Discounts and Offers: Can It Be An Advantage To Your Business?

Everyone loves a good discount, I know I do. You’re probably wondering how offers and discounts can be an advantage you. Yes, your profit might not be that much. However, at the end of the day you’re still profiting (at least a little) from the sale. Which is not completely a bad thing! And here’s why…

Offers that you can give to your customers:

Discounts (% or $): You can never go wrong with giving customers discounts on their purchase. Customers love the satisfaction of knowing that they saved money purchasing something. How much discount you would like to offer to your customers is entirely up to you, depending on your business and stock. Big discounts are often given to customers when a company wants to sell of an item quickly. But, a discount is a discount no matter how small it is customers are sure to be attracted to it.
Free gifts: You could offer free gifts to your customers after they have purchased over a certain amount. For example, customers get a free tote bag if they were to purchase $100 and above. This will encourage customers to spend more so they can achieve the $100 mark to get the free tote bag. This especially applies to the customers who are near the $100 mark.
Buy one get one free: This method could work on items you want to sell off quickly or items you have too many off. Customers often will feel that buy one get one free is the greatest value for their money and this will encourage them to buy more than one item from you.
Free shipping: Everyone loves free shipping! After spending on your website customers will be more likely to check out if you offer them free shipping. *(making them feel they are saving money) This option could also work as a type of free gift to customers who have purchased over a certain amount. Also, you could offer this to customers who are on your mailing list. *(this will encourage more people to sign up and you can send them emails!) Remember to specify which country/countries are eligible for the free shipping.

Check out our tips on email marketing:

10 Easy Mistakes That’s KILLING Your Click Through Rates [INFOGRAPHIC]

Clearing stock

There is really no point in you keeping all this stock you have left. You might be keeping it for months on end! Why not put it at a lower price and attract customers to buy it. I’m sure it’s only COSTING YOU MORE to keep it. This will be more relevant to you if your business is trend driven. Trends are constantly changing. In order for your business to be relevant you HAVE to keep up with the trends and constantly change your stock according to the trends. So what to do with all the leftover stock? Put them up for sale of course! Get rid of them to make room for all the new stuff.

Attracting Existing/New Customers

How many times have you bought something you probably didn’t need but bought it anyway just because it was offered at a great price? Good discounts and sales make people do that. Discounts are often only offered for a certain amount of days (remember to specify how many days). By specifying how many days your sale is on for, it will give customers the urgency to quickly buy it before the offer is over.

In addition, people who have not bought from you before and people who aren’t too sure about your brand would be more likely to try you out. This is because they won’t feel like they are losing out on much if they didn’t like the product they bought. But, if they like it they’ll potentially become a loyal customer.

MORE Traffic Means More Money!

Discounts often generates more traffic to your store which also means more sales. The discounts in your store has attracted more people and now you have more potential buyers. These people might see something else in your store that is not on sale that they like and end up buying that instead (speaking from experience) heh. Often times I will walk into a store with a sale going on and walk out with non sale items. So do not worry about not making money from sale items cause generating traffic is much more important.

Sharing Incentives With Others

Sharing a discount code or coupon on social media is a great way to get the word out to your followers. As you are giving your customers/ prospects the freedom of using the discount with no strings attached. People will be more likely to use the code or print out the coupon to use it in your store if it was made easy.

Tip: Discounts Can Backfire Too

While there a lot of benefits when you give your customers offers and discounts, there is also a bad side to it. Remember to only host your discounts for a certain amount of time and only when you are trying to sell off left over stock. DO NOT abuse the discount method and constantly have discounts all year round. This could damage and affect your brand and of course your sales too eventually. Your customers might no longer see your store as appealing as they use to. Especially when you have made it “too available”. Your brand would lack its lust.