With a young child at home, as some or many of your might know, it is difficult to get out of the house with your significant other for what my wife and I call, date night. This term, which we coined from another couple we know, refers to a night when the wife and I head out on the town for dinner, a movie, or maybe a show of some sort, without our son.
Last night was our night out. We were lucky enough to snag a baby sitter, who is referred to by our son as mom-mom, and mother-in-law to me, for the evening. She arrived at our house around six in the evening and off we went.
My wife decided it would be a good idea to visit a local restaurant, which is in the category of fine dining. This decision was made because of an advertisement she saw in the local newspaper. The ad was talking about the establishment, what it had to offer, and their hours of operation. But what really finalized the deal for her (and me also), is the buy one get one dinner entrée coupon that you could cut out and use.
The prices of this particular restaurant are on the higher end for my budget, so this coupon was a great way to experience an enjoyable atmosphere, fine dining and wonderful service, and save money. The coupon was only good for Wednesday night, which tells me that is more than likely their slowest of evenings. Their coupon program obviously worked because the place was packed. We didnt make a reservation so our wait was around forty-five minutes. With mom-mom watching our son at home, and our first night out together in a long time, would you care about the wait? We had our cell phones with us so if she really needed to get in touch with me or my wife we were just a phone call away.
This experience with this coupon is what leads me to write about todays advertising topic. There is nothing better then when you can share a real life experience and how it relates to helping others in their own advertising campaigns. I present this question. Are you running ads with coupons that could help those slow days or slow moving products?
This particular coupon we used helped this restaurant tremendously and chances are a similar campaign would work for you as well. I spoke with a friend of mine who runs a promotion company and when ticket sales to an event are slower then normal, he will step it up a notch and run a promotion in a local paper with a coupon to receive free photos, autographs and other low cost merchandise. For him as a promoter it is more important to have sold out arenas, so giving away some things is not that big of a deal.
Whatever your business entails, chances are you can work in a really good advertisement with a coupon that can spark some extra sales for that slow day or slow moving product. Another fascinating part of my own experience is that, my wife and I had such a wonderful time that we would strongly recommend the restaurant to friends and family. So their coupon also is getting customers to provide free word of mouth advertising as well. This could work for your business also.
Sit down and write up what your next advertisement will be, and make sure it includes a coupon that gets people to notice. You may start getting in sales you never knew or thought were possible.