How Can Selling Gift Cards Help Your Small Business During COVID-19 Lockdown?

Last updated on June 16th, 2023

Small businesses are currently at a standstill due to the current pandemic and lockdown situation. With customers staying at home and markets getting closed, the demand is plunging and exhausting their limited financial resources. For survival, they need urgent restoration of their financial capabilities. This is where selling gift cards and vouchers at SOSlocalbusiness come into play. By selling gift cards at SOSlocalbusiness, small businesses can multiply their sales to strengthen their cash position as well as retain their existing customers in the present crisis.

All small businesses across different sectors have suffered heavily in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The markets are closed from the last many weeks while people stay at home in isolation.

The demand and supply positions have worsened each day. Consequently, local businesses are the worst victims of all these adverse circumstances.

However, some practices to revitalize these businesses also are giving hope that they can cope with the situation. Amongst such means, registering at SOSlocalbusiness.com and selling gift cards / vouchers are proving to be effective in putting cash back into the businesses.

SOSLocalBusiness: A Not-For-Profit Initiative From Designhill To Help Small Businesses

Designhill, the leading creative marketplace, is contributing its bit toward helping small businesses overcome the crisis. The marketplace has created a dedicated website soslocalbusiness.com to help local small businesses that are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

You will not be charged any fee as the intention of the marketplace is to help businesses in the crisis and not to earn the profit. It’s free. By registering on this website, you can generate additional working capital.

You can list your business by filling up this form. All you need to do is fill in the details- the name of your business, address, phone number and website

After filling the details, you can list their gift cards, vouchers, and other deals on the site and ask their loyal as well as existing customers to buy these vouchers. The customers can redeem the voucher at a later date.

These deals and vouchers will be valid for 12 months. In this way, with the support of your loyal customers, small businesses can immediately have cash as working capital to fight in this crisis.

What Are Gift Cards?

Known also as gift certificates, gift vouchers, or gift tokens, gift cards are prepaid stored-value money cards that usually retailers issue as an alternative to cash.

Customers can use these cards to purchase things from a particular store. Given these characteristics, not only businesses but organizations also give gift cards as a way to reward their employees.

Gift cards are also a way to entice customers toward buying a product. So, since offering cash as a gift may not be socially acceptable always, gift cards have become a way to ask someone to buy and have a gift. Now, customers, both men and women, prefer to have gift cards, with popular options like Google Play gift cards, Amazon gift cards, and Uber gift cards.

The popularity of gift cards is such that even this is a huge market in itself. According to the statistics, the global gift card market will skyrocket to 525 billion dollars by 2025 from 378.87 billion dollars in 2020.

Why should your business sell gift cards?

Businesses explore gift cards in many ways to their advantage. During the coronavirus outbreak, gift cards are a source of much-needed cash to a local business. But the cards hold multiple benefits for businesses in normal times as well.

Here Is Why Your Business Should Start Selling Gift Cards:

01. Generate More Sales

Gift cards are a surefire way to generate more sales and cash for your retail store. While discounts lower the value of your products, gift cards entice customers to visit your store time and again.

When customers make multiple visits due to the cards, your store can upsell new products to them. Studies have revealed that customers buying gift cards spend at least thirty times more than the price of the card on buying products from that particular store.

During holidays, gift cards become even more effective marketing means to increase sales many times over the normal days. Many people buy additionally due to these cards when they are in a holidaying mood.

02. Build Brand Awareness

Gift cards and vouchers also help in your efforts to build brand awareness amongst the target audience. More and more people become aware of your retail store and any other business thanks to these cards.

They talk about your cards with their peers, which generates word of mouth publicity. This helps your store receive free exposure.

03. Ensure Trust And Loyalty

When you sell gift cards from your store, you are establishing a kind of business relationship with your customers. In this way, they continue to buy your products or services.

This, in turn, helps you in retaining those customers as you create personal brand relations. You can offer gift cards along with a loyalty program to further develop this relationship.

04. Acquire New Customers

Selling gift cards is also a great marketing strategy to gain more customers for your small business. Even those customers who otherwise are unlikely to visit your company too can come to have a look at your offerings of products. They can become your new customers.

How can you sell gift cards effectively on SOSlocalbusiness.com?

Many small businesses don’t have the resources and capabilities for selling gift cards.

While they understand the significance of the cards in driving customers, they are lacking the resource to generate and give the cards. For them, the best and most effective means of generating gift cards routinely is to use a platform for the purpose.

Soslocalbusiness.com is the site that you can rest your hope on to implement your gift card marketing strategy.

The businesses from the world over trust this marketplace for its quality services. Your small company can, therefore, trust SOSlocalbusiness to fetch more cash by selling gift cards to your customers on your behalf.

Here Is How This Site Works For Local Businesses When Using Gift Cards As A Marketing Tactic

01. You Can Use The Platform As Your Partner Platform

Small local businesses can use Soslocalbusiness.com as their partner platform for creating and selling vouchers or gift cards for customers.

The site also will collect payments on your behalf online. In this way, this platform works as your facility to sell vouchers or gift cards online to the customers who can buy your products or services.

The payment collected will be remitted to you. The intention here is to help local businesses in the present COVID-19 lockdown and not to earn any profit.

02. You Can List Your Business On The Website

The first step to take for selling gift cards is to list your local business with Soslocalbusiness.com by filling a simple form with the site.

Just give the name of your business, address, website [if you have it], and phone number. Give your bank account number also so that the site can remit the payments.

03. You Can Promote The Site To Sell More Vouchers

Designhill promotes the site Soslocalbusiness to drive an increasing number of visitors.

But to make more people buy your vouchers, you should also promote the site from your end. Use your social media and other platforms to spread a word about your vouchers or gift cards mentioning and linking the site.

Post the link of your voucher or gift card page on the site on WhatsApp, email, Facebook, etc. This initiative will help attract more people coming to the page to buy your vouchers or cards.

04. Set Up A Vendor Account

The system generates a voucher regularly with a unique order code for your business and customers. You will open your vendor account at the site with your login and password. With this account, you can track your vouchers. You can then mark the vouchers that customers have used.

These are e-vouchers sold only digitally. Customers can save the vouchers on their phone and show it to your business while redeeming. They can also take a printout of their voucher.

05. Get Your Payment Collected And Sent

Soslocalbusiness will get the payment due to a voucher or gift card from the customers on your behalf. The site is just a platform from where they can buy your vouchers easily.

The payment will then be transferred into your bank account or the account or your PayPal ID. The remittance of the payment will be done as soon as the site receives it.

06. Quick Access To Vouchers

Just as your customers pay for the voucher, they will receive from the site a confirmation email with a unique number on it. This number will be the customer’s voucher code.

Your customer then can either take out a print out of the voucher or save it on the phone to show it later to your business for the redemption purpose.

So, get started with Soslocalbusiness.com right now to use this platform for launching your gift cards marketing campaign and have cash during the coronavirus crisis. You will generate sufficient cash in a few days that will help you meet the new challenges.

Wrapping Up

Local small businesses have suffered the most due to the coronavirus pandemic as demand and supply positions worsen. The gift card marketing can help them get cash flowing their way. Soslocalbusiness is the site that helps local businesses by creating vouchers and gift cards using gift card templates on their behalf for customers. The site then remits the payments to the businesses without taking any fees or charges. This is because the site operates on a non-profit basis intending to help local entrepreneurs cope with the crisis.