Turn Economic Lemons Into Sales Lemonade

The chain reaction of foreclosures, mortgage company failures, banking sector woes, and a seesawing stock market is making for a very scary-looking retail season in the fourth quarter.

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently said that business sales have dropped the most significant amount in two years, further fueling speculation that the holiday shopping season might not be so rosy this year.

However, all is not dark, and the nervousness that consumers are feeling right now may be tapped to effectively improve one’s business now and in the long term. I’ve got a marketing tactic that can help with search engine optimization while simultaneously bumping up sales and even store visits for local brick-and-mortars. Read on!

My secret local search engine optimization tip du jour is exquisitely simple: coupons! Unsurprisingly, consumers are searching for coupons more than ever, since they feel the need to cut back on expenses.

Google Trends shows a sharp increase in searches for [coupons] as the end of this year approaches.

The potential for tapping into this consumer hyper-interest is obvious!

Local businesses should provide a special coupon page on their websites for each of their local outlets. The page should be accessible to search engine spiders, and it should clearly state what the coupon is for, using all the classic SEO signals. You should particularly frame the title of that page with keyword-rich, targeted text. For example, something like:

“Blue Widgets in Anytown, State Coupon – Blue Widgets Discount”

People are going to put more effort into researching deals, discounts, rebates, and coupons before they make purchases, so if your business site has content of that sort, you may be able to achieve additional sales.

Even better, coupon content can be a magnet for obtaining external links, so having a coupon and other discount pages can help with search engine optimization. Getting good-quality links from other sites helps increase your page rank and will, therefore, help improve your pages’ rankings in all search engines.

There are several coupon directory sites out there that love to list deals and may link to you.

While some of these may only list coupons if you pay them as an advertiser, there are sites out there that may list your coupons for free. Consumer blogs seem to be springing up all over, focusing on reporting the best prices and discounts—some of these are even local city or regional blogs, specializing in particular geographic areas.

If you put up a coupon page, do some regular web and blog searches to find sites that might list your coupon and link to you, and report your coupon to them.

Don’t be afraid to ask various organizations and blogs that report on deals to link to you.

You could even research local clubs and associations that post their newsletters online. Then, you could offer their members a special coupon with a line-specific info page on your site outlining the deal.

Depending on your product or service, advertising on some coupon directories could be useful, although some directories are not currently accepting new partners.

Additional coupon optimization tips:

Link to the coupon page from your homepage. Promote it on your homepage, even—display a small thumbnail of the coupon and linked text below that reiterates the coupon’s title.

Make the coupon “meaty”! There’s nothing more irritating than coupons for the stuff that no one buys, or coupons that are so insipid that they only bring your price down to what everyone can get at the corner discount store.

It’s hard to tell whether a blog is essentially a “sham blog” made up of all paid article content.

So, some blogs that appear to be on the level may come back asking you for money in return for posting your coupon information. Pay-for-blog posts of this sort can be frowned upon by search engines, particularly if they’re not clearly labeled as sponsorships. I’d recommend avoiding these, since the search engines may have discounted the worth of their links anyway, and I think they typically have fewer subscribers/readers.

Always include expiration dates in your online coupons. Just to keep them alive through this holiday season, you can have them expire online on January 1. Or, have them expire more frequently if you’re planning to put up new promotions — churning your promotions could result in more links.

Ask people to print and bring in the coupon—this will give you an idea of how effective this promotion is.

Provide links to the top-most popular items you might sell on your site, below the coupon information. The coupon might draw people into your site, but don’t waste the opportunity to show them a few other things they might also buy. Limit to only two or three items, though!

Ask people to rate your business or your product at one of the big ratings sites, such as the Internet Yellow Pages, to qualify for the coupon. Positive ratings can help your site rank in local and regular web searches!

State outright that the review doesn’t have to be positive, but that you’d appreciate honest feedback in order to represent your business well and to obtain input on how to make improvements.

You could ask them to write the name of the site where they reviewed your business on the coupon to validate it. It’s not a good idea to reward people for only good ratings, or the host sites might take a dim view of the promotion, but incentivizing people to give objective ratings should be acceptable.

Also, they are no longer required to write their usernames on the coupons.

Always include your URL on print advertising, including printed coupons.

To further engage holiday sentiment, offer to donate to a well-known charity for each coupon purchase, outline that deal on the coupon webpage, and invite people to email the page link to others they know.

Consumers will be more supportive of businesses that support their communities, and this can also help attract more links as people report on the deal. When doing charitable tie-ins of this sort, it’s also worthwhile to coordinate an optimized press release announcing the program and linking back to the coupon page.

Offer a “serial coupon”, such as if the consumer makes purchases on three successive visits, they qualify for increased savings each time. This could really pump things into overdrive!

Don’t make the fine print of the coupon so extensive that no one can comprehend the exclusions.

People know what “bait and switch” is, and they really hate it. Avoid anything close to that, such as luring people in with ambiguous language. Do this wrong, and you can turn people off and lose potential long-term customers.

Be darn sure you have enough product for everyone who might bring the coupon to your store!

There’s nothing worse than getting excited about a coupon only to find the store ran out. The economic crunch has caused many businesses to keep much smaller inventories, but if your coupon promotion appears to be working, try to be prepared to reorder products rapidly.

Using a good coupon strategy this season can allow you to take advantage of the hot consumer interest in discounts. Use this opportunity to get some excellent inbound links for your long-term SEO benefit, while also pumping up your short-term sales.

Post excerpts from Chris “Silver” Smit, a Search Marketing Consultant.