Tag Archives: discounts

Channel Marketers–The Ninjas of the Marketing World

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Channel Marketing is such a specialized marketing challenge. I’m not a career channel marketer, I’ve only dipped my toe in that world with a couple of companies. I think in the world of all marketing professionals, the channel marketers are the ninjas. They are the stealthy ones convincing companies with all different goals, strategies, locations, and customer types to pay attention to their product and adopt their programs to sell more of their products. Also, as new trends come up like showrooming, big data usage, or mobile shopping, channel marketers are the ones standing at the bottom of that proverbial hill that the poo rolls down. They have to interpret how those trends affect not only their products but understand how it is affecting dozens of types of resellers and retailers and then determine how to respond. Whew!

So now what? We’ve all agreed that the ninjas of the marketing world deserve a fist bump, but in the ever changing world of technology and marketing, are there strategies that can help them? In a word, yes. The channel marketers newest weapon of choice to consider is affiliated exclusive discounts.

marketing ninjas use sheeridNote I didn’t say “affiliate discounts” that’s completely different. I’m talking about offering a discount for your products to pre-defined groups of consumers that your resellers can attract to create new and loyal customers. Instead of looking at your resellers existing customers and speaking to them, look outside of that to where new customers could be coming from. Here are a few examples, then we’ll talk about how you turn this strategy into a channel marketing program:

Businesses

Um duh, that’s covered. But what if you broke down businesses and offered discounts to the target markets you wanted. Create special programs for specific SIC codes, or for women- or minority-owned businesses, or specifically small businesses. Or better yet, offer the verticals to your resellers, let them decide who the program targets.
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Three Ways to Battle Showrooming

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I love it when a new phenomenon comes around that give marketers something to worry about and to debate. I’m sure you have heard of showrooming. Even if you haven’t heard the term, you’ve probably done it.

Showrooming is when you are standing in Target, considering buying an Ipad andkelly gets a discount you pull out your smart phone and look up the pricing of the same product on Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Chances are, you’ll find it for a little cheaper, which then leaves you to decide if you head to the Target check-out with just the red velvet cookies, the $9 polka-dot push-up bra, and three plastic chairs for your patio, or if you add the Ipad to your not-as-random-as-it-seems collection of purchases. As you can imagine, Target, and other big retailers, are spending a lot of money, energy, and brain power to come up with ways to push your decision in their favor.

The battles around showrooming are in full swing. Amazon has offered permanent price-matching, so has Target. So at least they have neutralized each other. There are also apps that recognize when you are in a store like Best Buy and they can immediately offer you a coupon if you buy today. From a non-tech point of view, exclusive product like Target’s designer appliances, bikes, and bedding also battle that option of looking at competitors and leaving with only a $.99 bag of popcorn.

It makes sense that big retailers would first focus on themselves, their products, and their competitors, those are concrete concepts that are easily spit-balled in conference rooms. But I gotta say, what about me? Isn’t it all about me? I am the customer after all. If you want me to pledge my loyalty and devote all my dollars to you, then I need to be wooed. I need to know that you see me as individual and that you care about my point of view. Here are three things that big retailers should be doing to increase loyalty.

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Back to Basics–Why Offer a Discount

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Continuing our guest blog series, today’s post comes from Marcela De Vivo who is a freelance writer and accomplished online marketing professional in Los Angeles. She has written on everything from health & wellness, marketing, and technology, and currently works with web designers Planet Telex. Marcela reminds us why “discount” is not a four-letter word. 

Offering discounts on goods or services is a way to quickly draw in potential customers. kelly gets a discountWhen customers hear that they can save money on products or services they are looking for, likely to use, or even have considered using, a discount is likely to bring their attention to you, even if they had not previously heard of your business. Discounts not only bring new business and attention as a marketing tool, they can help improve your bottom line.

General advantages of offering discounts

1.  Attracts Customers. As mentioned, discounts are very attractive to customers and may not only bring new clients, but can also bring back previous customers. Discounting products and services, particularly in-demand ones, is a good way to get attention. Especially in these days of social media, word-of-mouth traffic can increase results on promotions exponentially quickly. Your business is likely to experience increased traffic online or in-store (or both), and a boost in sales.

2. Increases Sales. While the discounted items and services are generally the ones that will garner the greatest sales, the increased traffic to your store or site means that other products and services also enter customers’ awareness and become potential purchases. The increased traffic for one item may lead to purchases of other items while they’re there.

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We Want YOU… to offer a military discount

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It all started with just one question. “Wouldn’t it be cool if every business gave military discounts or special offers?”  That one question spawned a series of other questions like, “Well, why don’t retailers offer military discounts?” and “What would make it easier for small businesses to create special offers for members of the Armed Forces?” We try to stay solution-focused around here, so we came up with an answer.

We’re giving away our active duty verification solution for free. Yep, free. What does having a free verification solution enable retailers to do (other than offer an everyday discount like Fathead’s)?

  • Offer discounts to active duty military during Memorial Day weekend or for the week of Veteran’s day.
  • Give active military coupon codes for free shipping to APO addresses.
  • Create a special sweepstakes or contest especially for active duty military.
  • Include printable coupons for free popcorn or soda on a custom thank you page when verified military purchase tickets online to your events.

