6 Ways Promo Code Can Increase Your Business Earning

Promotion is a form of marketing tactic used to boost business in the short term.

Softinn Solution has developed a system for merchant to enable merchants to easily and accurately create many specialise promo code. It is to cater to different occasions and different customer segments. The flexibility of the promo code system developed by Softinn Solution enables merchants to be creative with running the promotion.

For example, merchant can create a promo code to be distributed to random guest during MATTA Fair. The promo code can be printed on the business card or brochure, guest will more likely to keep the business card or brochure. Another example will be to print the promo code on the checkout receipt for hotel guest so that they will keep the receipt and have higher chances of booking the same hotel in the future.

What Are The Benefits Of Using Promotion for hotel and homestay?

To strengthen and drive customer decision making

In people’s mind, promotion is something which will not last forever, this will create a sense of scarcity to those who have not made up their mind to decide which hotel to go to when planning a holiday. When a promotion is presented to travellers it creates an imbalance decision in their mind and shifts their decision towards hotel which offers discounts.

Spread through Word-of-Mouth and Upsell

Having a nice place to stay and good service is one thing, but if travellers do not know about your hotel or homestay, the effort of building a good business might go to waste. By running a promotion and posting it on social media, it will prompt social media users to take notice and possibly share the content to more users. Besides that, having promotion is something social media users are willing to share as it creates value for them as well when they can have more likes from their followers. The idea is to start the topic and let social media users pick up the information and make it viral. Of course, the promotion has to be attractive and worth sharing.

Create differentiation

When your hotel or homestay has a new package to offer or when a new hotel is launch. Offering promo code will make your announcement more easily engage with the audience. This will set you apart from other hotels in the same area. Even though offering promo code means lower profit margin for your business but the effect of the promotion will enable the news to spread to more people with ease. Besides that, having more people to book your hotel in the early stage will enable you as a business owner to collect more feedbacks and improve the business.

To cover low-season period

In Malaysia, there are certain periods when hotel and homestay will experience a lower booking rate and this will usually happen around the first quarter of every year. During this period, hotels can create promotion to attract the attention of those travellers who are not planning to travel during this period. People are easily affected nice pictures and ads these days. Even airline companies are putting up nice sceneries of certain countries to attract people’s attention and implant the message in their mind that they need to travel now.

Create testing opportunity

Let say you have a new room being offered or new features in your hotel and you would like to know if the travellers will like it. Promotions can provide a limited time window to test for new ideas and measure them. Promotion enables you to figure out whether they are worth the additional investment of time and money to make it a permanent products or services.

Lure more people to book on your site rather than OTA

OTA (Online Travel Agency) is a good way to promote your hotel brand name. However, the commission charged by OTA is getting higher and higher. Another annoying fact is some repeat or regular customers still booked through OTA rather than directly. This is because travellers behaviour has been trained to booked through OTA because in their mind they think they are getting the best price. Running promo code giveaway will not just encourage them to return to your hotel but also give them an impression that they are important as a customer.

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There are few things you should take note of when implementing promotion for your business.

Know your numbers

Be it profit margin, operating cost and so on. Make sure you know what is the cost of running a promotion and what is the acceptable loss your business can take in the short term so that in the long term it will create more value to your business. Also, do not blindly imitate a promotion your competitor is running. Even though you are in the same industry and probably the same location, the cost of each business can be unique to the business alone. Factor in all the cost before implementing the promotion that can generate a positive return for your business.

Promotion code is not a long-term solution

Even though giving out promo code will potentially see an increase in your business, however, if the product or service offered by your business is not up to standard, no promo code or marketing campaign can help sustain it in the long run. The reason is simple, promotion campaign is just a supplementary to a good product or service offered by a business.

What Are Promotional Code (Promo Code) And How They Work?

Promotional code, or promo code for short, is a code which can be inserted into the e-commerce website to obtain a certain percentage of discount for the product. Promo code is usually made up of a combination of numbers and letters to let business differentiate them.

Sometimes a business can give out multiple promo codes to test which is more effective in generating results. Promo code can also apply in terms of giving free gifts or small gifts when they present the code. This marketing strategy essentially gives customers another strong reason to use a business’s product or service. An interesting fact from a study done from Claremont Graduate University, getting a promo code is more enjoyable than getting a gift.

When a business issue a promo code, they are providing the customer with an incentive to buy. It will benefit both the customer and business. From a business point, even though it has a lower price tag but it will prompt more people to spend their money and thus increase the revenue. From the customer side, they get the same product but at a cheaper rate.

Another important thing to note is that promo code works well with both new and returning customers. Business just has to create the right marketing campaign to target the right audience.

Tracking marketing effort with promo code enables a business to carry out a test to see which platform are generating a higher rate of traffic and also conversion. According to Inc. magazine, a business owner can track the effectiveness of their marketing campaign by using promo code.

Softinn Solution has created a promotional code system that allows merchants to have multiple promo codes embedded into the system and they can then use to track their business performance. This allows the merchant under Softinn to have a broader marketing approach and encourage merchant to have different methods of promoting their business. Merchants can click here to check out how the promo code system works in Softinn Extranet. Click here for the explanation about the description of the promo code system and how you can utilise it to create different promo code for different occasions.

Head over to Softinn Solution homepage to learn how Softinn help small and medium hotels and also homestays save more by having all the essential functions in the Softinn Extranet. The best part is there is no upfront payment needed.

Softinn helps hotel or homestay build website with booking engine and payment system so that merchants can focus on running their business without much hassle.

**Above Article is Written by Softinn Solution**

Softinn Solutions Sdn. Bhd. is an emerging travel technology company that develops a cloud-based hotel reservation system for small and medium-sized hotels. Learn how we help hundreds of hotels better manage their business and increase sales.