With consumers feeling the bite of the credit crunch, online searches for discount vouchers have predictably been on the rise. A report released by Hitwise earlier this month states that voucher related searches have increased by 47% in the last year which clearly demonstrates customers desire to bag themselves a bargain in these troubled times.
So many people in hunt of a bargain presents obvious opportunities for a savvy store owner or marketer who uses voucher codes and discounts to their advantage. However, overlook those opportunities at your peril as customers hunger for discounts could actually be costing you money.
Ghost vouchers
Search for almost any store name together with the word voucher and you are likely to turn up scores of voucher code sites who’s listings suggest that they have discount voucher codes available. In many cases these codes simply do not exist, but you have to visit the voucher site to find this out. This can present a number of problems for the retailer:
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Customers may get distracted during checkout looking for voucher codes and never complete the sale.
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Some voucher sites will create pages for any store with an affiliate program and set a tracking cookie even if no voucher is found. This means you could end up paying a commission on a customer that was not introduced by the voucher site.
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Some voucher sites will show discounts from competing retailers on your store’s page on their site, encouraging the customer to shop elsewhere.
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Generally annoyance for the customer who may think that you routinely issue discount voucher codes but they are getting poor deal by not finding one.
Protecting your bottom line : Own your results
These problems are annoying enough when they relate to real discounts, but can leave store owners feeling positively cheated when it comes to non existent “ghost” discounts. Whilst we all understand the appeal of finding discounts in the current economic climate, lost sales and unnecessary commissions can contribute to making that climate worst for retailers.
The solution to reducing the issue is luckily simple thanks to the way that people phrase these searches. Vouchers searches with the greatest potential to cannibalise your profits are those that actually include your store name, which should mean that they are easy searches for you to rank for.
Adding a page to your site that explains your voucher policy should immediately give you a strong chance of ranking for terms such as “yourname voucher” that could otherwise hit your profits. If that page can instantly convey the fact that customers will not find discount vouchers for your site by searching online then you are reducing the risk of losing that customer as they go in search of a code.
Referring to discount vouchers in your newsletter and social media sign up pages can give you the chance of getting an addition result in the SERPs as well – again reducing the chance of losing that customer.
2 Down, 8 to go
Google will generally only show 2 results from a single domain on the first page of any search, leaving another 8 natural results that could leach business from you. The more sites you can displace from that first page of results the better, so what else could you try to place there?
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Your blog : If your blog runs on a separate domain or subdomain ensure that you have one post (or a category) optimised for voucher type searches. As well as helping you own that important first page of results it could result in extra subscribers
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Social Media pages : If you have a presence on facebook, twitter or other social platforms try to place these for voucher type searches as well. If the landing pages are pitched well then you could also gain more subscribers who think that is the best way to bag a bargain
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Press releases : The beauty of press releases is that there are countless sites you can submit them to, which means unlimited potential results in the search. Consider giving some of your press releases an extra “boost” in the rankings by linking back to them.
If margins allow and you think that there is significant leakage through voucher searches you could even consider adwords bidding using tightly targeted terms and direct visitors back to one of the pages above.
Other ways of mitigating the problem
Owning the voucher related searches will help reduce the problem, but may not be enough if it is a significant issue for your store. Other tactics you could consider employing include:
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Not mentioning vouchers during checkout : This could encourage people to go searching. More about this here
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Changing affiliate program policies : Some stores do not allow voucher code sites to be part of their affiliate program except by special arrangement
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Communicate with the voucher sites : If you really don’t offer public discount vouchers you could ask the store owners to remove your site from them, although you may want to weigh this up against the possible benefits of additional exposure
If you can’t beat them…
After all that talk about mitigating the problems associated with vouchers it is worth reiterating that public facing vouchers are not in themselves a bad thing. If you have protected your bottom line against the effect of ghost discounts then the next logical step is to try to capitalise more on voucher type searches and close the sale with those bargain hunting customers. That, however, is a topic that we’ll have to come back to.
In the mean time, we’d love to hear about your experiences with ghost discounts and public facing discount vouchers. Does your store have a problem with this? Were you unaware of how many sites are competing in the search engine for people searching on your brand name? Do you think that it isn’t a real problem at all and we all should just issue more vouchers? Leave your comments below and share your thoughts.
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