Many companies, if not all, use incentive marketing platforms in their marketing campaigns. Why? Simply put, it works. It may not always be the best way to go, but there are many businesses that swear by it and many more that haven't heard of it. That's because…
To explain the technique, the key to incentive marketing uses very simple terms. It is a specific planned action to get individuals to do something with as little cost and effort as possible. It bases its success on a psychological key equation, which states that where there's motivation and ability, there is also measurable performance. This means rewards don't have to be material goods or services, they can be intangible or even just fun and rewards can even come from connections.
Just think about how things work in incentive marketing. Say you're an affiliate marketer who wants to promote an Amazon Prime product. You find a cool product, grab a free bonus (a survey or the like) and then link the survey to Amazon Prime. Twenty-four hours later, you hit a million people. You've just made money by linking to one of your promotional offers to Amazon Prime.
Is it easy? Well, not really. You'll have to work hard, of course, and you'll have to set up an incentive program to get as many people as possible to sign up for Amazon Prime. However, once you have the system in place, it's pretty much a piece of cake. The big incentive marketing question is whether you can find as many people as possible to sign up for Amazon Prime and in return give you their contact information so you can market to them offline as well as online.
Fortunately, it's not all that difficult to generate loyalty from other businesses. All you need to do is offer people something free that has a significant value to them and you can pretty much use them to lure them into giving you something of value in return. That's the beauty of incentive marketing. There are a couple of key factors that go into making a great incentive marketing campaign and the most important factor is the reward.
The most important factor in incentive marketing strategy is motivation. Why do you want to earn someone's loyalty? What value does your offer have to offer them? People respond best to value when they feel as if they are getting something for free. Free gifts are fantastic motivators, especially loyalty programs.
You may have to research the individual benefits of various products to determine which incentive marketing platform would be best for your target audience. Sometimes customers have very specific reasons for giving you their loyalty programs or some customers may only give out loyalty programs to co-workers or family. In these cases, you'll obviously need to tweak your incentive marketing strategy so that it targets the right customer based on his needs.
In the world of internet marketing, one of the most powerful incentive marketing tools out there today is gift cards. If you combine a gift card with some personalization, you can create a powerful incentive marketing campaign. All you really need to do is provide a free gift card with a certain value to a customer, and the customer will be motivated to give you their contact information so that you can send them future offers. A simple Internet search should help you find a lot of different gift card providers.
Another form of Internet marketing incentives is to offer a free product to those who join your list. This way you can create a powerful loyalty program. All you really need to do is put a signup box on your website or blog and then add a form where visitors can enter their name and email address. Once this information is stored in your database, all you need to do is send out an email with a link to your free gift card. You can customize this form to have any sort of incentive imaginable – a discount, a free e-book, etc.
Some marketers choose to use more conventional marketing incentives, like discounts or cash prizes. One great example is a monthly magazine that you can give away. Each issue contains a different number of coupons. When a reader signs up for your newsletter, you can give them one of these issues as a gift. This is just one example of a traditional marketing incentive, but it does show how gamification can work in Internet marketing.
Gamification is another great Internet marketing incentive technique that many marketers are using to increase the value of their loyalty schemes. Many companies provide employees with points that can be redeemed when they reach a specified level of participation. An excellent example of this is a service that gives users an option to earn extra points with every purchase. This allows a company to not only increase their revenue by having a loyal customer, but to also increase their profits by increasing the value of each sale.
