The Web is doing its usual jerky dance these days, changing on the run. The talk is swirling about Yahoo’s death spiral, while at the same time Online Media Daily is reporting that Yahoo was the #1 site for unique visitors in November 2010. But the same story includes the nugget for online marketers that “coupons were the top-gaining site category [in November], with visits surging 40% from October…”
In case you didn’t already know, coupons are big on the Internet, where price competition dominates many categories. Businesses of all kinds, from giant Proctor & Gamble to puny ma and pa eateries on Main Street, are posting coupons to entice people in the door. After being rejected by Groupon, Google is testing its own coupon network, possibly called ‘Google Offers’. Online coupons have become a major focus of an industry trade group, the Association of Coupon Professionals.
An important emerging trend in online coupons is the integration of social media with coupon distribution and marketing. These approaches not only build direct sales but also emphasize relationships. They help companies to be found and as such can be a part of a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy.
This post is the first of 5 posts about online coupons – we will post them every Tuesday for the next 4 weeks. The next 4 topics will include:
- 8 Good Reasons to Use Online Coupons
- 5 Great Online Coupon Networks
- Groupon Redefines the Coupon for the Internet
- Planning an Online Coupon Campaign
Online Coupons Share Basic Traits with Ordinary Coupons
Coupons have been around for a long time. Online coupons are similar to these familiar offers in important ways:
- A coupon offers a discount, a bonus, or another form of enticement that the prospect has to claim through redemption.
- Often a coupon is a physical link to a transaction between a business and a buyer or prospect for a specific item. Therefore, coupons are usually (not always!) redeemable in a business for something tangible.
- Because coupons are usually redeemed in person, they are a good tactic for purely local businesses as well as national or widely distributed products.
Online Coupons Offer Unique Benefits to Marketers
As we know, the Internet has a number of advantages for marketing. This holds for coupon marketing as well:
- Coupons are a good direct mail tactic, except using email allows much better targeting and tracking. Offer codes are a thing of the past.
- Social media make person-to-person distribution a reality, extending the reach of coupon campaigns to people not previously known to the marketer.
- Online coupons can be set up to help marketers capture the buyer’s contact information and sometimes even profile data. The implications for followup marketing are obvious.
- Personalized options, either by segmentation or at the individual level, make coupons more flexible and more appealing to customers.
- Online “coupons” can be emails that supply coupon codes to enable customers to get discounts in online purchases.
Building Marketing Campaigns Using Coupons
Online coupons have pros and cons. They are almost always a discounted sale and that’s a problem if it’s all you have going for you. But if the numbers work, coupons can be a great way to motivate buyers and establish relationships. Our next post will look at how to decide if online coupons are right for you.
