In case you haven’t heard of gas and grocery incentive programs, they work like this:

You, the retailer, buy a large number of certificates for free gas and groceries at a greatly discounted rate (pennies on the dollar). ( View our Presentation Certificate Program PowerPoint)
You then offer these certificates as an incentive for customers to buy your merchandise.  Historically, these types of incentives have worked well, and the gas and grocery incentives are very popular due to the rising cost of both fuel and food in these tough economic times.  The traditional use of these free gas and grocery vouchers is to offer a customer one of these certificates if they buy a certain dollar amount of merchandise from you.  Although that works quite well, there is so much more you can use these gas and grocery certificates for.  This article will give you a list of ideas.

Use gas and grocery incentive certificates to:

·    in exchange for scheduling in-home sales demonstrations
·    get a customer lead to come in and hear your sales pitch
·    get new customers to sign up for new services
·    to get customers to extend the length of their service agreements
·    get dormant customers to order new or repeat services
·    encourage customers to make big purchases
·    as customer loyalty rewards for repeat business
·    reward customers who refer new customers to you.
·    to get more traffic for seasonal businesses (like landscaping) during off-months
·    to encourage customer spending during economic downturns
·    to attract big crowds for grand opening events
·    to create free advertising through a local media buzz
·    to win out over competitors who normally could undersell you
·    as the prize for employee sales competitions
·    to encourage employees to hit sales goals
·    as employee attendance or safety rewards
·    use a few certificates cards for your company’s vehicle fleet – everyone likes free gas, even you!

For Non-Profit Organizations:

·    to encourage higher donations during fund raising
·    as prizes for raffles or other contests
·    to generate attendance and sell more seats at seminars

As you can see, there are tons of ways to use gas and grocery incentive certificates.  A little creative thinking will take you a long way.  As a general rule of thumb, the trick is to find out what the key is to making a sale, then offer the gas and grocery incentive certificates to get customers to do just that.

Let me give you an example.  In automotive sales, for example, if you can get the customer behind the wheel for a test drive, the chances that they’ll buy the vehicle rises dramatically.  Knowing this, a car dealership in New York ordered 700 gas certificates, and offered them to customers during a weekend event in exchange for just coming in and taking a car for a test drive.  By 5:00 AM the morning of the event, they had people lined up outside the door.  By the end of the first day, they had to place an emergency phone call to order more gas certificates just to make it through the weekend.  The sales campaign worked so well, that dealership now orders 5,000 gas certificates per month on a regular basis.

If you try a gas or grocery incentive-based sales campaign, tinker with different approached and conditions for customers to get the incentive certificates.  Experiment and find the approach that works best for your particular business.

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc.
“The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
w-612-377-5262
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com

Believe it or not, free gas and grocery certificates are one of the most successful incentives in the marketing world. Such incentives can increase sales up to 30%, making it one of the highest rates of return on investment. For some, however, this may seem completely illogical. If a customer buys $500 worth of my merchandise, and in exchange I give them a certificate for $500 worth of free gas, how could I possibly make a profit?

The simple answer is that a $500 free gas certificate does not cost you, the retailer, $500. Instead, you buy the certificates in bulk at a greatly discounted rate, just pennies to the dollar (and the more you buy at once, the lower the cost per certificate). Therefore, the comparatively small cost of the certificate justifies itself by encouraging a customer to make a large purchase they might not otherwise have made.

Okay, that makes sense, you might say. But doesn’t that mean that someone, somewhere, is losing money. The answer to that question is yes… and no. It’s complicated. The goal of this article is to explain that complicated system to you, so that you understand how everyone involved benefits from free gas and grocery incentives.

Free gas and grocery incentives are underwritten by fuel and food companies as part of a strategy to generate guaranteed repeat sales, regular customers, and brand loyalty. They see the free gas or groceries not as a giveaway, but as an investment in creating a loyal customer from whom they will make much more that $500 over the course of their lifetime.

You see, in order to use the certificate for free gas or groceries, the customer has to select one grocery store or gas station where they can redeem their free goods. And they don’t get, for example, $500 worth of free gas all at once—they get it gradually over several months. Rather, they purchase gas and groceries as usual, and at the end of each month they mail their receipts for the gas or groceries along with a redemption coupon to the redemption company. If they spent at least $100 dollars on gas or groceries that month at the store they previously selected, then the redemption company send them a gift certificate for $25 at the store they selected. This continued every month until the customer has redeemed the full value of their free gas or grocery certificate value.

So, although a gas company may be giving away, for example, $500 worth of free gas, they are guaranteed at least $2000 worth of sales from that customer, for a net return of $1500. Furthermore, they have this customer’s loyalty for a period of months or even years. For example, for a customer to redeem the full value of a $500 free gas card, they’d have to fill up at the same gas station for 20 months ($500 divided by $25 per month = 20 months). Besides, once the free gas certificate runs out, the customer will probably still shop at the same gas station or grocery store anyway—stuff like that becomes habit forming after several months.

So the grocery and gas companies get guaranteed sales, the redemption companies that sell the certificates get paid for their services, retailers like you make more sales, and the customer gets free stuff. It’s a win-win situation all around. Or, more specifically, a win-win-win-win situation.

