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The Hidden Cost of Constant Discounts and Sales

Picture of Angela Chaney
Angela Chaney

Do you own a business and/or have a hand in—or exclusively manage—your company’s marketing strategy? Are you trying to drive sales and increase engagement on your social sites? If so, you may be making the mistake of using discounts, sales, and other short-term strategies that ultimately hurt your business. Here is more information on why this is counterproductive and what to do instead.

The Hidden Costs of Discounts and Sales

It’s easy to think that promoting discounts, giveaways, coupons, and sales is the best way to attract business. After all, these types of promotional posts get a lot of engagement. However, in reality, they only create a temporary influx of customers—and they are the type of customer who are hard to convert into long-term, repeat clients. Why? Because when customers come to you for the lowest price, they don’t see the full value of your product or service. Over time, this makes them less likely to pay full price for what you offer and instead leads to hunt for the next discount—whether that is offered by you or one of your competitors. 

Instead of focusing on sales or price cuts, consider a strategy that builds customer loyalty and positions your brand as one that delivers quality, connection, and value. When you use the Customer Value Journey (CVJ) as a blueprint for your marketing strategy, you can engage with customers at each state and turn them into lifelong advocates. 

The Customer Value Journey 

Not familiar with the Customer Value Journey? Here are the eight steps and how to use them to create your own strategy for your business.

Step 1 in CVJ: Generating Awareness 

Make sure your website and social media postings are about what the customer wants to see. Keep self-promotion to a minimum. Make your site user-friendly and packed with useful information for visitors. Establish yourself as a business that cares about their clients’ needs and pain points and run ads to make sure you’re on your target audience’s radar.

Step 2 in CVJ: Driving Engagement 

Ask questions and start a conversation with your social media. Get your prospects talking and be responsive if they ask questions back to you. Make sure your Google Business Profile is complete and correct.

Step 3 in CVJ: Building Subscribers/Followers 

Offer something your prospects will find useful in exchange for collecting their information and/or having them like and follow your social media profiles. Good examples are white papers, graphs, charts, or tutorials. 

Step 4 in CVJ: Increasing Conversions 

Continue to give valuable content and build on conversations you started in step 2. 

Step 5 in CVJ: Building Excitement 

Get customers excited about working with you so you can close the sale. Do this by telling them more about your processes and what they can expect to happen to their sales and business growth if they work with you.

Step 6 in CVJ: Ascend the Ladder 

Increase the lifetime value of your clients by upselling them on more or larger products or services. You can do this by sending them text reminders, emailing regular newsletters, or using retargeting ads or social media content. 

Step 7 in CVJ: Developing Brand Advocates 

Tell our clients or customers how much you value them and how you consider them part of your team. Invite them to customer appreciation parties or into your office for a tour and to meet the team (if you haven’t already). You can also send them a gift as a token of your appreciation. Ask for video testimonials or reviews from happy clients. 

Step 8 in CVJ: Growing Brand Promoters 

Make your top clients and advocates feel like a part of the family. Encourage others to work with them (if applicable), save them seats at group outings, functions, or events, and promote them on social media. As they are telling others why they should work with you, make sure you are doing your part telling others how valuable they are to your organization. 

When you utilize the CVJ instead of constantly offering sales and discounts, you’ll teach your target audience about the value of what you offer and turn them into advocates who continually tell others about your business. Need some help developing your CJV? The team at Pixel Fire would be happy to help! 

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