Customers who feel valued become return customers and are a great source of word-of-mouth referrals. For that reason it’s important to make an impression on them. You do this with excellent customer service, providing world-class service or products, and delighting them.
Whether you are a business owner or a chamber of commerce professional helping business owners develop a more loyal customer base, using gift certificates is a great way to make an impression on customers.
How Do I Use Gift Certificates for Growing My Business?
We’re seeing many businesses purchase chamber gift certificates to use in non-traditional ways to persuade customers to perform a desired behavior. These businesses are often not businesses you would expect to give local gift certificates as they are not recipients of the revenue.
However the gifting works brilliantly to encourage their customers towards desired behavior by rewarding them for it. For instance, a medical center who wanted people to sign up for their newsletter offered 3 chamber gift certificates as prizes for a monthly drawing if you signed up to receive their e-newsletter. The medical center got more subscribers and 3 lucky people received gift certificates for typing in an email.
In another example we saw, a local dentist hosted a monthly drawing for all of his cavity-free patients. The prize was a chamber gift certificate. The possibilities are vast. A personal trainer could offer a weight loss competition with a chamber gift certificate as the prize or a vet could offer a prize for the pet owners who have their pet’s teeth cleaned in that month.
If you’re a chamber professional share these ideas with businesses in your town. Ask them what they most want to do and then suggest pairing a gift certificate contest around it. This helps the business, other local businesses who are the recipients of the gift certificates, and the chamber.
If you’re a local business, don’t assume you can’t participate in the chamber gift certificate program because you don’t have a “giftable” product or service. If you have a behavior you want to incentivize, you can use this program to your advantage.
