‌🤑 What has been the most profitable promotion for your business? 🏷

[isabelle]

Hey Seller Community 🌟 

Happy Wednesday! Today, we're hoping to learn...

‌What has been the most profitable promotion for your business? 

Some examples are: buy one get one free, flash sale, end of year sale, first time discount, etc.

 

Looking forward to reading and learning from your replies 🧠 

[Amorajstudios]

videos for IG ads always work for me. I've definitely mastered my audience for each business on IG. 2022 is working of Fb as that is a platform i have not figured out. TikTok is also easy to get a following with as well.

[pessosices]

Great question @isabelle !

Promotions tend to boost sales for a little bit but then, at least for my business, fizzle things out so it all evens out. I found that when we regularly ran promotions and discounts, a lot of customers would get used to them and only come when there was a sale, and we ended up losing money. Since then we stopped doing regular discounts, except for a 10% off eGift Card sale from Thanksgiving to New Years when we're closed anyway. Not that many people buy them, so we're not really losing out or being taken advantage of, but it's a big help to have a little extra income when we're closed. 

We do use Square Loyalty, buy 12 items get $5 off, which works really well, and we always have a great boost when we send out a Square Marketing email every 4-6 weeks or so. Those don't have any discounts attached, just info on our newest flavors and things.

[OakParkUS]

Visiting local midwife and ob/gyn clinics in the area and setting up relationships for referrals, dropping off brochures, and doing this on a regular basis. (We have our manager do this now. In the past, we've had an ultrasound technician do this, and once we hired a sales rep). This helped us set up a stream of referrals from local clinics, which has gone much further and far outweighed any paid advertising on Google or Facebook. It takes work and actual establishment of relationships, but it's worth it. (This is mainly applicable to medical-based services, such as our 3D ultrasound  & diagnostic ultrasound clinic.)

[studio219ink]

We run a body piercing special as well as a special on small, simple tattoos. Services with a quick turnaround. Brings us massive traffic for a tattoo studio especially since we're visible on one of the busiest streets in Atlanta. It has increased year over year, every year for the past 10+ years.

[Keilani001]

Instagram, most definitely! About 80% of our clients find us from Instagram, (close second is yelp).

[Innerglo]

We track our clients and where they came from.  A disproportionate amount of "bad" clients came from Instagram. 

Causation vs correlation.   It could be the age of the average user or other variable. 

[mettayosemite]

10% Tuesdays - I feature one item and give 10% off for the day, which is really easy with DISCOUNT RULES. Thanks!

[GodlikeFitness]

Posting regularly on IG/FB and hitting the gym.  I do fitness so folks come up and ask questions if ya strong and shredded.  I wrote a book named strong and shredded and hoping that helps with high-ticket clients.

Referrals are freakin' best tho by far.  People already trust you to get them results.  Toss the referral $100 and boom.  Close.

[blackberryhouse]

We are a primarily wholesale company, although we do sell retail online. Our quandry has always been that we didn't want to compete with our own customers (wholesale buyers selling to the same retail customers)), so we held off doing many print ads or pushing ourselves in front of retail customers. When we decided to start promoting our retail business, we decided to go in the back door with it, so to speak. We started advertising our product and special sales where we though would be subtle - our Google My Business page. Happy to say that it was a move that took us completely by surprise. We had ten times the business we expected from it! So now, we keep that page up to date, and we only promote our product or certain colors in the line, and we don't even have to offer sales anymore. Google is consistently our #1 referrer and people pin things from that page to their Pinterest and Tumbler all the time, which in turn, helps further spread the word about our product.

We do a few Facebook ads, although I've found those keep getting more expensive with less reach, so I start my ads on Instagram first. For whatever reason, it seems to really help. We've started working with a few influencers on Instagram as well, and that's bringing in a little traffic, although nothing brings in as much traffic as Google. Once someone has viewed your Google profile, every time you add a picture to it, it sends them a notification that you have added a new photo. That's a win - and it's completely free. 

We've tried every type of advertising there is over the past 12 years, and seriously, the Google page has been our sweet spot for the past 3 years. If you haven't built your Google profile, just search "Google My Business" and set up your page. It totally worth it to have that presence.  

[Hailey]

Amplifying your point about having a Google My Business page. Before Square, i owned a digital marketing agency that was always a low effort, highly effective win for every client. It does WONDERS for SEO (and credibility/trust. )

[mdaigle]

I couldn't agree more about Google My Business. The web page and app are to be abandoned in place of managing your business profile via Google Search and Google Maps and this has been available for quite awhile now. Those who don't have a Google business listing should use Search or Maps to find their business then click that wonderful link that says something like "Claim this business listing", then follow the response to get set up.

Google My Business appears to result with my business ranking increasingly higher in correlation with the searcher's distance from my location when they search for products or services I offer. I maintain two websites plus two business profiles for each of my two businesses and cross-link them to improve credibility. I use Google My Business, Square Online, and my own Wordpress installations with WooCommerce for online shopping. Square offers a plugin for WooCommerce to allow me to take payments online and can even keep my inventory in sync (important when you sell online additionally to using Square Online). My business profiles on Google and Pointy get my business up front and even feature some of my products in the What's In Store segment of the search results. Google recently acquired Pointy.

