Are you operating a tiny, home-based business? Does the idea of having all of your business-related correspondence arrive at your home seem weird? If so, you have two basic options: P.O. Boxes and FedEx store boxes. Sometimes, the best piece of information to help you decide is simply location (is one of these in walking distance?), but there are some clear advantages and disadvantages to both.

You'll pay about $50 or less annually for a basic box at the post office, versus approximately $250 annually for a FedEx box. With a P.O. Box, you'll experience the occasional annoyance of FedEx and UPS packages requiring delivery at a different location, as they cannot deliver to their competitor's facility. That said, you can pick up mail from your box 24/7 (as the lobbies are typically unlocked).

A big potential advantage to a FedEx box is that you can actually get a physical address. For example, your address may be, "123 Smith Avenue, Suite 300." Sounds like a street, but actually it's 123 Smith Avenue (the FedEx store location) and mail box 300 (you have mail box 300, of potentially hundreds of other boxes, inside the building). In addition to generate a sense of largeness, there's a substantial benefit to doing this: Google Local and Yahoo Local require a street address, not a P.O. Box. Apparently, they haven't cross-referenced against the list of FedEx locations, because these boxes actually count. Thereby, you can get an instant local presence on the web.

For Couponfield, I selected the P.O. Box option. It’s cheaper and I felt a little odd, suggesting that I had an established office when I don’t. (Furthermore, the idea of a “green, virtual office” is compelling to me.) But, I can see the FedEx option being quite effective for some businesses.  

This is a bit of shameless self-promotion, but it's also genuine. Adding a link to your mini site, containing your information and coupons, provides you with a free, easy, intelligent management of your coupon campaigns. You may be thinking, "well, I already have a coupon on my website. Why would I need to link to another site instead?" There are plenty of reasons:

* I've found literally dozens of businesses with coupons on their website... that expired. Some of them expired an embarrassingly long time ago. With Couponfield, you enter the expiration date in advance, and it manages itself. It requires no help from your technical administrator.

* Surfers on your web are anonymous. With Couponfield, if someone prints a coupon, you see their gender, age, and zip code.

* Would you like to change an offer? Log into Couponfield and do it instantly, with no technical demands. Depending on whether or not you manage your own site, you may have to get your technical administrator to help change a coupon on your site. Even if you manage it yourself, it's almost certainly faster to make the change on Couponfield's system.

* Have a particularly valuable coupon, that you don't want to release too many times? Put a limit on it. After a coupon is printed x number of times in a day, week or month, it will be suppressed. If someone can print directly off your site, then they can print it an unlimited number of times.

* And the biggest benefit of all: Get in front of people other than the ones already on your site!

Couponfield is designed for brick-and-mortar locations, but we’re always delighted to accept coupons from online stores. Most of these stores are also small businesses, even if they’re not necessarily local to a customer.

Because Couponfield is designed for brick-and-mortars, we don’t have a great way to promote online stores… there’s no national search, so someone would have to find the coupon in their geographic search, or, possibly a keyword search. We’re working on enhancing this functionality, but for the meanwhile, this is the best we can offer online stores.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, it’s possible that this arrangement is ideal.

When I shop online, I find stores by searching for keywords (i.e., the most recent online purchase I made was an Eebee gift set; I found the eventual vendor from Google). When I find the item online and check out, I often notice the “promo code” field. That’s when I go back to the search engine! I type in the URL and the word “coupon code” … and I find a discount maybe 50% of the time.

This works out great for me and other consumers. But does it help businesses as a promotional tool?

It would… if the discount entices the shopper to add more to their cart. I don’t currently have statistics for this, but anecdotally, I’m guessing this doesn’t happen too often. I’m guessing—and with time, we’ll be able to know the quantitative answer—that all this usually does is reduce the amount that a shopper pays, below what they were previously willing to pay. Again, I can’t complain from a consumer standpoint: I’ve benefited many times. But, as someone who advocates coupons as a win-win for businesses and consumers alike, it doesn’t necessarily seem sustainable.

