Discount Selling: The New form of Targeted Advertising!

By Sanchita Dutta on July 17, 2012 1 Comment / 2196 views

Advertising world continues to innovate in their quest to capture maximum eyeballs (and perhaps accounts) with minimum efforts. While most of us are aware of most methods being employed so far, use of Discount selling is a method which I found to be marvellous in concept and execution.

What is Discount Selling & how is it an Advertising Programme

You would be naïve to believe that a company is selling a 62 rupees Toothpaste for just 19 that too including shipping by Bluedart for profits. That’s what Ebay India did. The fine prints of course were that the offer was open only to those who have NEVER PURCHASED ANYTHING on ebay and ONLY ONE QTY

So What Does the company achieved?

Suppose the net loss at each sales is 30 rupees. They happen to sell 1000 such toothpastes. What the company has done is that for just 30000 rupees, it has been able to attract 1000 new buyers and made them not only register on their website for their services but also made them purchase their first item thereby giving them an exposure of the entire purchase process. Now if that process is smooth and easy, then it will attract many of those buyers back for their next purchase.

The company has also been able to achieve an accurate and targeted number of new members or buyers for a predetermined fixed amount. Therefore there is no uncertainty in terms of cost of advertisement or customer acquisition. A wonderful approach indeed! Ebay runs such campaigns every now and then feeling the heat from the likes of Flipkart and others.

The accurate results and benefits of instant spike in sales of this innovative method of advertising has caught the attention of other new E-commerce Start ups as well. I saw an identical sale going on at www.shopclues.com as well!! And its no wonder that a few top management guys at this new start up are Ex-EBay India people.