5 marketing tips to make users fall in love with your promotions

Have you ever been troubled by the fact that no one participates in your discount or price reduction activities? The reason is that users don’t feel like they are “getting a good deal”. The author summarizes his 5 tips to help you create promotional interactions that allow users to “get a good deal”.

What users need is not necessarily to get an advantage, but the feeling of getting an advantage.

We often hear marketing experts talk about “taking advantage” like this, so what does it feel like to “take advantage”?

Share a real-life example:

A clothing store had just opened. At first, the owner told customers who came into the store that they could get a 20% discount on clothes, but almost no customers were interested.

Later, the boss changed his words and gave everyone a membership card worth 1,000 yuan (which can be used to deduct purchases) regardless of whether they made any purchases when entering the store. Almost no one would refuse.

So how do clothing stores make money?

The membership card contains 1,000 yuan in spending money, and each use can deduct 20% of the spending amount, which means a 20% discount.

In essence, both plans offer a 20% discount, but the marketing effects are completely different due to the different ways of expression. Because getting a membership card worth 1,000 yuan makes users feel like they are getting a bargain.

It just so happens that the company is currently running an activity called "pay a deposit to deduct tuition fees", so let's briefly talk about some tips in promotional activities and how to make customers feel like they are "getting a better deal".

1. Promotional activities must have a legitimate reason

Generally speaking, discount/price reduction promotions are the most commonly used promotional method for all merchants. By lowering product prices, it may significantly increase product sales or improve brand awareness in the short term.

However, long-term/frequent promotions are a double-edged sword.

For example, you are a loyal user of a certain brand. But it has been offering frequent discounts and price cuts recently. Do you still have confidence in this brand?

You may be wondering: Is the product quality also compromised? Is this a product to clear out inventory? Will there be a bigger discount next time? Should I wait for the next discount?

How to reduce the negative impact of promotions on customers?

Find a legitimate reason for the promotion, even if it is forced.

For example: new store opening, Christmas, the start of the school year... This will make users feel that the merchant is not lowering prices because of product quality problems or clearing inventory.

In this way, even after the event ends, customers can accept the product returning to its original higher price.

We may have seen advertisements similar to this:

"The boss's wife ran away, the boss has no intention of running the business, all the goods are sold at a bargain price, all at a 10% discount."

Here the boss has forced himself to find a legitimate reason for his discount promotion, but customers don’t care where the boss’s wife has gone. They only care about whether they can buy the discounted products they like.

2. Add scarcity to promotions

“No one will cherish free activities.”

The first time I heard this sentence was in middle school, at a free speech by Teacher Su Xing.

After planning and participating in many activities myself, I have a deeper impression of these words. Several times, I organized free open classes on weekends, but the attendance rate was less than 50%.

The same goes for promotions. If it is free/no threshold/unlimited participation, users tend not to care too much, and may not even want it for free.

Because, in most people’s minds: free = low price, no threshold = no value.

Therefore, it is necessary to increase the scarcity of promotional activities. Here are two methods:

1. Raise the threshold for participating in promotions

Limited time, limited quantity, limited identity, limited region... these are all common methods to raise the threshold of an activity.

For example: Previously, you could get 1,000 membership cards when you entered the store, but now it has been changed to "Only couples who enter the store on Christmas Day can get one, and there are only 99 cards, while stocks last."

In this way, customers who get the membership card will cherish it more and the probability of using the card for consumption will also increase. After all, they are one of the lucky few.

Or take Xiaomi’s “hunger marketing” for mobile phones. If there was an oversupply from the beginning, would it still be as popular as it was when it was released?

2. Changes to the way you participate in the event

On the basis that customers meet the participation threshold, we go a step further and require customers to perform certain specific behaviors to be eligible to participate in promotional activities. Common fission activities such as collecting likes, supporting, and bargaining use this logic.

For example: Previously, you could enjoy a 20% discount when dining in the store, but now it has been changed to "you need to forward a designated poster to your circle of friends and collect 30 likes to enjoy the discounted price."

The more scarce the offer, the more interested customers will be. At the same time, customers often also take into account the costs of participating in promotional activities.

If customers use their own time, connections and other costs in exchange for discounts from activities, they will take the "discounts" for granted, and the products will not lose value in their minds.

