time to make a purchase.

Coupons and deals can also help persuade consumers to try your business if they haven’t — or haven’t in a while. Around 80% of consumers say they have made a first-time purchase based solely on receiving a promotional offer, and almost 75% say that a coupon or deal is one of the top factors they consider when making purchases — especially online.

Some other benefits of offering discounts can include:

• Increasing customer acquisition rates
• Boosting number of sales
• Differentiating yourself from the competition
• Providing a reason to re-engage with consumers via email or other marketing methods

Tips for Using Discounts to Reconnect with Customers or Drive Sales

Simply throwing up a discount code on your social media page or handing out printed coupons on the street doesn’t usually get the job done, though. Check out these tips for maximizing the benefits from any discounts or promotions you plan to run.

• Create a goal. Always ensure you know exactly why you’re running a promotion. A promotion to help introduce a new product requires a different approach than a promotion to recapture lost customers. Understanding the why of your deal helps you better target it to the right people.
• Segment your audience. Planning ahead for your promotion can help you understand if you need to make different offers to different parts of your target audience. Sometimes, you’re actually offering the same thing, but you’re wording it differently to appeal to various audience segments. You might offer existing customers a “loyalty reward” or market a “free trial” to new customers, for example, or use different keywords to get your offer in front of the right audiences via online ads.
• Set conditions for promotions. Help boost the benefits you get from promotions by making them conditional. Instead of offering a £10-off coupon, offer £10 off a £50 purchase. Or, ask people to like or share your offer or sign up for your email newsletter in exchange for a coupon code — this builds even more value into the promotion for your business.
• Test different vehicles for your message. You can provide physical coupons, send offers via email, including them on your site or social media pages or advertise them via PPC ad campaigns. And these are just a few of the ways you can get your deal in front of consumers. If you don’t see immediate success with an offer, try advertising it in different ways to capture more attention.

Whether you’re looking to reconnect with old customers or bring new traffic to your business, Groupon can help. Find out about becoming a Groupon Merchant and discover benefits such as proven marketing strategies that put your offers before an existing network of consumers.