Online Coupons- The hottest Sales Promotion activity in USA

Although the concept of coupons and the perception of these sales promotion actitivites is totally opposite in Pakistan, one cannot deny the fact how much coupons not only enable the customers to save their money. The perception about coupons is entriely different and people perceive those companies as DESPERATE who are involved in such kind of activities. But as far as the countries like USA are concerned, coupons whether they are online or offline are something which every consumer wants while purchasing anything.

In this world of cut throat competition, where your competitors are doing anything to gain the maximum market share, every company has to do something extra and something different in order to sustain and come up with new strategies that can help them to foster their sales. In today’s world of crisis where every consumer wants to invest very little and wants to get the best out of it, it is necessary to offer them something beyond the core product. 

We also  have to see WHY these discounts are being offered by the companies. What are the benefits of offering such discounts and how this activity can enhance the sales as it is said as one of the hottest sales promotion activity in marketing. Before we start, I would like to mention that coupons do not apply on each item. You can not offer discount coupons while selling a Rolls Royce to a consumer because the buyer of Rolls Royce is far away from thinking about discounts. So, the concept of couponing applies for things like grocery items etc.

Customer retention is very important and should be the focal point for every company. By focusing on online promotions, a company can not only cut their major cost of mailing and printing but also it can enhance customer loyally. One of the online promotion tools is by offering discount coupons online. So instead of spending thousands of dollars on directly mailing and printing newsletters, a company can send coupons directly into the customer’s email and your client can print and ask for the discounts at any grocery store. These discount coupons will help the customers to buy something else in the same budget because you will be offering some discounts. This activity will help the company to increase in the number of units sold but will also help them to retain their current customers. Definitely, with this sales promotion activity, one can expect to have some new users because discounts normally create a good word of mouth among the customers. But now the question arise that how one company you direct their customers to their websites. The best thing to do here is mention each and everything about your online promotion in your newsletters which you will send to your customer

Another great way to direct the traffic to have online coupons is to put a link to your coupons on your website. This will make it easier to find about the coupons in your website.

One thing companies have to keep in mind is to offer discounts which are better than your conventional printed discounts. Like you were offering 10% Off on a purchase of a particular item when you were using the conventional mailing method. Now, when you are emailing the newsletter with discount coupons, offer them discount like 15% to direct your traffic to your website.  You can also include a link TELL A FRIEND to create a good word of mouth about the discounts being offered. It might be a possibility that your potential customers who are not using your product currently might be looking for a deal. So, by offering them such discounts you can increase your sales and gain the highest market share. 

Why Pakistani e-Ventures are not successful globally?

Its not like Pakistani people are not creative at all in terms of generating new ideas. Personally I think we Pakistani are far better than americans as far as the idea generation is concerned. The problem starts when we dont have the proper infrastructure to develop those projects. This article will give you a brief introduction of american and pakistani mentality in terms of e-ventures. 

Look what americans brought to you...We have google, youtube, facebook, digg, stumble upon and twitter, yahoo, wikipedia, rapidshare and so on. Go to alexa.com and see for yourself the top 20 sites in the world with the highest traffic. Do you see anything common in it? Yes of course...there is onething pretty common in all these websites which is SHARING. I am sorry to say but Asian people donot have the mentality to share things. They have a perception that if I share something with other person he or she can somehow take away my recognition. But contrary, americans do share alot of things and they promote the culture of sharing knowledege, feelings and emotions. This is one of the biggest problem. 

Second problem is we dont think globally. Our e-marketers define the target market in terms of local consumers and thats it. Again, go to alexa.com and see for yourself which websites have the highest traffic. There are only two websites comes in the Top 20 one is GEO.TV and other is Jang group website. We have rozee.pk at number 25 which is an online recruitment portal. But the social networking site that we know is Naseeb.com. No doubt technically its a good website but look at the tagline is MUSLIM's social network. This is the point which I was talking about. Naseeb have clearly segmented that its a website only for muslims and the first thing come into people's mind is whether it is a matrimonial website or something related to islam only. Look at the websites which americans have made they have segmented the market in terms of lifestyles not in terms of geographic and demographic basis.

If you are aware of the hofstede's cultural dimensions, you must know Pakistani people are risk averse as the uncertainity avoidance factor is high. We dont work on simple ideas, we are always in complexity and complications. I mean look at Youtube, Digg or rapidshare or even flickr. Is there anything really Innovative in it? These are the most simplest ideas you have ever seen. Twitter is a website which i really dont know why is it so sucessfull but look at the traffic on twitter and we all know the functionality of twitter which is just a small component of facebook application. 

Thnk on these lines..May be, some of us come up with a global website