How Local Can Coupons Get? - Steve Yanovsky - MediaBizBloggers

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With the advent of more and more mobile coupon applications for your smart phone, the ability to send and receive coupons for local retailers is becoming more of a reality. Local retailers that can’t afford to advertise in the available local media- newspapers, or what is left of them, local radio, local cable spots, etc. now have a state of the art medium available to them- mobile couponing.

Not only can buy a schedule on this new medium, they can deliver coupons to people as they come into their neighborhood, and are at the ultimate “point of sale”. Imagine receiving a coupon on your iPhone for Pepsi when you are in the supermarket and about to go down the soda aisle. Not when you enter the store, but when you enter the aisle where you can actually make the purchase. Marketers pay an awful lot of money for those end aisle displays to get you to make an impulse purchase, now a small retailer or independent restaurant can deliver a coupon to you telling you about tonight’s deal, and change it tomorrow when the deal changes.

One to one communication has been the promise of the Internet since its inception. The ability of the advertiser to talk directly to their desired target, with minimum waste, has been center of the bull’s eye. Now the little guy, not the Top 500 advertiser, can be sophisticated in the way they promote their business, how they promote it and when they promote it.

As the growth of smart phones continues to grow arithmetically, on a weekly basis, the number of consumers in the market makes this medium more attractive. Once the iPhone is distributed by Verizon, penetration for this device will grow profoundly, and take the market along with it. Nielsen estimates that by mid-2011, there will be 150 million smart phone users.

The economic climate has changed the way consumers shop, and, has driven them to use coupons as never before. According to the article “Meet the Frugalista”, in Media Post’s Engage Moms,4/7/10, 60% of Moms surveyed said that they have used coupons for the first time last year. That survey was focused on national coupons. Once they can get a coupon for their dry cleaner, or neighborhood restaurant on their phone, these first time coupon users will change the way they make purchase decisions for many of their household expenses.

Local retailers will be able to measure the ROI of their ad campaigns in a more precise way than many Top 500 advertisers. They won’t have to calculate the effect of their television campaign, or their banner ads, or their search campaigns. They will know exactly how many coupons got redeemed, how much they spent on the campaign, what copy changes they made.

Won’t that be ironic?

Steve Yanovsky, a marketing and marcom consultant with Customer Focused Solutions, can be reached at steve@stevenyanovsky.com.

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