digital marketing promotion – Growing Forward

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Gift cards can be incredibly useful to your business. People with a gift card tend to spend more money. They see their gift card balance as extra, a bonus, and they don’t mind spending more to get what they want. They are also much more likely to visit a store if they’ve got a gift card to spend. If someone receives a gift card for a store they don’t usually shop in, they’ll visit so as not to waste it, and often spend more than the balance of the card. It’s an easy to way to make more money, reach a new audience and get customers coming back.

Gift cards can make a great addition to your store, and as well as selling them, they are great to have in stock. Custom gift cards give you a great way to give your customers something extra, to offer deals and to promote your business. Most stores find that they sell a lot more cards over the holidays, but they can be exceptionally useful all year around if you can find ways to boost your gift card sales. Let’s take a look at some ways that you can do this.

Advertise Them

Most stores stock and sell gift cards. But, aside from sometimes displaying them by the tills, they fail to advertise them. If you want to sell more, the first thing that you need to do is let your customers know about them. Promote your cards with posters and marketing, offer an exclusive deal to those who purchase one, mention them in your email marketing newsletters, advertise them on your website and get your staff up selling them at the till. Get the word out as much as you can, and you are bound to sell more.

Motivate Your Staff

Your staff are a useful tool when it comes to selling gift cards. They can let customers know about them, and they can teach them more about how gift cards work and how fantastic a gift they can be. If you want your staff to sell more cards, turn it into a contest with a prize for the person who sells the most cards over a specific period. You could always trial this approach over a busy period, and then continue it the rest of the year if it does well.

Add Some Fun

Gift cards can be dull and uninspired. Or, they can be fresh and exciting. Don’t just offer the same basic card all year around. Inject some fun. Offer themed cards around holidays and events, add gift card holders or packaging to make them more appealing, or offer a choice of designs and envelopes.

Sell in Other Places

Selling cards in your store is great. But, if you want to reach a wider audience and sell more cards, you need to do more. Remember, people buying your cards as gifts might not necessarily shop in your store. Sell them on your website, and social media feeds, as well as adding links in your email marketing campaigns. Then, get them into other large stores such as supermarkets and department stores.

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The business world is full of competition and if you want your business to succeed, then you need to keep pace with the rest of your industry. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean simply copying what other businesses are doing, it means being able to read the signs, innovate with new ideas and understand where the possibilities lie.

Whether you are just starting out on a new venture, or your business is as old as the hills, you will need to have the right tools at your disposal to help you make the right decisions for your future.

Reputation Management

It might sound like something from a political TV show, but reputation management is one of the most important things you need to do in order to keep your business in the running. With the right tools, you should be keeping track of your own online presence, including what people are saying about you, as well as your competition’s online presence. This will help you to keep tabs on what your competition are doing and where you might be able to get ahead.

Though you might think that your reputation is all about your social media presence, it is also affected by any online mentions, listings and reviews that may be written about you. As well as seeing how these online comments bring business back to your website, you should also be on the lookout for any negative comments that may have a detrimental effect.

SEO

Like reputation management, SEO can be used to keep tabs on your competition and to influence your own website construction and content. For example, if you find that your competition are doing particularly well on a keyword you aren’t using, you might want to consider editing your content to include it.

SEO can also be used to see where you competition falls short and sometimes it is more obvious to you what they are missing than what you are. If you can track a few competing businesses, you will stand the best chance of keeping up with the industry as a whole.

Social Media

In an online world, social media presence is vital for any company. In 2018, this is even more pressing as customers expect faster response times, high quality content and social interaction too. If you can make sure that your social media is managed well, either in-house or by an agency, then you will be off to a great start.

As it goes hand in hand with your reputation, you should also look at what other companies are doing but don’t feel you must restrict yourself to your own industry. There are lots of innovative social media marketing campaigns out there and you shouldn’t limit yourself. Doing something different is usually the best way to grab the consumer’s attention, so be brave and do something bold.

Keeping pace with the competition is about more than just seeing what they are up to. You need to be thinking of ways that you can improve your own techniques, spot the gaps in the market and be bold with your approach.