Pointy is attached to my WooCommerce online store by a software plugin and very few sales are made there so my offerings are not fully represented on Pointy. Pointy adds your products to your profile as they are sold. The main method of connecting Pointy is by connecting their reporting device to your barcode scanner. I will have to make a note to request a Pointy device to attach to my Square Terminal now that I sell almost exclusively in store.

My main business is service based (in person). I would expect AdWords to be a necessary cost to improve ranking if your intended reach is not local. Almost all my clients that I served at another business found me right away when I started my own business. Since then (two years next week) I have attracted 1.4 new clients per week in a town of 28,000 where my rates, although much lower than when I worked for someone else, are too high to be attractive for most people. I provide exceptional service with equivalent skill. Not everyone really cares about their hair that much in a small town with a low median income. I serve those who want awesome hair or who have hair problems and need someone innovative enough to help them get a good cut. That brought me ~100 clients more than I can handle so I extended my hours and work week. Except for a couple handfuls or so of referrals all new clients said they found me on Google. They often then continue about the influence of my star rating on Google Search or Google Maps, and if they visited my website they would often comment very favorably on the style and content.

Credibility can also be enhanced by hosting (or even just redirecting from) a domain that is named as close to exactly your business name as possible. People looking for me personally often look for "Mike the barber" so I saw a great ranking impact when I bought mikethebarber.ca and redirected it to a subdomain on my personal domain where my Wordpress website is hosted (studio.mikedaigle.ca). I next see heuristic benefits in my search results by similarly naming my Facebook and Instagram profiles "mikethebarber.ca" and listing the forwarded mikethebarber.ca location as my website in each profile. Although I don't have a need I think I want to start a link sharing community in my town so that we can work together to improve credibility scores by reciprocal mentions on our business websites.

It doesn't take long for scores of business directory websites to slurp up your content and offer their own business listing for you (sometimes a fee based service is behind it so that you can enhance your listing with them (ie; YellowPages, Yelp)). It's good and bad that these sites exist because you have to search your own business to find outdated or incorrect information (horribly critical if you have moved or changed your contact info). Unless you want to be hounded by salespeople you should suggest changes as an anonymous visitor and not reveal your ownership of the business.

I just wanted to comment about the benefits I saw with Google My Business. Hoping my long-winded response may have brought some ideas some of you might find useful.

[KeenTaxService]

A referral program where a new client gets a discount and the client who referred them to me gets a discount on their next tax return. Ads have not worked at ALL. I've tried a campaign manager and doing it myself. NOTHING.

[Innerglo]

This is good. Its mentioned in "the one page marketing plan" 

[MudFire_Dex]

We do a discounted trial month - followed by regular pricing. It is a loss leader but works to keep the studio full.

[Stacelyn24]

We often use our promotion called “Gal Pal” we promote it during the holiday season where you and a friend can get a certain percentage off services during January - February (excluding Valentine’s Day). Clients love this promotion and it helps us keep our books full during our slow season...anyone in the beauty industry feel free to use..it really does help out during our industry slow season:)

[ReginaRMT]

I don't really do any promotions. Hoping to start real soon.

[Greenmonkey65]

Our Black Friday promo is one of our best. Buy One Get One 70% off. 

[Greenmonkey65]

A FB strategy I have used for over 3 years now is what I call “Most Recent Ad”. I set up an each month using a current post from our page. I set the audience to be those who like and follow our business page only. I spend $1 a day. I change out the post in the ad two or three times a week. 
This type of ad helps reach more people that know and love us.  The first year I put this ad in place I saw a 38% increase of return traffic to our physical store!! 
I still use this ad as part of my social media strategy. Still a strong traffic generator because more people are seeing our post on a more regular basis. 

[Freelancer4You]

For me it is a campaign called Circular Viralocity. It works for all of my clients in any Industry with any push . Basically I run social media posts, blog, email, video, direct mail , tele sales and SMS campaigns simultaneously, Each gives a tiny morsel of teasing info about the PUSH for product or service, and then each refers them to another one of our efforts ie.. Facebook post refers them to twitter which refers them to Pinterest which refers them to Instagram, which refers them to Tik Tok , which refrs them to a landing page which refers them to our website which refers them to BUY. Circular because usually you start at one point and work your way AROUNBD to all marketing and sales efforts until the buyer is comfortable making the sales decision. Big thing is everywhere they go there we are. This campaign structure helps with SEO, branding, lead generation, subscribers, and conversions EVERY SINGLE TIME. 

[Wmichael1987]

Honestly it's word of mouth. That has been my biggest promotion for years. The amount of referrals I get for previous customers is amazing. I love my customers. 

[OakParkUS]

Yes. Agreed. 50% of our customers are returning customers. Out of the remainder, 50% of those come from word of mouth. Then of the remaining quarter, which is where promotion comes into play, the vast majority comes from Google ads in our case. 

That being said, there is a way to use promotion to enhance the word of mouth referrals, since that is where the customers come from. Business cards and brochures - giving customers a tangible item to give their friends when they do talk about your business.  Also, at minimum, make absolutely sure your name and logo are on every product/byproduct of what you sell. In our case, we sell.a service of 3D ultrasounds, but every picture has our name on it and every gender reveal item and teddy bear has a sticker with our name and logo. It's worth doing this to promote the word of mouth.