Most businesses see promo codes as nothing more than a way to drive sales. Offering discounts might seem like a necessary evil to keep up with the competition, but there are actually a lot of other benefits to help reach your business goals.

Use your promo codes the right way, and they can be a powerful vehicle to boost brand visibility, helping you generate more leads and sales in the process.

Here’s how to do it.

Create a compelling offer

First, you need to create a promotion that attracts enough interest and encourages people to act. Take time here to determine what your audience really wants.

Here are a few different kinds of promotions you might offer as part of your campaign:

  • $X off a product or cart
  • X% off a product or cart
  • Free shipping
  • Free product with purchase of another product

Whichever offer you chose, make sure you create a visually-appealing coupon ad to go with your campaign. Communicate your offer clearly, personalize your promo code, use images of your products, and make the coupon code easy to find on your ad, on your website, or wherever else you display it.

Offer incentives

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In order to access a coupon code, you can require your audience to like or share your post, for example.

Incorporate your coupon code into a social contest and you can broaden brand reach and encourage conversions in the process. The best way to do this is by setting up a referral contest.

Offer each entrant a coupon code reward for sharing your content on their social network. This can be a standard contest, such as “refer 5 friends and get your free coupon.” Or you can offer a coupon incentive to each entrant, then a grand prize for a single entrant.

Referral Candy is a great tool you can use to generate share codes and encourage your audience to share with their friends.

Work with micro influencers

The real key to scaling your efforts to boost brand visibility with promo codes is working with micro-influencers to make it happen.

Micro-influencers are niche bloggers or social media personalities that you can partner with to recommend your products/services. Here’s an example of an influencer sharing about a promotion on Instagram:

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Unlike regular advertisements, people are more attentive to the recommendations of influencers because they identify them as peers, not businesses promoting their products.

Working with micro-influencers is a very effective method to get more reach and conversions from your promo codes. Enlist them to share their opinion about your brands/products on their blog or social profiles, and include one of your promo codes as well.

You can find micro-influencers by searching Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc, or use a third-party influencer platform to connect with them.

Use couponing sites

Coupon sites like Groupon or Coupon.com don’t just benefit shoppers. Brands share their deals on these platforms all the time with the goal of boosting brand visibility.

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Dealspotr is a coupon site that takes this benefit one step further by integrating an influencer marketplace right into the platform. Not only can you post your promo codes on Dealspotr for social shoppers to find, but you can also easily collaborate with influencers to promote them to their social audiences.

Instead of attracting new customers with discounts, Dealspotr focuses on adding the element of social proof to your promotions when you take advantage of the Dealspotr Marketplace.

Take advantage of the unique features of couponing sites to get even more reach for your brand’s promo codes.

Track your efforts

Using promo codes to boost brand visibility should always be a learning experience. There are a lot of different ways to create codes, publish them to various platforms and promote them. Some strategies will be more effective than others for your brand. Luckily, it’s very easy to track your promo codes and determine which efforts offer the most return on investment.

This is particularly important if you work with influencers to spread visibility about your promo codes. It’s simple enough to create unique promo codes for each of your influencers, then look at them individually to see who is doing the best at spreading your brand message.

Use your analytics to help inform future campaigns with your promo codes.

Wrapping up

Promo codes aren’t all about offering cheap products to encourage people to buy. You can use them to work towards a wide variety of business goals.

If you want to boost brand visibility, just remember these strategies to get the most out of your promo codes:

  • Create a compelling offer
  • Offer incentives to share
  • Work with micro influencers
  • Take advantage of couponing sites
  • Track your efforts.

Follow these steps and you’ll start to see the power of promo codes have to build brand awareness and more.

Image credit: Brand Awareness by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 (Alpha Stock Images)