When running a business, one of your marketing strategies should be focusing on rewarding your customers through customer incentives. Customer incentives are rewards you give your customers for continuing to do business with you.
A common example is a coffee shop.
Most coffee shops offer punch cards where you receive one punch for every cup of coffee you purchase. After purchasing 10, your next one is free.
Offering some sort of incentive to your customers is a great way to keep them coming back for more.
Put social media to work
Speaking of coffee, one company as the following article shows that has customer incentive programs down to a T is Dutch Brothers.
If you follow them on Twitter, you’ll notice they are constantly offering deals and freebies to their loyal customer base.
They have “double stamp days,” “free medium iced coffee days” and, of course, their signature punch card where you receive a free coffee of your choice after you buy 10.
Three ways to use social media to promote
Some ways for you to put social media to use include:
- Grow your following – First, you should focus on growing your following on social media. If you don’t already, get a business Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn page and a Google Plus page at the very least. The more heavily involved you are in social media, the more followers you will have.
- Offer incentives to people who promote your brand – This is a unique way to gain more followers on social media and get your brand in front of more people. Instead of just offering incentives to your regular customers, try offering incentives to those that share your posts, Tweets and status updates with their followers. On Twitter, for example, you can have people re-Tweet one of your advertisements and by doing so, they will receive half-off their next purchase. By offering incentives this way, everybody wins.
- Be specific – Nowadays, you can use customer management systems to track what your customers are buying and what types of customers are buying what types of products. You can then promote your brand in a unique, targeted way that allows you to make your customers feel exclusive. You can create an email newsletter and promote different newsletters to different target audiences. Sometimes, being specific with your social media and online marketing allows you to expand your brand even more.
Types of customer incentive programs
There are many types of customer incentive programs that people like, but it’s up to you to determine which one will be the most effective with your audience.
Do your customers just want something for free, like with a cup of coffee? Do they want to consistently rack up rewards, such as with a store credit card? Or do they want to receive greater discounts for spending more money, like Home Depot’s contractor program?
If you’re not sure where to start with customer incentives, try one type of offer and measure the response you receive. If it doesn’t perform as well as you’d hoped, try offering a different incentive.
With marketing, there is no one size fits all program.
Instead, you must figure out what works for you and your brand through extensive trial and error.
Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1IJklOO via social lead funnel
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