Losing Profits Because of Frequent Discounts? Here are 5 Ways To Skyrocket Your Sales And Break Away From Deep Discounts

photo credit: Meg Sexton | creative direction & styling by us

During slow sales season, It’s common to feel that you need to offer great discounts to drive quick, short-term sales. But discounting usually leads businesses to these 3 traps:

Missing Your Loyal Customers

Discounting tends to attract price shoppers, who are very sensitive to price. These are people who usually make one-time purchases, and who will only return because of a deep discount. They are rarely your target audience who will become loyal customers, because price is the key factor in how they shop. Without a loyal customer base, you’re entering a never-ending price war. Click here to read how you can grow a loyal customer base!

Hurting Your Brand

How you offer discounts sends a message to people about the type of business you are, and your positioning in the marketing. When you offer big discounts often, people see that you’re competing on price and your perceived value in people’s mind lowers. Any effort to highlight your branding, design, quality, etc., would be wasted because people now associate your brand with low prices and discounts.

Hurting Your Business

Unless you have the resources like Walmart or Amazon to always keep the prices low and compete on volume, it’s difficult for business to win the price war and sustain and grow in the long term. With discounts comes low profit margin, and it’s simply not a sustainable business, marketing, or brand strategy.

So, instead of discounting and hurting your brand and sales, here 5 other ways that not only help boost sales but also drive engagement and loyalty - 

#1 Offer Seasonal Special

Depending on the time of the year or particular current events, you can create a time-limited special offer of your products or services that fulfill people’s specific needs during that time.

#2 Create Package & Bundle

Create a bundle or package of multiple of your products or services. These packages can be created based on a theme, color scheme, or topic. You can take this to the next level, and create collaboration packages with partners who offer complementary products or services, and take advantage of joint marketing! 

#3 Add Value

Instead of discounting, focus on adding value to your offer to increase the perceived value (click here to learn more about pricing strategy). These should be freebies or add-ons that help take the customer experience up a notch, but don’t require much cost on your end. If you provide products, offering free shipping is a common tactic. And if you provide services, offering additional tips and advice can be really helpful! Click here and see the 10 Top-Performing Types of Content Marketing to get more ideas.

#4 Remove Risk & Doubt

Helps remove people’s fear and doubt of their purchases. You can offer product samples or free consultation of your services for people to experience what it’s like to buy from you. Just like how we all like to get ice cream samples before we decide which flavor we want, give people taste of what it’s like to use your products or work with you. Another way to remove first and doubt is to offer reasonable money-back guarantees or return policy. This helps assure people that they don’t have to commit unless they love the purchase.

#5 Include A Cause

If you’ve solidify your brand strategy (click here to get the Complete brand Strategy Checklist) and have a strong Brand Vision and Purpose in place, you can continue to attract your target audience who believe in what you believe in, and drive sales by using donations to charity as an incentive for people to purchase. People want to be involved and contribute to a good cause they believe in through their purchases. Set a percentage of your sale to a charity that aligns with your brand and communicate it clearly to your customers.

Focus on building brand loyalty, not short term sales through discounting.

If you need a confidence and courage booster, I got you! Click here to read the 3 most common self-doubts that #fempreneurs experience and how to conquer them.

And if you need more tips on how to turn your visitors into customers, read this post to learn the 6 proven ways to increase conversion.

Want to know more about how to protect your business and grow through hard times? Click here to read how to protect, grow and evolve your business through slow seasons.

Don’t forget to grab your seat at our FREE training, so you know how to grow your profitable brand people love AND a loyal customer community who keep buying from you!