One does not simply hate coupon. Many businesses consider offering a digital coupon to customers or even potential customers with eventually increase the sale (Christopher,B. 2014)..

Without doubt, coupon is an effective marketing way to attract new customers and returning customer in your company. From business perspective, coupon campaign can surely exert influence on your company’s profit margins (V, Kumar & Bharath.R. (2012).
So how do businesses promote their products with the help of digital coupon? Here are some of the digitally coupons that can be found online.
1.       Free shipping
Free shipping is one of the most common offers. Most of customers are not willing to pay extra money for the shipping; business will consider this consumer behavior to offer this type of coupon.
The Body Shop usually offers free shipping coupon to customer. Body shop use the minimum purchase amount strategy which is an idea to business to ensure customer to make an minimum order (Rafael, B.A., Mingming,L, Mahmut,P,2013)

On the other hand, some of the business would want to increase a sales amount for a particular line of products, and they would offer a discount for the product as well as free shipping just in order to boost the sales. For example Gap, they offered 35%off discount with free shipping for old navy product line, to attract more customers.
2.       Free gift with a purchase

Most of us cannot resist they thing that is free and company think this vulnerability as an opportunity to increase the sales. Company offers a free when customer purchased, it will make customers to feeling being treated, eventually increase the loyally.

Here is an offer from Liberty, they offer a luxury body wash as a gift when spent over 90 pound. Usually, the value of gift items would not greater than the value of total amount of purchase.

Digital coupon is now working best in increasing the sales amount and attracting more potential customer when accessed to internet. People are all love being treated by receiving an offer, so that customer will return to the business and become more loyalty.
Reference:
Christopher,B. (2014). Tips to Maximize E-commerce and digital coupon campaigns. Available:http://www.doubledome.com/blog/tips-to-maximize-e-commerce-and-digital-coupon-campaigns/. Last accessed 30/4/2015.

V, Kumar & Bharath.R. (2012).The Perils of Social Coupon Campaigns.Available:http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-perils-of-social-coupon-campaigns/. Last accessed 30/4/2015.

Rafael, B.A., Mingming,L, Mahmut,P. (2013). Online RetailersíPromotional Pricing, Free-Shipping Threshold, and Inventory Decisions: A Simulation-Based Analysis1. Available:http://cptra.ln.edu.hk/~mmleng/mmleng_files/EJOR/PFS-Accepted-2013-04-08.pdf. Last accessed 2013.

The popularity of Facebook seems to have no end. Founded in 2004 by a group of Harvard students, Facebook has 1.44 billion active users as of March, 2015, which is about 20% of the whole human race. Users of Facebook are given a highly convenient environment of getting along with their friends via sharing photos, videos and other posts. And this is also a great opportunity for advertisers to promote products, services and even holding brand campaigning. By holding different kinds of events in the real world and putting it on Facebook, having interaction with users, advertisers are able to know how Facebook users, who are also their potential customers, think of their products. And, more importantly, Facebook users have more opportunities to understand and reach the information and detail of stuff being promoted. Those who try to advertise are not necessarily products/services/brand; they can be singers, celebrities and sports team. According to H.H. Chi, advertising in Facebook, which is a type of interactive digital marketing, is more effective than virtual brand community. (Chi, 2013)

1. Motorcycle Helmet Art from Biltwell, Inc.
   Biltwell, a manufacturer of motorcycle accessories, is trying to have better interaction with their customers in their facebook page. By displaying different examples of their fans helmet design, fans from all over the world are motivated to submit their work to the Facebook page of Biltwell, fostering a sense of being in the same group between fans and the brand. Also, by posting fans using their products from all over the world, it can cultivate the image of the brand as a popular one as well

1. Red Bull:

As a famous energy drink company, Redbull is always linked with various sports. Not only does it advertise the drink by making sponsorship deals in high profile events, such as last year’s Red Bull Stratos space jump and the Red Bull air races, as well as Formula 1 fleet and football teams. Moreover, they also promote universal values such as the importance of environmental protection, thus creating a positive image for the brand. (Harris, 2011)The company does not draw much eyesight to the product itself. Rather, they concentrate on the lifestyle they want their customers to link the drink with. Through posting images and videos of high octane sporting events to their facebook page, they obviously obtain what they want; according to Socialbakers, they are the second most popular brand on Facebook with almost 40 million fans.

References

Chi, H. H. (2011). Interactive digital advertising vs. virtual brand community: exploratory study of user motivation and social media marketing responses in Taiwan. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 44-61.

Harris, J. L., Schwartz, M. B., Brownell, K. D., Javadizadeh, J., & Weinberg, M. (2011). Evaluating sugary drink nutrition and marketing to youth. New Haven, CT: Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Fashion media, undoubtedly, put their focus on shopping. And this is a great chance for fashion companies to advertise their potential customers via the internet. ASOS, a UK-based online fashion company, develops its business with its own publication, ASOS magazine.

