Pros and Cons of Rebates for Companies

Marketing and growing your business is not a one-size-fits-all approach. There is no silver bullet that solves all your outreach questions or targets every one of your unique markets. Instead, you need to cultivate several marketing tools to better connect with your ideal consumer. The fact of the matter is not every customer will be attracted by every marketing approach. Some might only find their ways to your sales doorstep via discounts, while others strictly rely on word of mouth from friends, family, or business associates who have purchased from you. And yet, there are those who will connect with the idea of a rebate. Rebates offer different benefits from any other marketing and outreach approach your business can undertake. It is well worth your time and energy to work with a service provider that specializes in rebate programs and marketing.

However, before you begin, it is a good idea to have a better understanding of the general pros and cons of rebates and how they can impact the overall success of your company.

 

Benefits of Various Rebate Programs

One of the major benefits of rebate programs is your ability to customize how you deliver the rebates to buyers. You can implement a singular rebate program for all your customers, or you can offer an assortment of programs to better fit the individual demographics that shop with your business.

Some of the behaviors you can utilize for your customers include buying multiples, buying bundled, buying products from a specific retailer, or offering benefits through social media platforms.
When offering a rebate based on buying multiples, you will incentify the purchase of multiple products at the same time. This is a rather common incentive offered when the cost per item is low or when there is a large amount of inventory that needs to be moved. It might be as simple as buy two get one free. Or you might offer a percentage discount if the customer buys two of the same product. There are various methods to implement this kind of rebate, which is one of the major benefits to such a program. There is limitless potential to this kind of a setup.

A similar option is known as buying a bundle. Instead of purchasing several of the same products a customer will need to buy various products at the same time to receive the rebate. This is often seen in the tech world where a customer needs to purchase the latest smartphone, smart watch, and headphones at the same time. If they do, they will receive an added discount, the watch for free, or a special rebate to be used with the tech provider. Like buying in multiples, buying bundled items together allows you to help promote the purchase of certain products and increase sales numbers for specific items that might, on their own, not see the same kind of sales volume without the bundle. Customers might not consider buying a drawing pen with their tablet, but if there is a special incentive discount attached to purchasing the two together, it will likely increase the sales of these pens.

If you do not sell your products directly but instead sell products through retail outlets, you can consult with the various retail partners in order to orchestrate location-specific rebates. Again, when focusing on rebates for the high-tech industry, one particular wireless service provider might offer a special discount on a smartphone should a customer sign-up with that wireless provider. They might offer the smart phone for less than through other providers. Naturally, this is not tech specific (although technology firms do take advantage of this because their products are often more expensive up-front purchases). It doesn’t matter if you sell pancake mix, clothing, or bathroom hygiene products, you can partner with retail partners to offer specific rebates.

One benefit you might not consider out of the gates is something that isn’t revenue related. Sometimes it’s more about increasing your social foothold. Having a strong social media following can prove incredibly beneficial for your business. It lets you easily market to customers in the future. Plus, with the amount of user data you can obtain via platforms like Facebook, you can customize advertisements for these customers moving forward. With these kinds of rebate programs, you will offer special discounts or even free content in exchange for them doing something specific on your social profile. You might offer a rebate coupon code or access to a new product if, in return, the social media user follows your page, likes a post, and shares it with their own following. By requesting them to share your post, it places your advertisement directly in front of hundreds (if not thousands) of additional shoppers. Often, this can be more financially beneficial for your business than flat out buying ad space on Facebook.

The Benefits Of Boosting Underperforming Products

Not all products will sell up to their expectations. For one reason or another, many products will not connect with consumers the way you would have liked. That doesn’t mean you’re not offering quality material to your customers though. You just need to find a different way to boost these underperforming products.

Using rebates is an excellent way to do exactly this. You can attach rebates specifically to these underperforming products, or you can bundle them with other higher-selling products, as mentioned in the section above. You can even target underperforming products in given sales regions. Perhaps you sell soft drinks and while the soft drink is selling well in one market, it’s falling flat in another. By offering rebates in the new market, or by giving customers the ability to try out your new product by giving it away for free (after they buy two of a more popular product) then you can eventually boost sales of the given product that is struggling.

This method works not only with territories, but with retail chains as well. Often, different demographics purchase products at different retail outlets. So, if you find a given item is not selling as strongly as you’d like in the store you can work with that store to offer new consumer incentive for trying the product. Again, this goes hand-in-hand with the retail outlet-based rebate programs in the previous section.

Lastly, every product has an end of life period. Maybe you are phasing out a given line, or you are coming out with a new model and you want to sell as many of the older products as you can. Plenty of industries incentify the purchase of these products at the end of their shelf life. The automotive industry, for example, will mark down and offer special rebates to customers who buy last year’s model, even though they are brand new with no miles. It’s a great way to boost sales of these soon-to-be-dead products.

Cons

While there are many pros and cons of rebates, because rebate marketing strategy or program are so robust and can be tweaked to best fit the needs of not only your business but that of your customers, there are very few actual cons to the idea of a rebate as well as an expertly crafted program.

Instead, the real problem arises when attempting to create a rebate program on your own. Rebates are far different from any other kind of sales or marketing method, which means if you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily drown in the rebate pool. There are so many variables to consider, it becomes difficult to determine the best course of action. This is especially true when it comes to multi-layered rebate programs and offering various rebates to different customers. There is so much to process, not to mention it becomes a challenge to determine what kind of a profit you are making at the conclusion of the rebate.

So the biggest con here is not partnering yourself with an experienced service provider that knows what they are doing. An experienced team of rebate marketing professionals are well worth their weight in gold. They can not only go over current sales numbers, your demographic information, and your other marketing practices to determine the best way to roll out your rebates, but they can also help monitor the rebates, issue the awards when the necessary steps are completed, and tackle any other specific you are in need of. It is great to understand how consumer rebates can work for your company.

Incentive Insights Solutions

That is exactly why, if you are considering a rebate program, it is best to understand all of the pros and cons of rebates so you can work with a partner like Incentive Insights, the top rebate processing company. No matter the size of your business or what you retail, Incentive Insights is here to help. All you need to get your new rebate program started is to contact us today.