You have a product or course in your business inventory that you maybe haven’t actively sold for a while.
Now you want to sell that offer and create a cash infusion in your business.
Should you offer a discount or coupon code on this product to new purchasers?
Have you sold this product successfully before?
If you have never actually sold this product to anyone before, then it is totally okay and ethical to lower the price or offer a discount or coupon.
You’ll have issues if you have past buyers of the product.
Think about this from a past buyer’s perspective, put yourself in their shoes.
How would you feel if a product you purchased at full price was now on a discount?
Has this ever happened to you?
I have purchased things in the past and then the business owner has decided to sell that product again at a significant discount to their email list. If only I would have waited a week, I could have purchased at the discounted price.
One particular business owner that I know includes in her emails that include the discounted price, “Do not email me to get the discount refunded if you already purchased.”
How does this make you feel? You paid full price and now the course is discounted and you can’t get a refund for the discount.
So is this something you are looking to do in your business? Do you want to deal with the past customers that are going to say well I paid $xxx and now you are charging $xx, can I get the difference refunded?
If you can guarantee that past and current buyers that own the product are never going to see the discount, then it’s a risk you could take.
Are you retiring the product completely?
Are you never going to offer this product again? You could offer a going into the vault type of discount, but again, you need to think about past buyers.
Usually when you put something into the vault, you will not be updating or keeping up with the material that is included and they don’t get access to you for the material. This may be a good enough reason to offer a discount.
What are they getting with the discounted product?
Did the original offer include time with you and the discounted version does not?
What parts of the offer are not going to be included to the new buyers, if anything?
Does the discount include everything that you originally sold with the product?
Alternative Way to Offer this Discount or Coupon Code
Unless you have those people who follow every single word you ever write and don’t miss a single thing that you ever put out there no one will really notice what you are doing.
Increase the current price that you are selling the product for. Then mark it down at a discount to the original price.
For example, the product you are currently sells right now sells for $97. You would increase the price to $147. Then give a $50 discount or 33% to continue selling the item for $97.
People love a discount. But since you have already sold this product to people before, you really shouldn’t offer it to someone else for a lower price that what anyone else paid for it, unless you also want to issue a refund to the people who already bought it.
Should you Offer a Discount Code or Coupon for an Existing Product?
You are the business owner, so ultimately you get to make the decision here. But there are some important factors that you should be thinking about when you think about offering a discount code for an existing product.
The most important thing you should be thinking about is how YOU would feel if someone else did this to you. If you won’t feel okay if you bought a product from someone else and found them offering that same thing you bought for a much lower price, then you most definitely should not be offering a discount code or coupon for your existing products.