So, getting back to Couponfield’s treatment of online shopping codes: Having them appear by geography may be a service, not a disservice. It puts the online store in front of local consumers (with lower shipping costs!), who otherwise wouldn’t have found the store except for using a keyword search.

More than anything else, starting a small business has been a learning process. When I learn valuable lessons, I try to pass them on to others who may be in the same boat.

I recently tried Yahoo banner ads—not the Adwords, but rather the graphic ads. They have some beautiful templates, and working with the product itself was pleasant and fun. Then, when I was ready to go, I was presented with a choice: Pay 1.30 per 1000 impressions (CPM) or pay 90 a click (CPC). So, essentially, you pick one variable to pay for, and let the other variable float.

My first opinion was, try per click. Yahoo argued against CPC and for CPM, saying something about the different networks that will carry either one. I figured, perhaps naively, that they were probably giving me good advice... they want me as a repeat customer, so they want to see my campaign be successful?  I decided to test each, and set up a nice head-to-head race.

The results were conclusive and painful. My cost per click was obviously fixed for the CPC campaign; for the CPM campaign, I was paying a fixed amount per impression and a floating amount per click. This cost per click floated alright... up into the stratosphere, in excess of 700% the cost per click of the CPC campaign. The cost was simply staggering. If you try something like this, please keep my experience in mind. If you insist on trying CPM, something I will certainly never do again, consider running a tiny test of both methods in a head-to-head comparison. Interestingly, my click-through rate (the number of times my ad was clicked, per 1000 impressions) was THREE TIMES higher for the CPC campaign than for the CPM campaign. Identical advertisements, btw.  So, they apparently know where to go to get the clicks, when that’s what they’re making their money from.

The benefit from this campaign was simply this: I now know to not try it again. My curiosity is sated. A significant amount of money later, Yahoo reported about 250 clicks, Google Analytics reported only 60. I’m not sure who to trust, though I suspect that Google Analytics may not report visits that are shorter than 3 seconds. (Anyone know? Please let me know, if so.) I hate to say, “click fraud”, but I do wonder.

In Yahoo’s defense, they would tell you that only a large campaign works well. They would say that repetition is the key… that Geico’s non-stop advertising makes sense, that a magazine publisher needs to insert not just 1 or 2 subscription cards into a magazine, but 5 or 6 or more. (I personally always found that amusing. "You didn't leave an impression on me the first 6 times a subscription card fell out on my lap, but wow, this 7th card is just really something special!") Perhaps this is all true.

But, where do we go, when we don't have the budget to fund a huge, repetitive campaign? So far, and I'll let people know if I learn anything important here, but Facebook is working pretty well. Based on my Yahoo learning experience, I'm paying per click and letting my cost per impression float. So far, it has sunk to about 20 cents per 1000 impressions. And you can tell the difference with these ads. I actually clicked on one, an intriguing little oddity called strawbalegardens.com. The site is obviously a labor of love: someone with a cool idea, trying to sell a book about it and apparently nothing more, who obviously just enjoys what he's doing. He's using Facebook, with a budget of possibly $5 a day, to get the word out. Again, I'll update regarding my Facebook experience when I have know something conclusive, but so far, so good.

Not all coupons are created equal, when it comes to beefing up your bottom line.

Which do you think will tend to give you higher margins, a coupon for $10 off a $100 purchase, or a coupon for $10 off a $100 gift certificate?

On the surface, the numbers are the same, and it shouldn't really make a difference. But, consider these points:

• You benefit from the "float" of gift certificates: Your payment arrives today, your inventory/services exits later. A great thing, as long as you're not somehow earning a negative return on cash flow!
• The psychology of a gift certificate recipient is a bit different from that of the buyer. The recipient may be thinking, "Santa Claus gave me this $100 gift certificate, but I see $120 worth of stuff I like. I spend just $20, and get all of this stuff? OK." The data displays this attitude. According to the National Retail Federation, the average customer uses the full amount of the certificate plus an additional 15% of the face value. What if they just want to cash out? Fine: you still received interest on their money while the certificate was outstanding.
• Not everyone spends the whole certificate in one sitting. In fact, according to the Tower Group, more than half of customers take more than 1 trip to utilize a certificate. Increasing your foot traffic equates to more sales opportunities.
• Unfortunately for consumers, not all gift certificates find their way back home. Estimates vary, but most businesses can expect 4% - 16% of certificates go unredeemed, instantly boosting margins.

