Marketing Coupons

How do coupons work in marketing?

Traditionally coupons were given away in newspapers and magazines, or maybe as part of a leaflet campaign.  Digital marketing has rejuvenated the use of coupons.  Historically the benefit of a coupon was that you had a permanent record of your customer.  Of course digital technology means that you collect digital information about customers, and therefore can tailor coupons to their needs.  So couponing is one of the few types of sales promotion which has benefited from innovative new technologies.

A coupon is basically a certificate, paper or digital, used by the customer for some kind of saving for a specific product or service.  Try couponing if you are new to a market in order to get people to try your products or services out; and equally, you might have a mature product or service that needs to an increase in sales, and coupons might be an ideal way to achieve that objective.

Try digital coupons.  If you have a website, or if you have your customer’s telephone number, you can easily start couponing. A coupon may be redeemed on your website, or you might text a coupon to a consumer via their smartphone.  There is plenty of low cost software out there which you could exploit.

There are also couponing based organisations, such as the Groupon and www.extremecouping.com, amongst others.  Groupon has the advantage of being able to target local geographical areas, so might be more useful to your small business.  If you have a niche product which might have more of a national or international appeal, it is probably better to avoid the large couponing companies which are better suited to more resourceful consumer brands.