Earlier this week, I was looking to gather up enough change to buy a stamp, so I could pay the garbage collector, and I came up 12 cents short. This is the only bill that I cannot pay online, and since I didn’t have a stamp left at the house, it was time to head down to the post office. I guess I could have broken a $20, or I could have bought the stamp with my debit card, but neither seemed like the way to go. Instead, I just checked in the couch cushions and under the car seat, and found a quarter rolling around. Voilà! Problem solved by “Found Money”.
How often do you go out, searching for new money, instead of looking more closely at what you have? Of course you need creative advertisements to draw in new customers. In addition, you need to market to your existing customer base, and provide additional services to the people you are already catering to. This refocus on loyal customers can be that extra cash that is just lying around.
Examples of programs meant to increase spending from your existing customer base:
- Loyalty programs, such as punch cards or electronic club cards, provide free product with enough consecutive purchases or visits.
- Customer Appreciation events, in which customers are invited to participate in special events or sales, with special savings for loyal customers only.
- Grouped product sales, like the Charter* Bundle or Two for $20(Applebee’s*), provide a greater value based on multiple products bought together at the same time, versus the a la carte sales model.
- Cross promotional sales that capture additional revenue for products that you regularly would not have sold. (e.g., selling Sunday newspapers at your coffee shop drive thru.)
“Found Money” is great. Every once in a while, you put on a jacket you haven’t worn for months and stumble across an amount of money just by checking the pockets. When you are able to capture extra sales from your existing customer base, you are finding that extra money, it’s just coming out of other people's pockets.
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