How can you offer discounts when business is slow?

When people are tight with their money it can be a little frustrating for small businesses because it is a challenge to get them to really open up their pocketbooks and provide you with money you need to stay in business. How can you market to your customers when they aren't spending money? One of the things you really need to look at is how much money the customers are spending and their motivation for buying certain products. You may find that some of your customers are big on saving money and they will only buy a product if it is on sale or if they have a coupon and offer for it. Discounts will help to pull in customers and really they won't cost your company too much money as long as you promote them correctly.

As you are looking at some of the discounts you can offer, consider what they are and how much you are considering slashing prices. You don't want to do this too often because it does send the message to people that you are willing to work for less and they may start to expect this from you a lot. What you want to do is set a price and stick to it and then once and awhile you can do a thank-you mailer or something to your customers to give them specialty pricing. It is the goal to appear competent and show your customers and others that you are not struggling to get by. When people see that you have a strong company, they are drawn to it. This makes it much easier for them to support your company than to support one that looks weak and like it might fail if they lose customers.

Do not do discounts too often because it does send a poor message. You also need to make sure you aren't upsetting the customer with the discount and offers. Sometimes people will end up buying a lot only to find out a big discount is happening in a week. Always promote the offer ahead of time so people can plan for it so they don't miss out on the great offers. In some cases the offers cause people to wait to buy products because they know it will go on sale in 60 days or less.

The discount you do is a one-time event. This way your customers know this is something that they shouldn't expect all the time and they will truly know it is rare and something that they need to take advantage of. When you send out offers and discounts you also need to make sure you are showing the customer the revenue from it will go right back to the company to develop new products and provide better service to them. Customers like to see action and they demand results. When you take the time to make this happen for them because of the offer, they will be loyal to your company.

As you offer a discount or a free item, always make sure it has some type of value to the customer. There is nothing worse than giving the customer a product for free that they don't want and it ends up in their trash. As you promote these discounts and offers you also need to focus on reminding the customers that this is not a standard thing and it will not last. This will give them extra motivation to buy now or lose out on the money savings. This will create consistency with the customers so they won't come to expect free products from you all the time.