How a Voucher Can Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Vouchers are a useful marketing tool for your business.

If you run a shop, restaurant or spa then you might want to look at ways of encouraging business in the lull after the Christmas rush.
One easy way to do this is to issue vouchers for money off services at your business.

There are several steps to this process.

Firstly look carefully at what the voucher will offer and that it doesn’t cause financial hardship to your business. Offering a discount on something you make very little profit on it not going to do your finances any good at all. Offering a discount on something you are busy with already isn’t good either. Overstretching your business and making it hard for people to book an appointment to take advantage of your voucher will only frustrate people and cause you negative publicity.

Look at your business and see which aspect you would like to increase, and how much discount you can realistically afford to give away.

Sometimes you might have to look at implementing a loyalty scheme rather than a discount – where people who book and pay in advance for a certain number of visits to your business get a discount. This has the added advantage of getting you repeat business and hopefully longterm customers!

If you have a new service you are hoping to offer then a takeaway voucher can be a good way of getting the word out about this. Offer a discount either via a press release or article in the local paper, or via websites. Another option is to have a printed voucher and pass this on to customers to share with their friends.

Offering to do interviews on local radio can also be a good way of getting heard out in the local community. Local publicity can be obtained if you can think of a good story for putting out a press release about. Build up a list of email contacts for sending press releases out to. Look out for any new magazines or papers starting up in your area as these may be ripe for your press releases to help fill their pages. New publications might also be a good place to offer a series of articles about your products or services or general information articles that will help people with some aspect of their life relating to the line of business you’re in.

You can also reward loyal customers who bring you new custom too. This reward scheme can be a great promotional tool as it allows happy customers to benefit from sharing the good service they get from you. Remember that a surge in business that you can’t handle isn’t good though, so take this sort of approach sensibly and slowly.

Essentials when creating a voucher

– Deadline: when the offer will expire. Do not have open-ended offers put a time limit on the offer. This also encourages take-up.
– Limit it sensibly: One per customer. Prevent ways of people taking advantage.
– Terms and conditions: make these clear but fair for customers and your business.
– Reserve the right to cancel the offer: Make sure that if you find your business is overwhelmed then you can end the offer. You can do this by limited it to the first so many take-ups. This might seem unfair to people who miss the deadline but you can always offer them a voucher for next month.
– Finances: double check the figures work out for your business.

Getting the word out there on local websites is another useful part of your advertising strategy. Some websites that are locally based might be happy to place a link or short article about your offer free of charge on their website. Some might want a longer article in exchange for the link, and some might want money!

Keep a list of local websites and make notes when you contact them and what responses you get from them. If you get a positive response from one then move this up your list for your next release. If you get no response or negative responses from websites then stop trying them for a while! It can be very frustrating for website owners to constantly receive emails from people wanting free links especially if you have said no several times.

Some voucher websites will offer you a link in return for a link back from your own site. This can be a simple page saying ‘our offers are listed on the following websites’ – but you might like to allow website owners to create their own listing on your site.

Consider the fact that you might have to pay for a link. On some small community sites they might be happy to accept a link in exchange for some money towards their own site or activities. Look at an overall budget for the links and stick to it.

Offering to write articles for local sites can work. You might have to write an interesting ‘how to’ type article or even a local history article to fit with the theme of the site.

Make sure when you go to any events, socially or for business that you have a business card which you can give to people with your email address on. Networking in person can have a really positive effect on your publicity work if you meet someone useful whilst out and about.

Monitor your discount’s success. Did it bring in enough business to make it worth while? What feedback did you get about it? Did people find the voucher terms and conditions easy to understand? Do you get enquiries about the voucher offer still?

Often you will find that a voucher that gets people to form a habit of using your business can have the most positive long-term effect. People only need to do something 7 times before it becomes a habit so try to think up ways of promoting your business for repeated use to get discounts.