No advertising is required for you to host a ‘secret sale’ for all your loyal social media followers. Simply designate a slow-traffic time period to provide a specific discount, and then post it to your Facebook or Twitter account. You can make it more fun by requiring a specific action that your fans and followers must complete in-store to take advantage of your promotion. Try posting a password, providing a printable coupon or asking those students to mention Facebook or Twitter during their transaction.
The key to the sale's success, however, is its exclusivity. Making it available for a limited amount of time to a limited demographic only makes it that much more appealing to students. Be sure to keep the length of your sale brief and the offer significant savings to capitalize on this concept.
Regardless of which strategy you use, have student employees engage with your customers and ask them if they saw your secret sale advertised on Facebook, Twitter, or both. This not only allows you to see how many of your followers view and take advantage of your online promotions, but also to learn which platform they saw it on. If one is mentioned significantly more than the other, then you will know it is the site that reaches the most students and you can concentrate your efforts there in the future.
Eliminating promotional costs, secret sales are a simple and inexpensive way to provide the chance to build interaction among your customer base. Once word spreads that fans and followers received a special discount, others will be likely to join your social media sites to take advantage of such events in the future and build your fan base further.
Sales like this also have the advantage of easy implementation, as they can be planned at any time of the year. Even better, hosting secret sales periodically throughout the year increases the likelihood that you will gain positive word-of-mouth and offers clear benefits to your students, encouraging them to stay involved in your social media.
Have you offered a secret sale? Tell us about it in the comments section!
