Using Deals & Special Offers To Drive Business

Available with Premier listing packages.

Who doesn’t love getting a deal? Doesn’t really matter whether they are buying for themselves or a gift for others, personal funds or on the company card, and it really doesn’t matter whether “money is tight” or they are “rolling in it.” Perhaps it is the sense of achievement or competition, or simply that it leaves more for buying something else.

Some are old-school, clipping coupons or checking the weekly “circulars,” and some are tech-savvy, taking the tech route through any flavor of online deal sites. Of course, these all come at a cost to the advertiser.

We hope that we can offer you something better. Something that takes advantage of the power of online, while also keeping it simple to plan and manage.

Deals & Special Offers provides you with an additional advertising channel that you have complete control over at no additional cost.

McHenry Life Deals & Special Offers feature is included in our Premier listing packages. What’s more, just like your listing details, you have full control over adding, editing, and removing your deals and special offers, as much and as often as you want. There’s no profit sharing cost, no insertion or change fee, or overage charge for exceeding any monthly limits. You can change your offers on your timing: monthly, weekly, or even every day or hour if you want.

How’s It Work?

Premier listing packages include a “Deals & Special Offers” section of the listing form. You may enter deals or special offers into this form anytime you wish. Since you access this directly within the listing form page, you may add, edit, or remove any deals you have at any time. Nothing needs to be submitted to us and there are no “deadlines” that must be met to have your deal presented.

Example of Special Offers being added to listing from backend listing form.
Add, edit, or remove Special Offers from your listing at any time, easily through your listing form.

After you have added a Deal or Special Offer, your listing will automatically be shown with the “Gift” icon, indicating that you have a Deal or Special Offers available. When your listing is viewed, a Deals or Special Offers section will appear below your story.

Demo listing card showing Deals banner along with Deals & Special Offers Available icon and hover tooltip.
Listing card featuring the “Deals” banner as well as the Deals & Special Offers Available icon with hover tooltip.
Example of Special Offers added to listing.
Special Offers appear on your listing page.

And that leads us nicely into some tips…

Maximizing Deals & Special Offers

  • First and foremost, consult with your legal counsel regarding any requirements or special wording related to any offers (e.g., terms, exclusions, expiration, etc.) that you may need to include in your offer. We are not lawyers, nor do we play them on TV. While we are not responsible for any offers you may include, we do reserve the right to remove anything that we know to be inappropriate or illegal.
  • Test, test, test…and then test some more.
  • Seriously, testing is one of if not the most important thing you can do for your marketing program. Even if you know nothing about marketing, at least by trying different things, you might stumble onto something better than if you didn’t test.
  • Experiment with different wording and different valuations. For instance, try BOGOs, $ off, % off, limited timeframes, “mention this deal,” as well as “print and bring this in.” Your product or service, your brand/market positioning, and your target customer can all impact what type of special/deal/sale resonates the best for you, even across relatively equivalent offers.
  • Don’t be afraid to try something different. In fact, we urge you to make your Deals & Special Offers on McHenry Life unique compared to every other deal and offer you have out there in every other marketing channel. We’ll go one further…you’ve already paid for it and you aren’t being charged any more for your offers, so feel free to use McHenry Life as your testing center before rolling out your offers into other, more expensive channels. Run an offer for 15 or 30 days, then run a different one. Then compare the results of the two, and use the best one for your more expensive channels. Then if next month’s test performs even better, try it in the more expensive channel and compare that channel’s results. Rinse and repeat. While this may not be statistically significant, it is probably better than most “set it and forget it” programs that most businesses are probably doing.
  • Don’t forget tracking. Even if you are offering the same offers across multiple channels, which is actually another valid test, you still need a way to track and compare the results between channels. This is probably the number one thing businesses do wrong with their marketing. Don’t use your marketing channels to just announce your deals. Make an offer that is different and better than any “in store” offer, require them to print/clip or at least show their offer upon purchase…and of course, especially for “show” offers, make sure to record the source. This will answer the age-old questions of “where should I spend my marketing dollars” and “which is the most expensive channel?” The answer, by the way, to the last one is often the one that delivers the least responses.
Sale on, Lifer!