As the holiday shopping season approaches, most of us are on both sides of the fence: we are both sellers and shoppers. Even if you dont sell products directly, you are likely brokering traffic for the merchants in exchange for commission.
Coupons, Rebates & Special Offers
As a merchant or affiliate marketer do you find that coupons, special offers, rebates, etc convert well on your site? Do you look for them specifically in your list of merchants, so that you can add value to your site and offer your visitors something special?
As an online shopper, do you search for these deals yourself? Or are you likely to take a merchant up on an offer if you happen to run across it?
In the 'real world', sales and rebate offers attract flocks of customers. Online, it's not much different. According to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool, the number of searches each month for these types of offers is staggering:
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13201 staples coupon
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11815 jiffy lube coupon
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11273 golf coupon
10965 folica.com coupon
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The key to success (or the key to savings!) is for the ad to be in the right place at the right time. To give you an example, last year I was on the fence about buying a new computer system from Dell. I left the window open where I was browsing their offers and went to check my PayPal account. Coincidentally, there was an ad for a Dell coupon on the login page, which gave me a code to save $20 on any Dell purchase made via PayPal.
Twenty bucks is not usually a deciding factor on a big purchase... but I just happened be a few dollars short on PayPal funds to order the system online - without that coupon code. It sealed the deal and I went ahead and bought the system out of my paypal balance.
Likewise, when I am shopping at Amazon I am more likely to throw an extra item into the cart at full price to bring my order up to $25 instead of paying a shipping fee. You might as well get two items for $25.37 than to get one item for $24.95 - dont you agree?!
- As an online shopper do coupons, rebates and sales influence your buying decision at all? What do you find works best on YOU?
- As an online marketer do you offer coupons, rebates and special offers to add value to your website(s)? If so, do these offers convert well?
About Lynn Terry
Lynn -- very good insight.
Sales definitely pick up as we head towards the holiday season and so will total search count for terms for coupons and deals.
There are a few things one needs to think about when putting such coupon on their site:
1. How "elastic" is the coupon? In other words, how likely is it for me to make more sales if I have the coupon on the site and will the volume of additional sales cause me to make more net profit than the net loss of revenue resulting from the price reduction of the product? Typically I will need a LOT of incremental sales to make up the shortfall.
2. Obviously, analytics is very important here and anyone not doing a good job analysing their sales may end up losing money as a result of the coupon offer. Analytics only gets you part way since it will analyze anything that already happened, not predicting future sales.
3. One of the factors to effectively determine future elasticity is analyzing whether putting a coupon on your site will cause more net new customers to shop there. Obviously, if someone searches for "Coupon" and finds your site and clicks, that consumer is a good candidate for buying your product solely due to you having a coupon on your site. BUT... that means your site needs to be findable under that search term. If your site is not up their on the Google search results, people searching for "coupon" won't find you.
4. So, if your site is not in the top result set of the Google search, it is likely that the only consumers who will see the coupon are the ones who are already coming to your site, possibly in search of your product. And those consumers are likely to purchase your products at the non-discounted prices.
Which brings me back to point #2. Analytics is very important and anything you can do to analyse sales with vs. without the coupon is important to your overall revenue stream and profitability.
Lynn -- I'm enjoying your blog -- keep it up.
Gene Kavner
Thank you Gene! 😀
I appreciate the additional points you offered, too - great post!