What Not To Do When It Comes To Making Offers To Grow Your Business
If you decide to make an offer to your clients, make it a good and genuine one, then heavily promote it.
Sadly, what often happens with offers is that they create only bad will.
Let me give you an example.
I am at that age where I have a bad back. Nothing drastic, but enough that I thought I ought to get a better office chair.
I found a specialist shop in Bristol called Back-In-Action so visited to try out some chairs. Whilst I was there they invited me to lie on a machine called the “mobiliser”. How could I resist something that sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger was involved?
I lay on it whilst it rolled uneven rolling pins up and down my back. It was painful but good. I liked it.
I decided I would hire it for a month to see if it helped.
Whilst waiting for the paperwork to buy the chair I had chosen and hire the mobiliser, I saw an offer for a free pair of shoes if you hired the mobiliser.
“Yes, please” I said to the really helpful man John that was taking my order.
“Oh, I am really sorry” he said. “The owner only makes that offer to people who are buying shoes who then hire a mobiliser, not to people who have decided to hire the mobiliser but then see the shoe offer.”
I scratched my head.
“What?”
“I know” said John. “It seems unfair doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t seem unfair. It is. Not only that, it doesn’t even say that the offer is limited on the offer leaflet, so is clearly misleading at least if not worse than that.”
More than that, it is simply ridiculous! Ludicrous! Muppetry!
Suddenly I have gone from a customer spending a lot of money, having a good experience, to one who feels like a third-rate customer.
Why on earth would you do this to your customers or clients?
What was until then a perfect experience was totally ruined. It wasn’t John’s fault, it is the owner of the business who clearly doesn’t understand sales, marketing, or customer experience.
Such a shame.
Until that point I would have told everyone about this amazing shop.
Are you making the same mistake in your business? Do you make an offer but put so many ridiculous terms attached to it that it does the opposite of what it is intended to do?
If you are serious about making an offer, make it a good offer, publicise the heck out of it and ensure that you follow through on it.
For the record, when I refer to offers I never mean dropping prices here, that is always a bad thing to do. I mean a “value added” offer, like this ‘free shoe’ offer would have been if it had actually been a genuine offer instead of a farce.