Increasing Sales by using Coupons. Will it help your business? Well, the Promotional Marketing Associations (PMA) Coupon Council shows that 3.8 Billion coupons were redeemed in 2003. Consumers saved over 3 billion dollars. 79% of Americans used coupons last year. There are many Coupon Franchises out there with quite a track record. Here are a few of them: Val-Pac; http://www.valpak.com/info/franchise/franchise_faqs_content.jsp. United Coupon Corp. United Marketing Solutions. Adventures In Advertising. Coupon Tabloid, INC. Consumer Network of America. Coupon-Cash Saver. Effective Mailers. Money Mailer. Welcome Host of America. What do all these services have in common? Well, for retailers and service providers they are quite effective at getting people into your franchise to try you out. That means new customers. There are a few things to remember, first; keep the message simple, less clutter is better. Second; Specific Dollar Amounts are more favored by consumers and tend to grab and keep their attention better and are more effective. Third; coupons are great but if you say special savings or special offer, do not keep running the same ad. Forth; You want customers to fall in love with your product and/or service, not the discounts. We have often watched the miss-treatment of those customers coming in with coupons to those without, since the store owners feel they make more money on the ones who do not have discounts, but this misses the point of getting new customers. Also always remember a current customer is 4 times more likely to buy from you again than a first time buyer of your wares. Coupons are such an interesting free market innovation. One of the earliest examples of coupons in the US was with Asa Chandler, who bought the Coca Cola secret recipe; He offered free soda drinks using coupons in 1894. By 1895 everyone was copying this idea in various industries, another early adopter was C.W. Post who offered a 1 cent coupon for Grape Nuts Cereal. Hey back then a penny was a big deal. Another tip in coupons is to put lots of disclaimers all over the coupon so the FTC or some consumer watch group headed by an attorney does not try to figure out a way to hit you with a class action lawsuit, paying millions of people 35 cents, which costs more to mail them out than the amount in the check, while the attorney clears many millions of dollars at your expense. Franchisors who wish to help consumers save money and promote their businesses so they can expand, pay more taxes into the system, provide more jobs and further the economic expansion, will have to pay to play. No we do not mean the costs of the coupons, those are relatively inexpensive. You will have to hire attorneys to protect you from attorneys. Think of it more like the Mafia charging you for protection. Of course all this hurts the consumers in the end. Since it causes higher costs in the market to all Americans and prevents competition in the market place, but we will pretend that this is okay in a free market in the Greatest Nation on Earth. We will pretend that this unbelievable extortion is helping consumers. We will pretend that the loss of economic output, jobs, tax base to governments is fully acceptable and that attorneys are knowledgeable, ethical and without every single one of them the entire country would instantly turn to anarchy? After all Einstein always said a good imagination is favored over good education. So pretend with me will you? Regarding the argument that all those disclaimers clutter the coupons and make them less effective; well, yes that is true, but we had to destroy the coupons to protect the consumer. If this does not work we may have to destroy all the businesses to protect the consumer? Hey, what if an attorney actually produced something for society? Yah, wow, isnt that a great challenge for your imagination, lets also Pretend that too? I wonder if we are protecting the dumbest Jerry Spinger Future Guest Star or the Jeff Foxworthy; Heres Your Sign Candidates? Oh well, The Darwin Awards are only second to the events described on: http://www.overlawyered.com Coupons work, they bring people into your franchised outlet, so you should consider coupons as a way to increase sales and help you business grow. So we recommend mailer coupons, try it a few times see the new customers it brings in and then work really hard to keep them while you go get some more. |
