Quick tools: Two in one

Marketing need not necessarily involve cash outflow. Sometimes one can earn money, while reaching out to new customers in the process. Gift coupons, for example, offer you the double advantage of making money while reaching out to new customers. Your existing customers and well wishers can buy these, to gift as vouchers to those who may not have heard of you.

We have two such companies in Bangalore who believe in this. Active Canvas, a one of a kind art school for people of all ages, offers a variety of courses and hosts events. It now offers gift coupons. Many adults have a hard time trying to pick up gifts for children. Well, they can now be innovative and gift them a voucher for a pottery class or for a theater course or for a fun day at a carnival!

Another Bangalore based company, PeopleHealth, operating in the preventive health care space, has also been innovative in terms of reaching out to customers. It offers electronic cards that can be gifted by corporates to their employees as well as gift vouchers that individuals can purchase. In fact they have special offers around special days such as Father’s day gift vouchers, Raksha Bandhan special gift vouchers for brothers and sisters to gift each other and so on. As they put it these vouchers help their customers emotionally connect!

Comments:

  1. Raghu Kanchustambham says:

    Just wondering if you can think of a variant of this mode of ‘promoting’ in a B2B scenario?

  2. Anjana Vivek says:

    Thinking loud here… is there something you can offer, which your customer can pass on to others? PeopleHealth, the company that I mentioned in this post, does this; their customers – the corporates – can buy these coupons to pass on to their employees. What is it you can offer to your customers that they could pass on to others? Of course in certain kinds of business, this is not possible.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Similar Story

Cost concerns limit impact of PM Ujjwala Yojana among poor in cities

Women in low income urban communities share why they haven't been able to switch to clean cooking fuel, despite the hype around Ujjwala.

Chanda Pravin Katkari, who lives in Panvel on the outskirts of Mumbai, applied for a free LPG connection under the PM Ujjwala Yojana one-and-half years ago, but has yet to get a response. She still uses the traditional chulha, most of the time. Chanda and her sister-in-law share the cost and occasionally use their mother-in-law’s Ujjwala LPG cylinder though. “The cylinder lasts only one-and-half months if the three of us, living in separate households, use it regularly. Since we can’t afford this, we use it sparingly so that it lasts us about three months,” she says. Chanda’s experience outlines the…

Similar Story

Bengalureans’ tax outlay: Discover the amount you contribute

Busting the myth of the oft repeated notion that "only 3% of Indians are paying tax". The actual tax outlay is 60% - 70%.

As per a recent report, it was estimated that in 2021-22, only 3% of the population of India pays up to 10 lakh in taxes, alluding that the rest are dependent on this. This begs the following questions: Are you employed? Do you have a regular source of income? Do you pay income tax? Do you purchase provisions, clothing, household goods, eyewear, footwear, fashion accessories, vehicles, furniture, or services such as haircuts, or pay rent and EMIs? If you do any of the above, do you notice the GST charges on your purchases, along with other taxes like tolls, fuel…