You?ve got your business up and running and sales are coming in and you are even making a profit. Now is the time to step your marketing up a bit. How about a loyalty program to encourage more sales and more customers?

So what is a loyalty program then? It?s a group of incentives you put in place to encourage your customers to buy more from you than they originally intended. Here are a few ideas for you.

* Coupons: One of the easiest ways to encourage more sales is to give away coupons that give you a discount on the next purchase. The coupons can be in your ezine, packed with your products or in your adverts. The beauty with this is that you also bring your customers back to your shop or web site.
* BOGOF: The delightful acronym that means buy one get one free. You can offer this to your customers on their next purchase. This actually means that they buy three for the price of two. If you limit the time that this offer is available you can encourage extra purchases at little cost to yourself.
* Specials: You can offer hard to find or desirable items to your regular or existing customers.
* Packages: You can group some of your products into a cost effective package and offer these to loyal customers.
* Loyalty Cards: You can set up cards that can be stamped for each purchase. Many large supermarkets use sophisticated loyalty cards. You can then offer free products, offers or special information for so many stamps.

Just a word of caution ? make sure that your offers are ?to look forward to: and not perceived as ?normal business?.

So why go to all this trouble and expense to reward customers that are with you anyway?
* It brings your customer back to your shop or web site.
* It encourages more sales.
* Word gets around and your customers tell others of the great value that you offer.
* Your business gets perceived as offering great value.
* Mostly ? because it works!

Good Luck!

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