How to Advertise Your New Business
The best way to advertise your business
Online coupons are a growing trend when it comes to advertising your business; whether products or services. Sites like WagJag, Groupon, Living Social, and Teambuy, among others, are used for this. As an example, I'll use a restaurant that opened nearby. A few weeks prior to its grand opening, it sent out coupons to a few of these sites. The coupon was for around $12 for a two people all-you-can-eat buffet, whereas their normal price was more than that for one person. At this ridiculously cheap offer I couldn't help but buy it! I bought 2 so that my family of four could go and have a nice dinner out without taking a big toll on the wallet. Needless to say, this restaurant was pretty good. Good enough that we now go and pay regular price because we liked the food so much. Had it not been for the online coupons, we wouldn't have even heard of the restaurant. Maybe over time through word-of-mouth it would've come around, but compared to the word of mouth garnered from the coupons, and then people who tried it using the coupons (like us) it would've been nothing. My mom honestly recommended the restaurant to at least 6 other families.
How do these group coupons work?
Basically, a business decides to sell a certain number of coupons (or sometimes unlimited) with the condition that a minimum number of coupons are sold. This is best explained with an example. Let's say you're running a hair-cut business and want to sell 500 coupons. These coupons offer half-price off a regular hair-cut. You decide that the coupons are only valid if you sell at least 100 coupons. You come to this number by calculating profits and such but we'll ignore that part for simplicities sake. Anyways, you're confident that the service you offer is exceptional, and people need but TRY it. You end up selling all of your coupons, and even if half of those customers are satisfied with their haircut, you have found yourself 250 new regular customers! These people will probably go on and tell others about it, and so god knows how many new customers you just got yourself now. 500 coupons was just an example, depending on the size of the business, you can offer much more or much less.
But don't these coupons lose money?
To put it one way, yes. By offering these coupons, you will be incurring a loss. Let's say you normally charge $14 for a haircut, but with the coupon you are only charging $7, that's half of the amount gone right there. Not only that, but the coupon sites themselves take a large sum of that money as well. The numbers aren't openly available but I believe they vary per site and depending on what type of coupons you're offering. Often times I've heard they can be upwards of 50%. That's another $3.50 from your haircut gone right there, leaving you with a mere $3.50 which barely even covers the cost of your haircut employee.
BUT WAIT, can you put a price on such quality advertising? If you compare this to putting an ad on TV, a magazine, the paper, or anything else, it probably comes out cheaper and delivers better results. I mean, look at all of the companies that are offering these deals every day, across all of these sites!
It has to be successful. In the rare chance that it isn't successful, consider it an advertising expense. Even then, the loss won't be that great since you're still getting some money back. It works so well for many of these business that they offer these coupons on a regular basis. Advertising with coupons is definitely worth considering, it is the best way to advertise your business. If you are looking for a cheap way to advertise your business, a good way to advertise your business, and a business that allows customers the chance for a trial of your product or service, then this is the way to go about it.
Below I'll link a couple of the sites that you should try below. They should all have pages where you can find out more about offering coupons, and that explain their conditions.