3. There are skills in the language expression of preferential promotion activities

Some friends may wonder after seeing the subtitle: What other expression techniques are there for discount promotions? Isn’t it just an instant discount of a certain amount of money? How much discount is there?

Yes, but do you know when to use "instant 20 yuan discount", when to use "50% discount", and when to use "20% price reduction"?

Different marketing language has different effects. Overall, we will adopt the principle of maximizing the visual stimulation of the discount amount.

For example: if a piece of clothing originally cost 100 yuan and is now 80 yuan, we usually say "20% discount"; and if a pair of shoes originally cost 1,000 yuan and is now 800 yuan, we use the sales pitch of "instant discount of 200 yuan".

Why?

The first feeling is that it is more favorable, which is the feeling of "getting a bargain" mentioned at the beginning of the article, and it can stimulate customers to pay.

Therefore, high-priced products are expressed by discount amount, and low-priced products are expressed by discount degree.

Of course, overemphasizing the price reduction/discount amount will lead to the problem mentioned earlier: cheap = poor quality/service.

Therefore, we can also change our mindset, ignoring the price reduction of goods and emphasizing the customer's sense of gain.

For example: "On Christmas Day, you can take away a super deluxe couple travel package worth 4998 yuan for only 998 yuan."

At first glance, it seems that customers will not even think that the product has been reduced in price. Instead, they will feel that they have gotten a bargain of 4,000 yuan and will place orders crazily.

4. Learn to take advantage of customers’ “loss aversion” psychology

What is "loss aversion"?

It means that when people face the same amount of gains and losses, they think that the losses are more unbearable for them, and the negative utility brought by the losses is 2-2.5 times the positive utility of the gains.

I’m sure everyone has received the activity link of “Pinduoduo helps you open a 100-yuan cash red envelope” from WeChat friends more than once. The clever thing about this activity is that anyone who participates in the activity will have a balance of more than 90 yuan, and then they can withdraw the money by just asking their friends to help them open a red envelope with a few yuan in it.

Even though many people knew that this was a scam to attract people, when they thought about the 90-plus yuan balance in their accounts, they were averse to losing money and ended up forwarding the activity link one by one.

It's difficult for anyone to give up something they already own, even if it doesn't have much practical value.

We can also fully utilize customers' "loss aversion" psychology in promotional activities.

For example, the article begins with the case of giving away a 1,000 yuan membership card when entering a store. If this is changed to a 20% discount every time you enter the store, it may be forgotten after a while.

But holding the membership card with a "1,000 yuan balance" really feels like holding 1,000 yuan in cash. I would never throw away this 1,000 yuan in cash. The more you think about it, the more you will spend money.

The author recently bought a monthly money-saving card from Pinduoduo, which allows him to receive a 5-yuan discount coupon with no threshold every week. Ever since I opened the card, I’ve always been thinking about the 5-yuan discount coupon that I haven’t used yet.

Finally, half a month after opening the card, I had 6 more purchase records on Pinduoduo, even though I rarely shop online.

5. Learn to take advantage of human desires/needs

The previous article mentioned the psychology of “loss aversion”, and here we will briefly talk about human nature. After all, at its core, all marketing is about satisfying human desires or needs.

So, what are the desires or needs of human nature? Here, I share two classic theories.

1. The eight basic and eternal desires of human nature

Drew Eric Whitman, an American "direct mail expert", divides human desires into 8 categories in "Money-making Advertising: The Most Profitable Copywriting Manual in History":

1. Survive, enjoy life, and extend life

2. Enjoy food and drinks

3. Freedom from fear, pain and danger

4. Seeking a sexual partner

5. Pursue comfortable living conditions

6. Comparing yourself to others

7. Care for and protect your loved ones

8. Gain social proof

2. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

This theory was proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Its core content is to divide human needs from low to high into physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs. At the same time, these needs appear in a certain order. Only when a person meets the lower needs can higher-level needs appear.

Only by accurately grasping and fully understanding human desires or needs can your promotions be more attractive.

OK, the above are some tips associated with discount promotions, I hope they are helpful to you.

Author: Zhuoshui Creek

Source: Operation Expert (ID: yyzj19)