The Art of the Limited Time Offer

It’s coming to the end of the year — is your marketing feeling a little stale? Here’s some tips on how to create a limited time offer that can boost your leads and sales, and breathe some life into your marketing strategy.

Anatomy of an offer

A limited time offer requires four things to make it successful:

1. It’s timely - Your offer needs to be relevant to what’s happening now. Specials on costumes should happen around Halloween; and the perfect time to offer a whitepaper on Facebook marketing is right after new Facebook features have been announced.
2. It’s what people want - You need to offer people something they like. Try having a sale on your most popular product instead of the one you’re just trying to get rid of.
3. Time is short - A limited time offer that extends for eight months is not “limited.” Making your offer’s timeframe shorter (and promoting that) will make people jump at the chance to get it before it’s gone.
4. It’s exclusive - If you want to cause even more of a scramble, limit the number of people who can receive your offer. If the first 100 people to register get in free, people will be quicker to sign up.

Limited time offer ideas

Here are some good limited offer ideas to get you started.

• Analysis
  • SEO analysis
  • Store layout analysis
  • Free website analysis
• Whitepapers/ebooks
  • The 7 Deadly Sins of [blank]
  • Secrets to [blank]
  • 10 Steps to [blank]
• Discounts on items or services
  • First appointment free
  • 30% off sale
  • The first 50 to join get their first month free
• Customer referral/reward program
  • Refer a new customer, get a discount
  • Like our page, enter to win a $100 giftcard
  • Follow our blog and win a free copy of [book name]

Is there’s an offer that’s worked well for you in the past? Share it in the comments section below!

Related Links

• KLM Surprise: How a Little Research Earned 1,000,000 Impressions on Twitter

[Image: oskay]