Gift cards are so easy and appealing for your customers. They give you revenue up front and can be very in demand, especially for gift givers. But just what do you need to know before you start implementing a gift card program? The negatives might surprise you.
Three Tools to Help Your Business During COVID
1. Social Media
In the very beginning, a lot of marketing people touted social media as a great sales tool. But as more businesses joined the platforms and the platforms became interested in turning a profit, the ability to make direct sales plummeted.
But with COVID, more people are working from home and spending more time on social media. While a direct sales approach is still largely ineffective, social media is the ideal way to connect with your audience.
Be real about what you share. People can identify with struggles and questions. Don’t be overly negative. Be human in how you relate and post on social media. This has been an ideal time to make deeper connections with your audience and to grow your follower base. Engaging your audience will help you continue to grow your business in the future.
Some businesses have even leveraged social media to enable people to shop without entering their place of business. They simply use the platforms that their target audience is on to show the goods and services they have to offer.
2. Local Gift Certificates or Currency
If you’ve been thinking about starting a gift certificate program or if you currently have one in your business but it’s becoming overwhelming handling the administration of it, it may be time to look at more efficient alternatives.
A local gift certificate or currency program can help you reach new audiences without the administrative nightmare that running your own gift certificate program can bring about. Usually run by the local chamber of commerce or Main Street Association, a local gift certificate or currency program gets you additional exposure and shows you as a respectable community business.
3. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation used to be a tool solely used by big brands because it was so expensive and difficult to implement. Things have changed. Now even economical mail senders like MailChimp and Constant Contact offer marketing automation to their customers.
Marketing automation allows you to set campaigns that send based on different triggers or time periods. It can help you measure interest on particular topics and nurture customers down the sales funnel to becoming eventual buyers. It’s a very efficient way to bring in more revenue with less effort.
If you’ve been struggling in your business recently, these three tools can help. Best of all, they take very little investment on your end other than time.