Whether a coupon for a gift certificate is a brilliant idea for your business or a mediocre one depends heavily on many factors, including your industry (i.e., If you're in the pest control business, you may want to skip over the gift certificate idea! "I was in your house and noticed a lot of roaches" is probably not a great Hallmark card sentiment...). But for most businesses, it's worth considering. With unlimited coupon postings at Couponfield, there's no problem posting a coupon for a gift certificate alongside additional offers.

A quick note about Kwik Surveys (kwiksurveys.com): It's another free resource that can help your business. A survey is a great way to find out a few critical things: 1) What customers think of your business, 2) What customers think of your competitors, 3) Opportunities to earn more business, and 4) Potential risks.

Conducting a survey online is, generally, a vast improvement over paper. Not only is it easier to distribute, but tallying and correlating results using an online survey tool like kwiksurveys.com is effortless. There are other survey tools out there, most of which cost money (a few years ago, a company I was working with paid about $300 a month for their survey platform). Kwiksurveys.com is completely free.

If you'd like a quick, objective second opinion about a customer survey you're conducting, feel free to send it over to re.tyler @ Couponfield.com 

Here are some ideas for Automotive Repairs, Beauty Services, Cleaning Services, Consignment Shops, Education, Gift Stores, Interior Designers, Landscaping, Massage Therapy, Travel, and Veterinary Services.

• Automotive repairs: Can your shop service hybrid cars? Not all repair services can. If you’re one of them, let consumers know about you with a hybrid-specific coupon. Is your shop open on weekends? If so, your service may be unusually convenient. You can advertise this in a coupon with discounts specifically for weekend service.

• Beauty Services/Spas: Most coupons are designed for first time visits. Instead of focusing entirely on winning new clients, why buy some insurance for repeat visits with a stamp-able coupon for multiple discounts, with the 3rd or 4th or 5th service free?

• Cleaning Services: Do your employees have the courage to work with houses that are also, essentially, pet menageries? If so, maybe you can try a "Pet Lovers" discount. It may not be the most pleasant work, but it could bring people in who may otherwise not think of hiring assistance.

• Consignment shops: What about offering a deeper discount for the consignors themselves?

• Education/Classes/Instructional: A free introductory class may be effective to get new students, possibly the best coupon you could offer. But, perhaps you can also provide an incentive to persevere and succeed in the program, i.e., "receive 30% off the purchase of a new musical instrument, after completing 10 or more lessons." Or, “Lose 20 pounds with our fitness program, and we’ll give you a $25 gift certificate towards your new wardrobe” (and negotiate a discounted bulk purchase of these gift certificates with a local apparel retailer).

• Gift Shops: Do you offer free gift wrapping? Promote this in a coupon! (A coupon doesn’t have to always be for something you’re not already willing to offer!)

• Interior Design: Does your design service offer a distinctive style? If so, is there a coffee table book that represents it compellingly? A book that may serve as inspiration for your prospective client, and even help close the deal? What about offering free copies of this book upon completion of an initial consultation? (A bulk book purchase may make this far more affordable than initially imagined.)

• Landscaping: Offer low chemical treatment options? Maybe you can advertise this with a coupon. Or, couple your promotional efforts with a charity drive. For example, a program founded by John Denver, plant-it-2020.org, will plant trees for $1. What about a charitable coupon, in which you promise to plant 10 or 20 trees for every new client?

• Masseuses: Many spas offer innovative, potentially mysterious, services alongside the traditional massage. What about package deals offering the well-known item (massages), with more unusual treatments (i.e. Egyptian body wraps) at a combined discount?

