Summary: In today’s podcast episode, Marco Torres from MarketingBoost.com and Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions discuss how implementing incentives for marketing and sales adds value to a business. These solutions are helping business owners generate leads, increase sales figures, and maintain profitability through value-add incentives.
Summary
Marketing incentives for a business should be centered around its call to action. Marketing incentives can be used for lead and referral generation when trying to accumulate new clientele. Incentives are also often used to develop loyalty programs that keep existing customers satisfied with the business and give them incentives to continue patronizing the business. Incentives add value to your business and customers when discounting will not suffice. Businesses that use subscription models can benefit from motivating customers to increase the time frame of their subscription, e.g., going from a monthly subscription to a yearly subscription through travel incentives for customers willing to make the switch.
Business owners benefit from using social media such as Facebook to cultivate a target audience for their products or services and create social media groups. These groups should be monitored, analyzed, and monetized to promote incentives in a viral manner. Businesses can benefit from using incentives that revolve around recruiting new individuals to join the social media group and gain exposure for their business. Businesses that are successful with cultivating social media groups can monetize those groups by giving calls to action and incentives to participate their members.
Knowing key financial figures
Business owners should be aware of the gross profit margin, net profit, and revenue for their business as well as the industry average gross profit margin for competitors. Knowing these figures can help business owners price their products or services and ensure that the business is not over-charging or under-charging. Discounting can lead to having to double your previous sales in order to maintain profitability. Business owners should also be aware of their costs to acquire new customers and the expected revenue generated from the customer to make sure that incentive programs are of reasonable value to maintain profitability. Measuring benefits and costs is essential to advancing a business to the next level and generating higher revenues.
Using marketing incentives to increase sales
Prospects and clients are more inclined to purchase products or services that have incentives than they are to purchase them at a discounted price. A common example comes from the increased likelihood of a customer buying something that buys one get one free than something that is 50 percent off. The idea of something of value being added to the purchase is more attractive to customers than a decrease in the price of only one item. Factors such as scarcity and urgency also increase the likelihood of purchase in addition to implementing incentives.
Incentives can be used at any level of business and at various price points. However, incentives are best implemented for high-ticket items due to the perceived value added. It is important for business owners to test incentives to see how they will function through the sales funnel process to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Businesses can test the effectiveness of various incentives through the implementation of micro incentives or micro calls to action to smaller ticket items initially and later apply them to higher ticket items. Prospects gained from incentive-based lead generation can be used in drip campaigns that expose prospects to incentives and educate them about your business through various platforms for communication, eventually transforming them into clientele.
Managing negative perceptions through marketing incentives
Negative reviews of a business deter potential customers from engaging with the business. Business owners can benefit from providing existing customers with incentives that encourage them to give positive reviews or ratings. Business owners benefit from placing positive reviews on multiple pages of their website to capture the attention of prospects and boost the overall positive perceptions of the business. Partnerships and collaboration with other businesses help to increase the credibility and effectiveness of your marketing incentives and add value to any business involved. Video reviews and testimonials increase the credibility of the review and showcase the impact that the business has on real people and give prospects someone to relate to on a deeper level. Review-based incentives add value by improving the business’s search engine optimization by increasing the number of total reviews left for the business.
Positive reviews encourage potential customers to engage and interact with your business website, increasing the likelihood of turning them into clientele. Following up with your clients is an important aspect of the review process that allows the business to gauge its client’s level of satisfaction with the business before a review is made. If a client is satisfied with your business, kindly ask them to leave a review for the product or service they received on the business’s website. If a client is unsatisfied, allow the client to communicate why they are dissatisfied to a business owner or representative and see if there is any way to resolve their issue before the client provides a negative review. Business reviews have become more important to consumers in the decision-making process than ever before. Business owners should ensure that value is derived from satisfied customers through incentives that inspire customer-based promotion of the business.
About Marco Torres from MarketingBoost.com
Marco Torres is the Founder of MarketingBoost.com, he has helped thousands of business owners worldwide boost sales and scale their businesses by as much as 5-fold through the use of incentive-based marketing. He teaches entrepreneurs how to soar sales & marketing through the use of “Value-Add-Incentives” instead of discounts. His Facebook Group is home to more than 27,000 active business owners who are raking in sales with his advice and amazingly affordable subscription program.
About Financing Solutions
Financing Solutions provides an easy-to-setup unsecured business line of credit to small businesses. The small business financing product is a great cash backup plan that costs nothing to set up, nothing until used, and is inexpensive when needed. Financing Solutions is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and 5 stars by the BBB/Google Reviews.
Unlike a traditional business bank loan, our business credit line requires no collateral or personal guarantee (except in cases of fraud) making it an excellent alternative business financing option. Small businesses often used their line of credit for short-term expenses, working capital, to make payroll, or for a business investment especially when business cash flow is temporarily down.
Get a free, no-obligation business line of credit quote by filling out our simple 2- minute business line of credit application here.
Remember: The time to set up a credit line is when you don’t need it.
Note: Financing Solutions donates 10% of its profits to various nonprofit charities