Coupon distribution rose 7.5% and redemptions rose 15% in 2008 Q4

Long gone are the days of affiliate marketers bidding on “Brand Name+Coupon” or “Brand Name+Discount” and being the only advertisers.  A story today in the USAToday focused on the economy being  the main player in forcing Big Brand marketers to think about coupons and discounts in their search marketing campaigns.

Remember when your mom (or maybe she still does) would go through the Sunday paper and grab every coupon available and get excited to go shopping because of all the money being saved.  Think about the commercials and press about the Christmas ToysRUs catalogs in the Sunday paper.  Coupons have always been a customer favorite but it appears to have taken a bad economy, high unemployment and a mortgage crisis for household Big Brands to start thinking that the internet was the place to market their products with coupons.

The other angle on this is the fact that consumers are now more interested in coupons and discounts than ever before because of the same reasons above: bad economy, high unemployment and mortgage crisis.  A variety of coupon sites are out there to help small business owners use and track coupons: OneMinuteCoupon.com and others are probably going to start getting more attention as small business take the same steps as Big Brands in offering discounts and coupons to keep customers coming in and buying.

If you aren’t bidding on and offering coupons or discounts for your retail store via your website than this might be the perfect time to fix it.