Michael Goulet
Free Fuel Nationwide Team Leader
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
w-612-235-6372
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com

HOW FREE GAS AND GROCERY PROMOTIONS WORK

The vast majority of consumers hold to the traditional folk wisdom that if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. If they don’t discount it immediately as some sort of scam, they are at least deeply suspicious, wary of requirements, conditions, and loopholes. That want to know “what’s the catch?”

Unfortunately, free gas and grocery promotions fall into this “too good to be true” category. If you tell a potential customer that, for example, if they buy a car you’ll give them a certificate for $500 worth of free gas, they are instantly suspicious and on their guard. Many will ask you what the catch is. Consequently, if you use free gas and grocery promotions, you have to know them backwards and forwards. You need to be able to explain to a customer, on a moment’s notice, exactly how the gas and grocery certificates work so thoroughly that they have no doubts left that the offer is indeed legitimate. To help you in that, this article will explain in detail just exactly how free gas and grocery promotions work.

First, you (the store owner) purchase a number of these free gas and/or grocery certificates from a redemption company. You buy them at a greatly discounted rate, paying “pennies on the dollar”. You then use these certificates as an incentive to get customers to buy your product or service.

The best analogy that you can use to explain the process to your customer are the mail-in rebates for items at electronics stores like Best Buy. The customer pays full price for the item, mails in the rebate receipt, and within a few weeks the company mail back a check for the rebate amount.

To use free gas and grocery promotions, the customer must:

1. Choose a gas station (for gas certificates) or grocery store (for grocery certificates) that they want to use their certificate with. They can choose any store they want, but then must always use the same store for the entire certificate redemption period.

2. Activate the free gas or grocery certificate, and state which store they plan to use it at. They can do this either online or through the mail.

3. The redemption company provides the customer a redemption coupon that is printable from the registration site (much like a mail-in rebate form) with the customer’s name, activation number, and month & year the coupon needs to be sent in on.

4. On the first day of the next month, the customer begins saving receipts of their gas and/or grocery purchases.

5. At the end of the month, the customer mails in the redemption coupon for that month and their receipts to the redemption company.

6. If their receipts show they have spent at LEAST $100 on gas or groceries that month at the store they previously selected, the redemption company will mail the customer a $25 VISA gift card which the customer may use anywhere.

7. They continue this process until the certificate amount is used up. For example, if they received a certificate for $100 in free gas, they can get $25 in free gas once a month for four months. If they get a certificate for $500 in free gas, they can get a gift card for $25 worth of gas once a month for 20 months ($25 per month x 20 months = $500.00).

That’s how it works. The customer does have a few hoops to jump through, and a deadline each month, but nothing unreasonable. If you explain this clearly enough to them, hopefully they’ll become convinced that your free gas or grocery promotion is legitimate. That builds customer trust—something worth its weight in gold in a competitive marketplace.

Michael Goulet
Free Fuel Nationwide Team Leader
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
w-612-235-6372
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com

Savvy business owners know that the cost of good advertising is priceless.  Expensive newspaper ads, flyers and signs have long been the industry standard.  However, as consumers become more conscious of rising fuel and grocery prices, advertising needs to take on a new approach to find new customers and retain current customers.  We have a new and economical way to help your business with this advertising plan that will amaze your customers and leave you amazed with the results. You can use the rising costs of food and fuel to your advantage.

Gas and grocery are the main theme through out article. We offer a total of 8 certificate categories in which the same principals apply.(we offer Eight Certificate options)

Rebate Certificates reward consumers for being loyal customers of their favorite grocery store, gas station, retail/department store, pharmacy, spa, movie theater, restaurant or sporting event. That’s eight different categories which, in exchange for submitting their monthly receipts, customers get $100, $300, or $500 in Visa cards as a “thank you” for being a loyal customer!

Grocery and Gas certificates are something that will get everyone’s attention since 100 % of people eat.  By giving grocery or gas certificates to your customers, you are boosting your business while retaining your sales.  How does this work? It’s a gas or grocery certificate that entitles their customer to participate in an EXCLUSIVE, INVITATION ONLY rebate program.

When marketing minds work in sync, we can find a unique way to help you.  When your company buys these certificates from us, you hand them out to customers. You can do this as a Grand Opening incentive, customer loyalty award, new customer reward, or any other way you can imagine. Some businesses use them to schedule in-home demonstrations. The success has been phenomenal for these businesses.

The ideas for using these certificates don’t stop here. By using these certificates, you will have very loyal customers AND increased profit margins.  You can use it as a lure to extend the length of service agreements, increase the traffic to your location, generate a local media buzz, gain market information on your customer base, and offer promotions that are impressive compared with your competition.

Your company purchases the certificate for a greatly reduced price. You give your customer the certificate when they spend a certain amount of money with your company, and you are only spending pennies on the dollar to offer this deal.  Companies who tested this method of incentives for customers with one hundred certificates are now ordering them every week because of such a huge increase in business. With one car dealer, the results were so amazing for a free gas offer he had to order emergency certificates to make it through the weekend.  Can you imagine this kind of traffic to your business and how this will excite your employees?  Please contact us for more information on pricing.

So contact us to provide your customers with a great product from you and an incentive to go with it.  Let’s keep the economy rolling!

Please visit my site and review our FAQ for additional details.

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc. – “The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
http://incentivebasedpromotions.com/ (Product Site)
http://fundraisingandincentives.com/ (Non-Profit Certificates)
http://fundraisingandtravel.com/ (Non-Profit TravelBook)
w-612-377-5262
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com