Black Friday and Cyber Monday are (gulp) right around the corner! What are you doing to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar location and boost online sales? If you are stumped or at a loss for ideas, we’d like to offer up a simple solution to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar and online storefronts using one of our most popular marketing apps: coupons! Need some inspiration to get the creative juices flowing? We have several simple and easy-to-execute ideas that can have you up and running in no time.
Boost Black Friday Brick & Mortar Sales
Brick and mortar retailers are no strangers to coupons to drive traffic and sales to their physical locations, but coupons can be used for more than just a %-off discount – they can be used to create excitement and inspire visits to your physical location. Fans can either print the coupon to present in store, or download a QR code that can be scanned at check out. The key to a successful coupon promotion is to offer something exclusive that will make their shopping experience easier and/or more enjoyable.
Here are some coupon ideas to get you started:
- Offer a set dollar discount or a % off coupon to Facebook Fans. Perhaps the most obvious choice is a simple %-off or $-off coupon that is made available exclusively to your Facebook fans. The key is making sure that your Facebook fans realize that it is an exclusive offer available only to fans on Facebook – your customers want to feel like they are part of an exclusive club – a loyal band of merry shoppers that are in on a secret deal. Make the offer something that isn’t available in your printed flyers or any other public means of obtaining discounts.
- Offer a Doorbuster Coupon or an Early Entry Pass. If you plan on opening extra early, offer a coupon valid for a limited time (maybe just the first two hours) that can be used for either a %-off discount, $-off discount, or a bonus gift with minimum purchase. Or maybe you want those early morning deals to only go to your devoted Facebook fans! You can offer an early entry pass in the form of a coupon that must be presented for entry during a specific time period.
- Offer free coffee and donuts to coupon holders. Who doesn’t appreciate a hot cup of coffee when shopping in the freezing cold of late-November in the wee hours of the morning? You just may win the coveted “first stop of the day” honor!
- Give them a Mystery Discount. You set the amount – $5, $10 or $15 off – and fans must redeem their voucher in person to see what level of savings they received. To do this, simply upload a set of custom codes that you can associate with each discount level.
Trigger Cyber Monday Online Sales
Online retailers have to battle a very different kind of traffic to get shoppers in to their virtual storefront. The competition is fierce and the internet is a mass of retailers competing for business. You need a competitive edge, and a coupon offer that is exclusive to your Facebook fans could be just the trigger your business needs.
Need some inspiration to get started? Here are some simple ideas you can execute today to drive traffic on Cyber Monday:
- Offer a discount for online purchases. A simple coupon offer with a %-off or $-off coupon for online purchases made on Cyber Monday is as simple as it is effective.
- Offer free shipping for online purchases. Often the deciding factor – all things being equal – comes down to shipping charges when making an online purchase. Offer your Facebook fans an exclusive coupon that can be redeemed for free shipping at check-out.
- Offer a limited-quantity item exclusively to your Facebook fans. If you have a limited supply of a popular or hot-ticket item, offer it up exclusively (even if its just initially) to your Facebook fans via a coupon offer. Again, your fans will feel like they hold a special place in your sales plan – that they have insider deals and access that non-fans don’t.
- Offer fan-exclusive sales.
Link to a specific page on your web site from the voucher page, and people can start shopping right away. Don’t publish this page anywhere else, and offer some exclusive items for fans.
Make it a Limited Offer
If you are concerned about the quantity of coupons that are distributed through your campaign, you can make a couple simple adjustments in your dashboard to make sure you’re not giving away more than you bargain for:
- Limit the number of coupons available for download. You can set a total number of coupons available, and when that number is reached no more coupons will be available.
- Limit the time period that coupons are available. It can be a day or a week, but limiting the time period that coupons are available creates a sense of urgency and allows you to set boundaries you can easily manage.
- Your Cyber Monday coupons can be made as one-time use only. Just create a list of coupon codes in your ecommerce platform, and upload them to Woobox using our Custom Codes feature.
For detailed instructions on how to create an online coupon, visit our help doc on Creating A Coupon for Your Online Store.
Promoting Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Coupons
They key to a successful coupon campaign lies in making sure that your target audience actually sees your offer! A simple Facebook post only reaches about 12-16% of your audience organically, so it stands to reason that if you want more fans to see your offer, you need to throw a few dollars at Facebook ads. You don’t have to break the bank, a small ad budget goes a long way on Facebook. You can add to or delete your campaign at any time – so there’s little risk at throwing $25 at an ad, gauging results, and adding more to the ad budget to give it even more of a boost. Woobox makes the process fast and easy by allowing our customers to promote their offer with Facebook ads directly from their dashboard. Check out 5 Reasons To Use Woobox’s New Facebook Ads Manager to find out why you should place your ad campaign through Woobox, then visit our How-To Guide for step-by-step instructions.