634 – Give your visitors an incentive: Tom talks Coupons

Episode 634 - Coupons
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 634 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about coupons, and I'm going to tell you how I get sucked in every time by a billion dollar company with coupons or or coupons depending on your preference. Now, actually looked it up and here's here's what Dictionary.com had to say about the pronunciation of this. It said coupon code coupon was related to cope and coo seo yuppie and is of French origin and it's developed. An American pronunciation variant, Q-pon, with an unhistorical Y sound right not justified by the spelling, and this pronunciation is used by educated speakers unlike me and and as well as established as perfectly standard. Although it is sometimes criticized it kind of like I'm doing right now and making fun of it, but I don't really care what you call it. Coupons, coupons. It doesn't make a difference. It's a powerful tool. And I'm going to talk to you about that today. Now, hope you didn't miss Episode 633. That was how to inflation proof you and your kids. And it probably applies to your neighbors and your brothers and sisters and their kids and your grandkids and your students or any young person. You know, even though much of this episode is doom and gloom on that episode, after I rant for a while, I give you the solution to beating inflation.

[00:02:11] All right, make sure you pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. It can do all kinds of cool stuff with it on your cell phone and tablet and pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And just one of the tips you've heard me say this before has saved me seven and one half million keystrokes. That's got to be 8 million by now, because I've been saying that for a couple of years. Right, since we did the estimate. So pick it up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And then I'm sure you want to thank me personally for saving you hundreds and hundreds of hours of time into the future. All right. So let me tell you about this billion dollar company that sucks me in every time with coupons. It's called Harbor Freight. They sell discount tools mainly, but lots of other things. And they're always coming out with new stuff. Now, just this past weekend, I got an email. I mean, it was during the week telling me to check out this week's coupons. Now, as a VIP member, I got a coupon that said for any purchase at all. Any purchase at the store with no lower limit. In other words, I could have bought a pair of scissors for $0.99 or something.

[00:03:32] And I would get a free tarp. A battery operated flashlight and a long tool magnet to hang up your metal tools on the wall. And the freebies totaled about $15 retail. Now to harbor freight. They probably cost a total of $3. Right. But that little coupon got me to get my fat butt up out of this chair. Drive 15 minutes to Harbor Freight and listen to this. Walk out the door with $166 worth of stuff because I bought a whole bunch other stuff while I was there. Now, if you really want to get me up and running towards the store, you better get out of the way when they have their five gallon bucket promotion for free. Oh, man, I love those buckets. I mean, I knock over little kids in their parents getting in there before the buckets run out. Which brings me to another point about using coupons and the copywriting technique called urgency and scarcity. They put one little line on the coupon, it said, while supplies last. In other words, if I didn't get there early in the weekend, I might not get the freebies. Now, truly, truly, this was my thought process when I saw this coupon. And I'm not trying to brag, but I'm as promotion savvy and resistant to them as they get. I mean, I've written copy for millions of years. All right.

[00:05:09] So I know all these things. But here's the deal. On Saturday morning, I was supposed to put the skid plates on my four wheeler in preparation for a difficult in the woods journey I have coming up to save a bunch of trees deep into the woods. So Saturday morning comes around and I thought, Hey, you know what? I better go to Harbor Freight first before working on my four wheeler because they might run out of freebies. All right. And I had been planning all week to work on the quad the first thing in the morning on Saturday when it was cool because of that damn coupon. By the time I went to Harbor Freight, played around with all the goodies I bought, and by the time I got to work on the quad, I was burning up in the hot sun, but I didn't care. I got a free tarp, a cheap flashlight, and a big old magnet. All right. That's how powerful these things are. I mean, coupons are one of the reasons Harbor Freight is $1,000,000,000 company, and it has seen exponential growth. Now, I don't expect you to be harbor freight, but I do expect you to take lessons from them and all the other companies who use coupons to their advantage. Now, one overriding principle of selling is that people love sales, discounts and freebies. Those things pretty much make people buy unless it's a commodity they have to have.

[00:06:46] Harbor Freight knows that virtually all the people that come in with one of those coupons will buy way more than they intended when they walked into the store. And that coupon got me to walk into the store. And over the years, I've spent many thousands of dollars there. Many thousands. So how can you use coupons both online and offline now? Mostly I talk about online, but a lot of the same techniques apply. But the offline requires you to print stuff and I'm kind of against that because too much work when you can do everything digitally. But let me start online because it is easiest and you don't have to mail or print things. So the shopping cart system we use and promote is kick start cars.com. Now one of its many fantastic features is a coupon module. This coupon module lets you customize a coupon code for specific products or even for specific groups. So let's say you have some connection to the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts of America. Well, for the Boy Scouts and their families, you might give a 25% discount on certain products and services. So you could make a custom coupon code, something like Scout 25. And you give that code to your Boy Scout families and tell them to use it at checkout to get a 25% discount. Same for the Girl Scouts. You could make a code like GS 25. The reason or the reason I didn't do that for the Boy Scouts because I didn't want the Boy Scouts to have a code BS 25.

