Does your brand connect with your customers? In order to answer this question, you should know a couple of things. First, what is your brand? Are you a luxury space with pricey and unique items for purchase? Or are you a budget-friendly enterprise that’s welcoming to everyone? And secondly, does that brand connect with your target audience? If you know who you are and who you are marketing to, you’re very likely to be much more successful.
Building a successful brand that connects with customers takes time, patience, and energy. One example of a successful brand who knows their audience is the DIY and craft retailer Michaels. They know that their target audience is largely female, and can be any age ranging from adolescent on up. Often this group is budget-conscious, and so coupons are a winning part of the overall brand strategy and marketing success of the nationwide retailer.
There’s a good reason why coupons have been in use since their inception by marketing genius Coca Cola in 1887: they work. The most commonly searched for type of coupon tends to be grocery coupons, with fully more than half of all coupon searches for grocery items. Since women largely still do the grocery shopping these days, Michaels knows coupons are familiar and in-demand for their target audience. And in this day and age, when coupons are as close as your nearest internet browser, there’s absolutely no reason to pay full price at retailers like Michaels.
Michaels also has an robust online presence that’s interactive, which aligns with their branding success. They keep their customers interested in crafting and other projects by providing inspirational online boards for ideas, conversation, and interaction. And, Michaels coupons can be found any day of the year. This makes the availability of a discount at Michaels only a click away from their target audience’s brainstorming sessions.
If you’re building an empire on budget-conscious customers, considering a strategy like the one Michaels uses is one way to find massive success. If your brand is more elite, high-end, or luxury, then a coupon campaign may not work for you – unless as a gateway for those who might otherwise be intimated to try your product in the first place. In other words, if you offer atypical potential customers a coupon on their first visit to your store or purchase of your product, you might easily hook someone who decides they can afford your product after all.
In either case, the success of the Michaels coupon strategy is hard to ignore – and easy to implement.