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Incentive Marketing
Incentive marketing, simply
put is a specific plan to get people to do what you want them to do.
This could be employees or customers; you offer a reward of some kind
for performing certain objectives. When we say incentive marketing
however this usually refers to customers or clients. We want them to
remain loyal to a brand, product or company, and so in order to do this
we set up an incentive marketing strategy that will bring them back
continuously.
The first thing you need to
do to create an effective incentive marketing strategy is to set a goal
or objective, such as increasing the sale of a specific product. This
goal needs to be simple and achievable, and must be specific and clear
enough for all the intended participants to understand. Next outline who
your target audience is and how they are going to be influenced by your
incentive marketing strategy. This step is important since it will
influence the budget for your incentive marketing program as well as how
you will be relaying the message to them and also how you will measure
the results of your program. There are also other important things to
take into account at this stage such as geographic boundaries or sales
regions, legal considerations, the length of the program and timing,
individual goals or team goals, and of course, the reward. The next step
is to measure performance. You have to have a quantifiable way of
checking to see that your incentive marketing program is working. You
may need to look at historical sales data in order to measure the
effectiveness of the incentive marketing strategy, and this is usually
the most effective way of determining the success.
When working on the budget
portion of your incentive marketing strategy, you will need to keep
certain items in mind. The first being: How many participants are you
looking to involve in the program? Next: What is the length of time for
this incentive marketing program? And, what are the expected results of
this program?
The other considerations
for an incentive marketing program when it comes to budget: is it an
open ended program where you will have an estimated cost or a closed
ended program with a fixed cost? If it is open ended incentive marketing
program the estimated cost is usually a percentage (anywhere from 5-10%)
of the increased income from the incentive marketing program.
You then need to select the
perfect reward for the incentive marketing program that you are running.
It is vital to find out what is motivating your target audience, so that
you know what to offer them in order to get them to act. They will not
act if they do not perceive a vested interest. You then have to
implement the incentive marketing program. It has to be timely and clear
and must communicate consistently the results of their performance. This
will then be followed by a celebration of the performance of the target
group by awarding them with whatever rewards were promised by the
incentive marketing program.
Finally an analysis of the
success of your incentive marketing program will be vital to see how
effective it was. Were the participants motivated in the ways that had
been anticipated? Either way these incentive marketing programs are set
to have short term gains and it is vital to keep them going so once one
is over either plan the next one ore have another incentive marketing
strategy in place to kick in right after the end of each one.
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