What are incentives?
An incentive can be called an income which adds to the regular salary or payment given to an individual, who can be an employee by an entity for whom he works. Incentives are given to the employees to motivate them to work more and generate better results. There are various kinds of incentives which include, for employees, customers, point program, dealer or channel, sales, online programs and incentive programs.
Customer incentives
Incentives for customers have become a common phenomenon these days and are available everywhere. Customer incentives can be given in the form of a free sandwich through downloadable coupons, heavy discounts on some of the services. Companies make use of such incentives just to lure more and more customers. The more incentives they offer, more customers get attracted to their deals. At the end of the day, the customers make frequent visits which helps to boost sales. Here are a few ways the companies can do to offer promotions. Incentives can be used to attract the old customers as well as the new ones.
- Make the customer come back: The Company has to offer an incentive which will force the customer to come back to the same place. For instance, a customer is offered a fixed number car washes for a sum. Here the company offers a card to the customer and now the customer has to somehow return the same place to get his number of free washes.
- Offer must be valid: Make sure that the offer made to the customer is actually beneficial and is related to the business. This also motivates the company to give the best service so that the customer returns to the same place due to the quality of work.
- Offer a promotion which creates an emotional support: It does not matter how many offers you are providing to the customers. Even one single offer is sufficient for a customer to keep coming back as it creates an emotional relation between the company and the customer.
- Do not offer unless it is worth the business of the customer: Here an example can be cited when the retailers spend thousands of dollars at the customer, but the customer does not spend that much to give enough business to the retailer.
- Do not set deadlines to the promotions: When a retailer fixes a deadline to the promotional offer, it never hardly works. If the promotional offer has to be used within a stipulated time then this means to show loyalty under pressure and people respond negatively.
- Create incentives on the basis of customer feedback: Such an incentive is the best as it is based on the voice of the customers. This is what the customers want and if you give them what they want it helps to generate a positive response from the customers and makes the promotion a success. The customers are ultimately the judge of what are the best products are they are the ones, who use them and have experienced it. An input from the customer can be valuable for the company to make positive changes in future.