• Travel: Do you specialize in a country or region? If so, what about offering travel guides or coffee table books as a free gift with a consultation. Or, possibly, a gift certificate to a local restaurant that serves food from the region's cuisine?

• Veterinary Services: How many people have multiple pets of the same species, and can only afford to take them in to see a vet one-at-a-time, when the animal is sick? How about a discount for introductory/check-up exams for the same species, i.e., bring in two ferrets for the price of one? This is the sort of promotion that will probably cost you little to offer, but provides a huge benefit to the pet owner.

Whenever I find free (or nearly free) useful things for my own business, I share the news.

Help A Reporter Out (HARO, helpareporter.com) is a completely free service linking journalists to sources. I signed up last week, and I now receive notifications of journalists looking for sources to interview for specific stories. Journalists indicate the stories they’re working on. If you’re an expert on the topic, you can supply your info. The idea, though I don’t see where this is necessarily contractual, is that if your input is used, you’ll be quoted in the story. I’m just waiting to read one of my HARO alerts and find a request for a coupon-related story!

To give you an idea, here’s a sampling of today’s journalist requests: R/C Controlled toys/gadgets, Yoga instructors, Traveling with grandparents, wooden kayak builders, recipes for spring salads, wedding photo albums, technological parenting aids, unusual water sports, and a bunch of more personal stories (i.e., “have you ever saved a child from a near drowning?”) It’s easy to see two things: 1) that everything is so specialized, a long time may go by before you encounter a request of relevance to you, and 2) when there is a relevant post, it may be extremely relevant! I just hope that the wooden kayak builders got wind of the fact that someone was looking for them.

You probably already know this, but be very careful when speaking to a journalist! I was interviewed at my previous job, for a boring story. In an attempt to perform some alchemy and make the Boring Story an Interesting Story, the interviewer tweaked my statement just a bit. Also, when asked, I said that my title was, “Research Manager” (accurate) and they apparently didn’t like this, so I was transformed into “Company Spokesperson” (inaccurate). It wasn’t a huge deal, but it left my hide slightly burnt. I certainly won’t forget it. So, just use caution.

I’m frequently asked why Couponfield can be free, so I know people are curious whenever free services are free. I’ll provide a little bit of insight into HARO's situation. I’m certainly no “company spokesperson" and everything I'm about to say is an educated guess. I have absolutely zero association and no inside knowledge whatsoever. But I did read their advertising options. At the time I read the info, it cost $1,500 to sponsor the general daily alert email (so your ad goes right above the list of journalist requests). There’s a morning, afternoon and evening edition. I’m guessing this means they’re brining in $4,500 a day in email sponsorships alone, with other advertising options no doubt in the mix. It’s possible that this is a little under-priced in the marketplace, as the first available slot is in late May. It sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me: They’re helping journalists, they’re helping people get free publicity, and they’re (I'm guessing) helping themselves to $4,500 a day. From what I can tell, it’s a win-win-win business model.

Are you looking for an innovative way to spruce up your coupon offerings? Consider connecting local charity drives to your coupon campaigns.

Not all coupons have to simply be for a given dollar or percentage off a sale (not that there’s anything wrong with those!). There are plenty of innovative, creative strategies for local coupons that you can use when creating a campaign.

For example, are you looking for a way to demonstrate your commitment to your community? How about partnering with a charity—preferably a locally based one—for a coupon campaign? Instead of $5 dollars off an oil change, how about, "Present this certificate when you purchase an oil change, and we'll donate $5.00 to the local elementary school's PTA fund." The emotional resonance of a promotion is arguably more powerful than a simple $5 off. Many people may not go out of their way to save $5, but will in order to boost the resources of a charity.

Certainly, some people won’t particularly care about the local PTA. You’ll need to have a good idea of your target market, and what kind of issues they’re likely to care about, when creating a local coupon for a charity campaign. There’s also nothing stopping you from arranging for several different partnerships with charities per year. You can even run simultaneous donation drives, and provide customers with the choice of which they’d like to support.

