[gr cleaning solutions]

Merry christmas all hope you all had a good one.Im thinking of putting a special offer on in january along the line of get your carpet cleaned in january and get a 20% off vochour valid for one year.Has anyone done this and does it work 

[Mike Halliday]

2 things..... they want a discount now not the promise of a discount in the future, so give them the discount off the first initial clean

and they don't know what '20%' means it has no monetary value, so offer £10 or £15 discount.

off to see Sherlock Holmes...bye

[Ian Gourlay]

I am getting Grumpy

But  we are told do not put price in our adverts

So to me as Customer £15 off means nothing  20 % off means nothing

I know Moben Advertises a £1000 off and o not say price

But most Carpet Adverts do have price of carpets but not fitting etc

[Karl Wildey]

20% off what?

Your petrol, travel time, chemicals etc will all cost the same, the only thing you can discount is your profit from the job, just think before you carry out the offer, can you afford to discount your profit by 20%

[Mike Halliday]

if you can't afford to do a £100 job for £80 then you are not charging enough. 

if we work on 50% profit we could still earn 30%...... I'd rather have 30% of something than 50% of nothing.

but this is why I don't like percentages you can give a £10 discount subject to a minimum spend but percentages can mean you giving away a lot of money were a cash amount would be less.

special £10 discount on all suite cleaning

looks better than.....

 special 10% discount on suite cleaning

and you will be giving away less money as long as you charge more than £100 for a suite

[JandS]

Mike

To be honest don't think people fall for these "discount" methods any more.
They know you've already loaded the price to cover the discount.

What might work would be 10% discount for pensioners.
They ring for a price, they get it then tell you they're pensioners, and you say
right that'll be £100 - 10% = £90.
That way they see that they're actually getting something.
The best special offers, I think, are the 3 rooms for £x or room and 3 piece for
£x with a subject to a maximum rider.

John

[Neil Williams]

To be honest don't think people fall for these "discount" methods any more.
They know you've already loaded the price to cover the discount.

Got to say that after 3 months of trying different offers on the front page of my web site I have to agree with the above comment.
Not one of the few people who came to use via the web site in December (when we run 20% off) mentioned it, and it clearly stated to mention a code when calling.
So yes either people can't be bothered to read, or they know that you can offer 50% off but you'll be sure to add that into the equation before taking 50% off.
You can fool some of the people all of the time
and
All of the people some of the time
but
You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

[Mike Halliday]

lets look at this logically, we are carpet cleaners probably spending not more than £150 a week on marketing, we don't employ marketing experts or do any kind consumer research. So we can say "discounts don't work" but what we are really saying is....

 I think discount don't work

or

discounts don't work for me

on the other side of the coin is..

DFS. they  spend probably spend 50 grand a week on advertising they do have marketing experts and take out lots of market research. all there marketing is based on special offers, do you think this is because people don't believe special offers?

Boots the Chemist do a buy one get one free, do people tell them to get stuffed because no one believes you get one free or do they go to Boots and buy thier shampoo and suntan lotion.

Don't believe me when I say special offers work, just open your eyes and see what the experts are doing.

[deep-cleaningukltd]

"We know about half of our marketing will not work; we just don't know which half"

Henry Ford. (Sold a few cars I believe)

In my short time in business I have come to realize that the one thing that marketing experts do best is to market themselves. Spent a fortune in my early days on marketing. Two years ago I was really unhappy with an ad we were running. It looked dull, boring and lacklustre. So we spent £500 on an up-date. Bright, happy smilling model, really stood out from the crowd. Result; the same number of enquiries from the new "bright" ad as from the old "dull" ad.

We started an online campaign at the beginning of November offering upto 25% discount for jobs done from Jan 1st to Mar 31st. Has been downloaded a lot so, fingers crossed, we should have work to get through the slow season.

Adi

[Shaun_Ashmore]

The idea of an offer is 2 fold

1. To get the prospect to book you
2. to get the prospect to book you NOW

there is a third option and that is based on the kind of discount based on the discount itself meaning that 3 for 2 will bring in a higher average job ticket.

Shaun

[MAX Carpets]

We have run special offers every month since 1988, couldnt imagine working without them.

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

I've never done any type of special offer. That's not to say they don't work for some people.

I personally have a distinct aversion to them hence why i don't use them.

I prefer the "does what it says on the tin approach" ie no special offers but if it sounds expensive it's because the price I quote is the price you'll pay-no hidden extras. The job will be done right first time and to exceed the client's expectations.

If clients think they can't afford my prices then I probably wouldn't want them as clients anyway. I do have to admit this approach only really works if you have a full diary because if you do discount then if you are doing the discounted job you can't be doing a full priced job at the same time.

Obviously we will all have a different definition of a full diary. And yes perhaps charging a lower metre cost for large commercial areas is probably a different discussion all together and beyond the scope of where this thread started which is targeted at domestic customers.

Roger