Phil Risher walks through a holiday tactic for local service businesses: sell discounted gift cards to new customers. A carpet cleaner might sell a $200 voucher for $100, limited to three per buyer, redeemable in slow months like January. The acquisition cost is worth it because lifetime customer value beats $100.
How to sell gift cards for your local service business. Now, this is a really effective way to take advantage of the holiday season and to sell gift cards. One of the best ways is to give a discount on gift cards. So, for example, let's say you do carpet cleaning. Maybe you offer a $200 gift card for 50% off. So for $100, you can buy $200 worth of work, and you can only buy three of them, and you buy it for someone else. And so a perfect example of this is, if I want my mom to have her house cleaned, I can buy her a $200 voucher for $100, 50% off for her. So what happens for the company is that you actually get a customer, a new customer, for $100. You basically pay $100 for that customer. And the beauty of it is that maybe you say that it can only be used in your slow time, like January or February, but it allows you to get a new customer. The lifetime value of a customer is more than $100, and probably it's worth 20 to 50 to $100 for you. For a new customer.