In addition to the creation of a local coupon, you could announce that x% of your gross receipts for a given day or week will be donated. This can work great for restaurants in particular, especially if employees planning lunches in nearby office buildings hear the word.

Find a charity that is easy to work with, that provides you with a helpful point of contact. During the ramp-up of your program, you’ll want to be able to share marketing resources. Making a poster or flyer for your charity day? You’ll need the logo or other graphics of that charity. Quite possibly, the organization will even have someone on staff who will produce these materials for you.

You’ll also want to be able to reach out to the charity’s local network, indirectly. If they have an email newsletter, you’ll obviously want to have an announcement there. This brings your business to the attention to a whole new group of potential customers. Contrast this against simply putting a flyer up on your door: People who are already at your door, already know about you. If they show up for the charity drive, great, but repeat/future business from them was quite possibly already in the cards. Getting your announcement in front of a new audience is what will ultimately increase your customer base. This is similar to making certain that your coupons are posted on an external site, and not just on your own website, where only existing prospects will see them.

Speaking of getting in front of new audiences, don't undervalue the power of having an advocate on the ground for you. As an example, you can sponsor runners for fundraising races. The runners all have fundraising goals. Consider partnering with a runner to help him/her meet their goals: You'll almost certainly be instantly tied into their social network (of potential new customers for you!). While the local aspect of the charity may not be there, depending on the cause supported, the local connections will be.

Administering the donation adds some labor to process, but ultimately, this is an opportunity. It’s a chance to meet people involved in the community and get the word out about your business. The group may even send you a letter of appreciation for your lobby (if your business has a lobby), and there may be additional ways to publicize the total amount of contributions raised.

A final bit of polish on the idea of charity coupons is that they don’t actually cost the full amount, when you consider the tax write-off implication.

Be careful to receive the approval of the charity before running the promotion, though. Sometimes, charities will reject partnerships that don't provide them with a certain threshold of donations. On the surface, that may seem downright ridiculous, but it makes business sense: If a large corporate sponsor needs to donate $50k for a sponsorship, and they offer your organization a partnership that generates only $100 in donations, they can risk antagonizing the donor that had to donate far more for the same partnership. Keeping the charities local helps avoid that brand-name issue, and the local relevance can go a long way in generating public loyalty and improving your sales. 

A buy-one-get-one-free entrée coupon for your restaurant is perfectly good, and should bring people in the door. But there may be better ways to showcase your menu.

Most restaurant coupons fall into a few different categories:

* The buy one entree, get the second free or half-off.
* The free appetizer with the purchase of an entree
* The x% off a check, food purchases only (no drinks)

These are common and they usually work. But, there may be other ways to increase both customers and margin. Consider, for example:

Odd Hour Coupons: What about coupons for non-prime time meals to smooth your daily traffic and fill in the quiet times?

Free Desserts: Instead of a free appetizer, why not offer a coupon for a free dessert? This helps send customers away on a positive and overall fun note (assuming your desserts are great).

Special of the Day: Is your daily special a source of pride? Would you simply like to see the specials ordered more often, as they're even more impressive than your regular menu and will help bring customer back? Do you find yourself with excess leftover ingredients for daily specials? Consider a while-supplies-last coupon specifically for the daily special.

Diet Menu Coupons: Potential restaurant patrons may stay home for a number of reasons. Recently, it may be money concerns. But even on a good day, there are often diet concerns. When people eat at home, they can basically figure out how many calories they're consuming (and if it's a frozen dinner, the number doesn't require any math). A basic CNN poll—highly unscientific no doubt— indicated that the majority of restaurant patrons "turn off" their diets when eating out. That is, they've already given up their battle before they walk through the door. How many times do prospective clients decide to not give into temptation, and stay home? Why not make it easier by offering coupons specifically for your menu's healthiest options?

More Adjectives: It's a simple idea, but it may be the best. Visuals, smells and words can all pique interest. It's probably not possible for you to include the first two in your coupon, but you can at least work with words. Which one sounds better, "50% off dessert" or "50% off any dessert, including our award-winning strawberry and white chocolate mousse"?