Keep Current Customers Loyal: Offer coupons/ incentives and do it right so you generate buzz

1. Keep Current Customers Loyal: Offer coupons/ incentives and do it right so you generate buzz

2. If you are following on Twitter … Tag your tweets with: #SMBTOOLS

3. What You Can Expect Today … • Trends in using coupons and incentives • How to spread your discounts and get others to spread them, too.

4. About Your Speaker

5. About Your Speaker Hi! Anita Campbell, Founder Small Business Trends http://smallbiztrends.com Twitter: @Smallbiztrends • Writer and speaker on small business advice • Runs a small business community touching over 300,000 small businesses monthly • Voted “Most Influential Small Business Figure”

6. Polls

7. Question: In Your Small Business, Do You do Any of the Following? • Subscribe to vendor Twitter feeds for discounts • Subscribe to vendor newsletters to be notified of specials • Become fans of businesses on Facebook, to be alerted to special discounts or incentives • Visit vendor “Partner pages” to see discounts offered by partners of your vendors • Search in search engines for coupons or discounts before making purchases • Use coupon websites

8. Poll Results

9. Question: As a Vendor, Have You Offered Any of the Following Coupons, Discounts or Incentive Programs? (Choose all that apply) • Distributed printed coupons via services such as ValPak • Coupons in newspapers, magazines and yellow pages ad • Offer online coupons or discount codes on website • Loyalty cards • Discounts distributed via your social media outreach, such as Twitter or Facebook, or to bloggers • Discounts distributed via email • Discounts distributed via mobile text messages • None of the above

10. Poll Results

11. Trends in Coupons

12. Coupon Trends • Per Coupons.com - Growth of digital coupons outpaces printed newspaper coupons 10 to 1 • Coupons/Rewards was the 5th fastest growing Internet category in 2009, increasing 36% • Consumer who prints digital coupons has an average household income of $97,000, 23% higher than U.S average

13. Coupon Trends • Print is still #1 • Transitioning online and to mobile

14. Coupon Trends • Email & text coupons: opt-in, so more relevant • Mobile is choice of young, affluent, female • Top markets for email and text coupons: • Providence; • Washington; • Atlanta; • San Diego; • Chicago

15. Ways to Distribute Coupons • Print • Distribution services • Loyalty cards (discounts) • Local listing sites: Google Maps • Customer sites: Yelp; FourSquare • Coupon portals • Partner websites • Email • Mobile text messages

16. How to Spread Word of Discounts Twitter • 2 types of Twitter approaches • Dedicated “deals” feed • Announced through company Twitter feed • DM or email to influential Twitter followers • One-day specials: • Intuit and “Free” incorporations

17. How to Spread Word of Discounts

18. How to Spread Word of Discounts Twitter • The power of your following • Work at building a following • Put Twitter name on documents, door sign, emails • The power of the retweet • Make it retweetable • Allow room for retweeting • The power of Twitter search • Use words like coupon, discount • Be specific on product category

19. How to Spread Word of Discounts Facebook Fan pages • Make your Fan Page interesting – give people a reason to become fans • Facebook-only specials • Engage with fans! • Advertisements on Facebook • Note Restrictions on Contests Through Facebook

20. How to Spread Word of Discounts

21. How to Spread Word of Discounts

22. How to Spread Word of Discounts

23. How to Spread Word of Discounts

24. How to Get Others to Spread the Word

25. How to Get Others to Spread the Word

26. How to Get Others to Spread the Word

27. Questions?

28. Thank you! Anita Campbellhttp://smallbiztrends.comTwitter: @smallbiztrends