[00:08:28] Right. Because there's there's enough BS in the world already. All right. But coupons can be easily programmed to not just for percentage discounts, but to give free shipping or a certain amount of money off when you spend a certain amount of money, all kinds of things. And just the fact that the code is customized to the group makes them feel special and makes them want to use the code, which means more sales for you. Just like the phrase while supplies last. That Harbor freight used. You can set expiration dates on coupons which force people to use it or lose it. And if they don't act by a certain date, then the deal is off. For instance, you could say use the coupon code. All right. All right. I'll get right in here. Let's go. Brandon, for 10% off and a free American flag. But you got to do it by midnight to get the deal. So the by midnight tonight creates the urgency to act. And it's a discount anyway. So whatever I'm doing, if I see this coupon, I should stop and make my order right now. That's urgency and scarcity. Getting people to move now. Now, with a little extra programming, you can make coupons appear on a web page where you tell the person this coupon will disappear in 5 minutes.

[00:09:58] And the coupon, of course, gives some fantastic deal, makes them go now and go get it. Now, not only can you target groups of people with your coupons, you can target times of the year like holidays, Black Friday, like Easter, Presidents Day, 4th of July, Veteran's Day, Labor Day, and all the others. And you can do it for your own businesses, like your anniversary sale for your business or or your own personal birthday sale. I frequently do it when this podcast reaches certain numbers of episodes. So we're approaching 650 episodes now, which is something to be really proud of because many podcasts do one episode and quit and the average podcast last six months before it fails. But anyway, any significant milestones in your business can be perfect times for coupons. Now, here's some other things about coupons. The last research I'm going to read from their website here revealed that consumers respond to marketing messages. Beyond just saving money. Yes, saving money absolutely is a great way to use coupons and sales and stuff. But they also look for new products and experiences. These are customers or potential customers. The research companies found that 56% of consumers find it. Listen to this. I was going to say, well, they better get a life, but they find it exciting, right, to discover a coupon or discount for a new product or brand they have not previously tried. That's why you see it all the time in vowel packs and and where they send you in the mail coupons or discounts to try to hide or try teeth whitening or whatever it is.

[00:11:53] They work like crazy. And this is the science. Why? 56% say that it's exciting to discover the coupons. 45% of the respondents to their survey are leveraging coupons or discounts to expand their budgets. Now, this is back to saving money and their ability. But the last part is the kicker here. And also to increase their ability to buy fun things or experiences so they can't maybe justify them at full price. But if it's a coupon, they can say. And vlas went on to find that consumers can be highly influenced through incentives such as 60% of consumers want to try a new product, 59% to buy something that's not on their list. Like I did when I went into Harbor Freight, I just saw stuff. I said, Oh, man, I could use that. I could use this $166 later, I'm leaving the store. 54% make impulse purchases. I guess that's kind of what I did right there. And then 46%. Change their planned purchase because of a coupon for another competing product. Think about that, folks. If you have competitors and I put the link to this whole research thing they have in the show notes there. Now I should mention a few downsides of using coupons, but you can be sure I wouldn't have done this episode if I didn't think that.

[00:13:25] The downsides. Will hurt you less. Then the upsides will help you. In other words, you'll make more money because of it, even if you lose a little bit of money. So one downside is that you make less profit on that particular sale. And yeah, I'll agree to that. I guess if you only have one product and don't plan on having any more. That could be a downside for you. I think about acquiring that customer for many more sales in the future, and that that far outweighs a little less profit from the first sale. Now, the other downside is that people may wait for coupons and sales to make their purchases. Well, Harbor Freight has a deal every week, so they don't have to wait long for people to respond. Now, I guess this could be a downside, considered a downside, but I prefer to look at it like I can control when I get a burst of sales. So to me, it's not really a downside, right? So anyway, you can see by this episode, I'm a big fan of coupons and I've used them effectively for over 20 years since Kickstarter cart was invented. So put your thinking cap on and try some techniques using coupons. I'm pretty darn sure you will increase overall sales and new customer acquisitions. And you can grab your free trial at Kickstarter, Cars.com, and once you purchase it, you get free, unlimited one on one tutoring and training to teach you how to use all the powerful features.

[00:15:07] And that's for the life of the time you have it. So that's my story on coupons. Now, if you'd like help with this and the other million things you need to know to be successful with your online business. Check out my mentor program at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of Internet and digital marketing. Go to greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and you can see all the things that you just can't get anywhere else. Nobody is a fanatic like me. I mean, I'm literally technically and by dictionary definition, a fanatic. And I help people. I've been doing it for I've been in business 44 and one half years now and online 28 and a half years and just live and breathe this. And I just love seeing you folks out there developing your own online incomes and lifestyle business where you don't can take the tell the boss to take this job and shove it. And, you know, there's no ceiling to how much money you can make. I mean, just it's just the most wonderful business I've been in and since I've been in business. All right. That's my story. And I'm sticking to it. I can't wait to see your first coupon. Catch you later.