Landing pages are another great way to bridge the gap between brick and mortar business and the internet properties you control. A landing page is a specific page only found by directly typing it into the browser. The benefit is that you know the visitor came because of a specific event that triggered the visit.
Example: You are on this page because you attended a seminar. Only the people who attended the seminar have this link. It allows us to track how many people were interested enough in the content to come find out more.
You can use this concept too. For example, if you sell vitamins at your pro shop and want to test an idea to also offer them for sale to your members online in a subscription model, you can print up coupons. Perhaps your goal is to eliminate in-person transactions and get your clients on a monthly vitamin membership plan to make EFT (electronic funds transfer) charges automatic and have their vitamins mailed to them monthly without having to think about it. You are locking in more secure and repeatable revenue, and as an incentive to do so you may consider offering a small discount to the member. So you decide to print coupons and hand them out in the club. The coupons may offer $10 off the vitamin package and point directly to www.yourclub.com/10bucksoff. You might also be considering offering only a $5 off program. You can also randomly give out $5 off coupons to another landing page www.yourclub.com/5bucksoff.
Looking at analytics, visits, and purchases through the above two links will tell you whether the $10 coupon was more effective than the $5 coupon. This form of test marketing is an effective way to try new campaigns.
A word of caution, if you do a test marketing campaign such as the above, be certain that when it comes time to checkout you actually give EVERYONE $10 off during the sample testing. If your clients find out some are paying more than others, your relationships and credibility suffer. The goal of a test market is to find out how many people WOULD have bought at the higher price. You don’t actually have to charge them the higher price (until the official program is launched).