Visited by 30 million netizens monthly, and 8 million customers in 200 countries, ASOS makes good use of magazine to build up the tie between e-commerce and media, giving traditional fashion magazines a new opportunity to survive under the popularity of online magazines and newspapers.

ASOS obviously knows that the model that other brand magazine, such as Mr.Porter, are competing with them. They have a lovely printed magazine to for customers to take a look at clothes or accessories every single month. What’s more, it also gives customers an online platform, allowing them to do shopping with the advice and promotion of their magazines. Each image has little squares in the corner labeled 1 and 2. Click on the 2, and you can see the remixed version of the first outfit, displaying how the set of clothes can be mixed-and-matched. Below each photo a list of items and the cost of them is also shown, which is convenient for customers to consider what they can buy.

ASOS also understands that celebrities, pop singer and actresses can be a huge attraction for their clothers or accessories. The likelihood of Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence, and Blake Lively have all been invited for making the cover.

Both publishers and brands are realizing the positive impact by putting content with commerce together. Condé Nast, for example, recently revealed their plan an e-commerce platform of its own. Beginning in the UK, the project will expand to the U.S. and then to all markets working with Glamour, its highest circulation magazine, and others.

According to Chaffey, by merging the traditional printing media with the relatively lately advancement of online shopping, a bigger positive impact can be generated as they complemented with each other. (Chaffey, 2010) Moreover, the main age group using the internet is mostly teenagers under 25 so an online shopping platform will be able to work with a traditional printing media. (Kucuk, 2011)

However, it must be noted that the influence of traditional print media is diminishing and it will be more suitable for businesses to put their effort and money on the new way of digital marketing. For instance, ASOS developed its mobile application for customers to view and place order on the clothes or accessories by simply using their smart phones or tablets (Magrath & McCormick, 2013) The trend of using mobile applications as another way of marketing is also noteworthy.

References

Chaffey, D. (2010). Applying organisational capability models to assess the maturity of digital-marketing governance. Journal of marketing management,26(3-4), 187-196.

Kucuk, S. U. (2011). Towards integrated e-marketing value creation process.Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 12(4), 345-363.

Magrath, V., & McCormick, H. (2013). Marketing design elements of mobile fashion retail apps. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 17(1), 115-134.

Recently, businesses rely on Digital Marketing as a key driver for their business to offer beauty goods and services.

Social Media and Beauty

Beauty industry has developed their brand on social media, such as Instagram and Facebook; there are a huge amount of users for beauty brands to promote themselves. The company makes good use of such platforms to promote brand and engage with their fans via offering them online experience with more rewards.

For every MAC Cosmetics fan, having a ticket to attend the fashion show or make-up event is sometimes challenging. Social media provides a platform for the company to show live updates during the event and for the customer to follow the event as free.

Blogging

MAC Cosmetics have used blogging as a great way to communication with fans and customers.

This instant and open sharing of information and opinion is transformative and ties communities of like-minded people together in virtual tribes that can wield substantial real world influence. (Jay,B. N.A)

MAC Cosmetics do not have official blog but instead of engaging with some famous make-up bloggers, in this way to attract more followers. For example, Makeup and beauty blog is a website that is operated by a make-up blogger who is obsessed with makeup providing daily product review, makeup tips and beauty news. By blogging, MAC Cosmetics can inspire the reader the beauty skills with MAC products.

SEO and Beauty

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has taken on huge prominence within the beauty industry. Whilst social media and blogging can be used to engage with fans on a much more personal level, it is SEO that’s been used to enhance exposure and generate additional traffic to websites (Ross A.M, 2007).

For example, many retailers as well as makeup brand have taken to SEO to increase their profile within the search engine results’ pages (SERPs).

From the above image, you can see when searching for a term as competitive as, ‘lipstick’, and you can see the advantages of gaining that number one spot. However, any SEOer will tell you that much more go into SEO campaigns. Even such optimised Meta is not actual ranking factor, but is a way to increase the Click through Rate (CTR), which in the example above would work effectively, given that I was searching for ‘lipstick’ (Shaun, A.2015).

In general, MAC Cosmetics made use of digital marketing tool to achieve their marketing goal. Social media and SEO marketing strategy is the way to increase the brand awareness.

Reference

Jay,B. (NA). Blogs and the new transparency of communication.Available: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/blogs-and-the-new-transparency-of-communication/. Last accessed 30/4/2015.

Ross A.M. (2007). the Value of search Engine Optimization: An Action research Project at a New E-commerce site. Available: http://hwang.cisdept.csupomona.edu/cis451/docs/seo/The%20value%20of%20seo.pdf. Last accessed 30/4/2015.

Shaun,A. (2015). SEO Meta Tags Best Practices. Available: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/definitive-guide-to-using-important-meta-tags/. Last accessed 30/4/2015.