Offering customers rewards and incentives can be a great way to get them through
the door, or keep them coming back to your business. However, you can also use
rewardsas a way to incentivise customers or prospective customers to spread the
word about your brand. Your customers have whole networks of people on their
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other accounts, who they could be
exposing to your business via social shares, however often, they don’t think to
do this unless you do something that prompts them to or offer them something they
want in return. There are several ways you can use social media combined with
rewards to help bring in business. Here are some ideas you can use, or build on
to come up with your own unique ways of marketing your business:
On Site Interactive ‘Hot Spots’
Some restaurants and shops now use tablets on specially designed displays or
kiosks to allow customers to do things like place their orders, or find out more
about products. These can already be great ways to engage people once they are at
your premises, because they can be fun to use, more convenient than queuing to
order from a member of staff or waiting for someone to be free to serve them, and
are also quite cost effective since it can be done using ordinary tablets on
specialist tablet stand enclosures, designed for commercial locations, which you
can buy from imageholders.com, which can integrate scanners and QR readers for a
truly immersive experience. If you use this kind of technology at your location,
then adding social features that allow people to share what they are doing on your
tablets with their friends or followers, or to redeem promotional offers from your
Facebook page or Twitter feed using the tablets, is a good way to get even more out
of your investment.
‘Check In’ Rewards
A very easy way to get people to promote your business on Facebook is to offer them
something – whether it is a discount or a special freebie – when they check into your
business on their Facebook page. This will show all of their Facebook friends that
they have visited your location and a link to your Facebook page. You can also offer
rewards for ‘liking’ your page, however check ins tend to appear more frequently on
users’ news feeds than recently liked pages, and so you’ll get a better return in
terms of visibility by incentivising check-ins than page likes (though both is best!).
Twitter Giveaways
A good way to get your Twitter followers sharing your tweets and a good number of the
people who are exposed to them becoming new followers is to offer something for free
that you will give away to a randomly selected Twitter user who has followed you and
retweeted your giveaway tweet. This works best when you already have a decent number
of followers to get the ball rolling but can be a great way to leverage the fans you
have to gain more! These are just three ways to reward your customers for social sharing and gain some extra social publicity!