All companies -- whether you are new or well-established -- are looking to grow. Grow customers, grow sales, grow profits. It's a common goal with a ton of methods, services and solutions at your fingertips. How do you know which of these services is right for you? How do you traverse these murky waters successfully? Success is often built one step at a time.
One of those steps that both new and established businesses have to consider is gift cards. Can they really make an impact for your company? Are you missing profits without them? Perhaps, this is one of those decisions you have been putting off but know you should make.
There are certain categories of business -- such as restaurants, spas and beauty salons, and specialty retail -- where gift cards have supplanted long-standing paper gift certificates as the preferred means of pre-selling products and services. If you're in these types of businesses, chances are you already have a gift card program in place. But plastic gift cards have found their way into many, if not most, non-traditional businesses as their general popularity grows among consumers. Automotive and motorcycle dealers, grocery stores, even pet-sitting services have had great success with gift card programs. But is it right for YOU? Here are three reasons you need to consider a gift card program for your business, regardless of what you sell.
Gift Cards Are Desired by Your Customers
You've heard gift card critics say that gift cards are impersonal and uncreative. Yet consumer demand for them continues to grow year over year, placing gift cards in the top three in terms of most-requested gifts along with electronics/media and clothing. Today's consumers expect their favorite businesses to offer gift cards and will often seek businesses that do. Why? They may want to introduce their friends to a business they enjoy. Perhaps they know the recipient well enough to be sure it will be a useful and appreciated gift. If a gift has to be mailed, dropping a gift card into the mail or ordering it over the internet sure beats standing in line at the post office with a box.
Building Your Brand
A slick gift card design is like a miniature billboard. Your glossy image is not only attractive, but it promotes and reminds people of your business. The larger plastic gift card providers can offer you a range of customization options. From standard themes, created for quick shipment, to full-color options that use your company's colors, logos and images, there is customization available for any size business. Combine this with a variety of in-store promotional materials like fully custom card carriers and hangers, eye-catching displays, posters and more. Now, you have a multi-faceted campaign to promote your gift card and drive highly profitable sales.
Driving Your Revenues
At the expense of sounding presumptuous, it's a pretty good guess you could use more business. More traffic. More loyal buyers. More revenues. These are precisely the types of business issues gift cards are designed to address. A gift card generates at least two trips to your store -- one for the card purchase, and at least one for the redemption (more traffic). A percentage of those new customers are going to like your business enough to come back and they may even bring their pals (more loyal buyers). All those new customers are coming to your business to buy things -- maybe even more expensive things than they would consider if they didn't have that gift card (more revenues).
Regardless of the type of program you offer, one key benefit applies to any gift card program. The day you begin to sell gift cards is the day you begin to gain additional revenues. Gift cards allow a customer to "pre-pay" you for products or services to be delivered later. That card may come back later today. It may come back next week or next month. Some will likely never come back. But you can count on that gift card purchase revenue sitting in your bank account. That's revenue you can use to help run your business now while you wait for a new customer later. That's a situation any business would envy, and a well-designed gift card program is a great way to get there.
About the Author:
Al Duggan specializes in custom gift cards and is the Vice President of Business Development for Valutec Card Solutions, LLC, a Metavante (NYSE:MV) company, the country's largest provider of plastic gift card services to small to mid-sized merchants.
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