The easiest way to fill your order book is to sell to customers that you’ve already sold to before. This is because they’ve already sampled your product quality, your business’s efficiency in hitting their delivery deadline, and your customer service.
However, this doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have to offer some form of encouragement to get them to place another order within the desired time span. Read on for some ideas.
1. Personal Discounts
You can send your customers personal discount coupons. Although this can be done via email, which may not be seen in a busy inbox, the more personal touch would be to send a paper discount coupon to your desired targets. This can be made even more personal with the addition of the customer’s name included on the coupon itself. Companies such as print media advertising will be more than happy to do this for you and will give you a much more professional and eye-catching final product than if you were to try and print your coupons yourself.
If you’re not so happy about contacting your customers through the post, then adding it to their order along with their delivery note will ensure that they receive it and that it won’t get lost within their filing systems.
2. Promotional Offers
You can choose to introduce promotional offers at certain times of the year or bi-monthly, for example. Choosing products that you have a surplus of will free up warehouse space and keep your stock moving while providing your valued customers with a bargain that they just can’t resist.
You may find with this tactic that your customers are more willing to try the different products within the range that you offer. You could end up with customers who are happy to pay full price on future orders for items that you’ve previously offered in your promotions as well as purchasing their usual products.
3. Custom Swag Items
Just like a bargain, there are very few people who will turn down the chance of receiving a freebie, especially if it’s good quality. By using custom swag items, you can do just this. You’ll have to make sure to advertise your swag items well so that your customers know that they’re available to them, or you can offer a promotion where orders over a certain value will include a free gift.
The best way to make this work is to make limited edition freebie items and therefore collectible. You could then find that your customers are choosing to place orders purely to get the free gift and complete their collection.
Final thoughts
These ideas will certainly keep your customers coming back for more and if you control your release dates carefully, you can ensure that your order book always stays full. Balancing discounts, promotions, and custom swag items against your profits may seem like a headache at first, but if you set the wheels in motion and automate as many things as you can, you’ll find that your profits excel any misconceptions that you may have had at the outset.