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‘Twas the Day After Cyber Monday

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The biggest shopping days of 2012 and the numerous articles and reports that have been published in its wake inspired this little holiday poem.

‘Twas the day after Thanksgiving and at every mall
The shoppers were camping, awaiting their haul

Threats of mass riots filled them with dread
While millions more shoppers were smug in their beds

Though the masses lined up to score the doorbusters
The media reports in-store sales were lackluster

More shoppers are logging online instead
To shop from their work, their homes, or their bed.

They shopped on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and more,
Without ever stepping one foot in a store.

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2012 Veterans Day Discount Deals

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Colonel Kelly deserves military discountsFirst and foremost, Veterans Day is a time to express gratitude to all the men and women who have served our country so well. And I join my co-workers at SheerID in thanking them for their service and sacrifice.

Around the country, in different ways, people will show their thanks to the members of the military.

Several online retail companies will be offering discounts specifically for active military, veterans, and their families. We’ve compiled a list of some of our own clients who are offering these discounts.

Check them out over on our Veterans Day 2012 Discount Deals page.

It’s Not Too Late Yet: 7 Ways to Pull Off a Cyber Monday Promotion

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Like it or not, it’s that time of year again. Mischievous elves and sleepy looking Santas are starting to sneak onto the shelves of retail stores alongside Halloween’s witches, goblins, and ghouls. In a few short weeks stores will start piping in Jingle Bells in an attempt to force us to feel festive and start working on those holiday shopping lists.  If you’re an e-retailer who is on the ball, you’ve already got November 26th, 2012 circled in red on your calendar, and you started your holiday marketing campaign planning way back in July. If not, don’t panic. There’s still time to pull off a Cyber Monday campaign that will cause your web traffic and revenue to spike.

Cyber Monday may have first entered the vocabulary of marketers and e-commerce retailers as early 2005, but it’s really just in the last couple of years that mainstream Americans have started to sit up and take notice of the sales and savings they can find online the first Monday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday. In 2010, according to comScore, shoppers spent over $1 billion online on Cyber Monday, making it the single biggest shopping day of the year, and last year they spent even more. The National Retail Federation released its 2012 holiday forecast last week, and they’re predicting that sales will increase 4.1% year over year to $586.1 billion, which makes it seem entirely possible that this year’s Cyber Monday sales will be bigger than ever.

If you don’t have the staff, inventory, bandwidth, or margins in place to plan a Cyber-Monday blow out, you can still plan a little something special for the big day.

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Are You Offering Teacher Discounts?

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4th grade uses an exponentially large amount of gold and silver glitter.Ready or not, it’s back-to-school time. The long slow days of summer are at a close, and with it, the barrage of back-to-school marketing and advertising has kicked in. If you’ve been paying attention like those of us in the SheerID marketing department have been, you’ll know that those campaigns have been going on for a while now. (Spoiler alert – they’ve been going on since late June!) As a retailer, the student dollar is important to you, and getting a jump on the competition is key to making sure those dollars are coming in your direction.

You know the story about the insomniac bird and the worm that should have stayed in bed, right? Okay, moving on.

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A Back-to-School Special from T-Mobile

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Last week we started seeing buzz among bloggers who are fans of T-Mobile about their back-to-school special, which started yesterday. Here’s what T-Mobile is offering. Normally, when you add a 3rd line, it costs $10 a month. If you take advantage of their back-to-school deal between now and November 13th 2012, you can save $5 a month on your T-mobile bill for select family plans through January, 2014.

It’s basically a back-to-school sale. The deal is not limited to college students, everyone is eligible.

There is one catch. You cannot redeem the offer online. Trust us, we tried. To actually redeem the offer, you have to call customer service, navigate through 4 steps in their phone tree, and then listen to some not-completely-heinous hold music while you wait to speak to a customer service representative. The CS rep can apply the discount. You could also redeem the offer at a T-Mobile store in-person. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure an extra $5 in my pocket each month is worth the hassle.

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Follow Me On Twitter!

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Image by http://thedesignsuperhero.com/

It might not seem like much of a big deal now, but concentrating a large part of your marketing in the social media platforms these days is not the unique and scary concept it once was. Everyone from the mom and pops to the huge Fortune 500’s are embracing Twitter and Facebook these days, but there are still stumbling blocks to be found in this newest marketing space.

After years of scrambling to show ROI… well, to even define ROI in any kind of standardized way that matters, savvy marketers are using social media as it was most likely originally intended; to engage with existing customers and expose their brand to new ones.

According to an article found on MarketingCharts.com, “This year, 2 in 5 (merchants) are measuring success through sales, a more than 20% drop from 52.7% last year. Overtaking sales in popularity this year is the number of participants in special promotions, which is now being used as a metric by 44.9% of merchants, up from 36.6% last year.”

Don’t get me wrong, using sales as a success metric will always be important, but in the social media marketing world, it’s now sharing space with more squishy metrics like “follows” and “RT’s.”

One of the more popular promotions I’ve seen lately is the “follow us on Twitter for a special code” promo. The special can be anything from a few dollars off an event ticket to $$’s off an online retail purchase. But for all the usage of these types of “follow us” promotions, there are many things that can go wrong when you use them.
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