A promotion is a way to draw attention to your business, whether through advertising or other means. Special offers, sales, or contests that are not normally available often produce impressive results. It is an effective way for any business to attract new leads and retain existing customers.

By running regular promotional offers that are fun and interesting, you keep your business fresh and alive. But more importantly, you are showing your customers that you want to help them save money by making them feel special and appreciated.

The ideas to promote your business are limitless. Get creative and make your promotional offers fun and unique. Encourage interaction with your customers to make them more memorable.

Here are ten great ideas that are sure to increase your sales and make a profit! We all know about standard discounted prices, bogo, and other sales, but by putting fun new twists on these proven tactics, you make them new and exciting!

1. Silver, Bronze and Gold Tickets: Hold an Olympic event. Let everyone know that each and every customer will receive a silver, bronze or gold ticket with their purchase. These tickets allow the customer to save a good amount on subsequent orders or offer instant savings with the ticket.

For instance:

Silver ticket = 25% savings.

Bronze ticket = 35% savings.

Gold ticket = 50% savings.

Of course, these numbers are just examples and can be changed to suit your business or you can use a dollar amount instead of a percentage.

2. One-touch BOGO: Put a fun new twist on old BOGO standby. With every BOGO purchase, you offer a certain amount of points depending on the amount of the purchase. When the customer reaches a certain number of points, offer him a free item of a certain value, or a gift card, etc. 50 points = $ 10.00 free item; 100 points = $ 20 free item and so on.

3. Business Card Codes – Put special discount codes on your business cards. Let people know they will need the business card when they make the purchase to get the discount. This is a good way to get people to stick with your business card, and it could lead to a lot of new customers.

4. Refer a friend: Offer a gift or discount to anyone who refers a friend. Offer a discount to the friend for any purchase, as well as a gift card or coupon for the customer who referred you. Make discounts a percentage of what is purchased. Or offer as many rewards for the purchase, depending on the total of the purchase. Each level of rewards earns a greater discount or gift. You can also run a referral contest. Whoever provides the most friends or friendliest purchases will win a substantial prize.

5. Trivia contest: there are very few of us who do not like trivia. Post a new trivia question every week. Customers must enter or send an email or text message with their responses with a special code found on your website or in your newsletter. At the end of the month, offer a prize to the one who gets the most correct answers. Or, if multiple people hit the same number of questions, enter them into a prize drawing and all finalists will win a smaller prize. There are so many fun ways you can offer trivia as a way for your clients to save money.

6. Name a product: organize contests to name your products, invent flavors, choose colors, etc. Many successful companies run promotions like these and produce great results.

7. Customer Appreciation – Have a Customer Appreciation Day. This can be done online or offline. Have snacks, games, prizes, contests, etc. Offer demos of your products or services and then have a question and answer session. Get really creative and make this event special. Obviously, online and offline events will be different, but either way, your customers will know that you appreciate them!

8. Customer of the Month: Take the former employee of the month idea and use it for your customers. Rewarding loyal current customers is just as important as getting new customers.

9. Scavenger Hunt – Give people a short list of items and for every item the customer brings or ships online, they will earn rewards, points, discount dollars, and more. For an online scavenger hunt, the person must find the items on a website and then ask you to provide the link. These items should be unique so that they are not too easy to find. Of course, you don’t want them to have to work too hard. Just have a light, fun game to attract a little interest. Your customers will enjoy seeing how many items they find and how much they earn from finding them.

10. Daily Special – Make every day special to your customers. Each day offers new savings. For example: Monday = $ 5.00 of this item. Tuesday = Save 10% on everything and so on for each and every day. If this is too much for you, do it one week a month. Make it work for you, your business, and your customers!

The above ideas can certainly be adjusted to suit whatever business you are in or the details can be changed to suit your needs and the needs of your customers. These few ideas by no means cover all the possibilities of how you can attract new and existing customers. But hopefully they will get you started and your creative juices will start to flow for more successful promotional ideas.