And, what could be simpler? Print a piece of paper and it's done. Right?

Maybe.

Coupons can get much more complicated than you might think. What restrictions do you want to impose? Good on certain days? Certain hours? Is there a minimum purchase required? What about 'rain-checks' if promoted merchandise is temporarily unavailable?

What about structure of offer? Buy-one-get-one-free? Percentage discount, flat dollar-amount discount, or special one-time only price? Should coupon expire?

Lots of questions, but how should you go about making all of these decisions?

Start at beginning: before you do anything else, decide exactly what you want to accomplish with your offer. Do you want to increase sales, get new customers, introduce a new product or service, use coupon as a product in and of itself (as in "gift certificate"), or ??? It is imperative that you make this determination first because all of other coupon-related decisions depend on it.

Way back in 1990's, (your remember) during spectacular growth and hype of Internet, one group in particular learned to doubt they needed Internet as a new marketing tool - local business owner.

While many simply ignored it as a game for larger businesses, there were those who bravely set out to explore possibilities. Unfortunately, many of these local business web-marketing pioneers ended up wishing they had ignored it too.

What happened? Why do many who tried web-based marketing for their local businesses feel burned, or at best, skeptical?

For starters, somebody forgot to tell them it required marketing. The "build it and they will come" theory prevailed. Instead of being a marketing driven, these early attempts were frequently, and solely, put into hands of web designers.

Now don't get me wrong. The designers did their job. Many sites were built. Basic functions performed smoothly. Even site email worked… and a few local business owners could be heard bragging - "I got a web site."

Then… nothing. Neither current nor potential customers were visiting, let alone taking any kind of buying action at these web sites.

The business owner, likely applying same thinking they used about Yellow Pages (put it out there, and they'll find me), grew frustrated, then angry. Problem was, consumers had long ago become accustomed to using phone book as a source of information about local businesses. Using a web site was a different story.

"Web site? " they might ask, "How do I find it?" Such comments often conveyed gap between having a site that could fulfill its promise and having a site that did nothing but add an expense.