Customer Incentive Programs For More Active Clients

Customer incentive programs and other means of strengthening small business marketing campaigns are becoming even more important, as start-ups and smaller companies today have a harder time coping with the national economic climate. Giving your leads and clients the extra push to stay with your company longer and add more to your profits via customer incentives is one good way to help you dominate the local markets and further imprint your business identity on the minds of your audience, although it has to be done with the right methods and a well-developed campaign strategy.

Incentives and Your Business Goals

More often than not, smaller businesses usually enter the economic battlefield with inaccurate goals, which are also used to formulate campaigns for advertising or marketing. The inaccuracy of the goals reflect in the inaccuracy of plan development, later leading to underperforming marketing strategies and methods and sub-par sales figures, for example. What you need to do is come up with the right business goals for the size of your company or business; quantifiable and trackable ones that allow you to see if you are on the right track. For a small business, it is mostly easier to strategize your marketing plans and focus on local or niche markets, which are more accessible to you and your advertising budget compared to trying to dominate the entire market (big-budget competitors and all); here is where incentives come into play.

Not having a billion-dollar budget means that you do not have the traditional venues of brand or company promotion available to the big boys. Instead, you can gain new customers by treading the less-beaten path of the niche market; a market with a special need that you will cater to with your products and services. For example, instead of employing a comprehensive and expensive marketing campaign spanning traditional and Internet media, you could instead use direct marketing methods and supplement the effectiveness of these with well-chosen customer incentives. A well-selected customer incentive, such as a free account upgrade or a good-quality eBook on saving money, has the added benefit of endearing yourself to your leads and clients more and persuading them to become more involved with your products and services, despite the comparatively low cost of each.

Choosing the best incentives for your direct marketing or Internet marketing strategies depends on research into the characteristics of your target market and the best way to disseminate these incentives for maximum effect. Good customer incentive programs are an integral part of the marketing efforts of a small business, and allow you to generate more income for your small business at lower cost.