Did you know that your business invoice can actually be used as a very effective promotional and marketing tool? Invoices are most often overlooked by businesses as a means of communicating incentives and offers to their clients or customers.

This leads me to ask you the following question … are you using your invoice as a marketing collateral for your business?

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If no, then continue reading on as you’re about to find out some really powerful ways of turning your invoice into an effective promo tool.

Let’s start by first looking at the different kinds of ways that invoices can be used for marketing purposes.

1. Referral Incentives

This is not exactly a new technique and most of you might already be familiar with it. In a nut shell, offering a referral incentive to your clients or customers means that you’re offering them some sort of discount or offer if they refer your products and/or services to people in their social circle.

You might have come across this kind of promotion in several businesses. For example, hiring agencies forward job descriptions on to candidates and offer them a cash incentive if they refer a candidate to them that actually gets hired.

This cash incentive usually varies between £200 – £500 which makes it a strong incentive for people to forward on job descriptions amongst their friends and family members in the hopes of someone getting the job.

But the question is, have you ever thought of putting down this referral incentive in your invoice?

Your invoice gets forwarded to an existing customer or client which makes it a really powerful channel of forwarding this promo as compared to simply advertising it on your website or social media channels where the message is essentially being broadcast to people who may not even be your customers, thus not quite in a position to strongly refer you on to someone else.

2. Customer Testimonials

Again this strongly ties with the argument above. We are all scrambling to get more and more customers to leave us a testimonial. We attempt so many ways always trying to find the right time and place, but have you ever thought of using your invoice to get one?

It makes perfect sense. Right when a customer has made a purchase of your product or service, right when the connection with your client is still fresh, ask for a testimonial.

Especially if your client is really happy about their purchase and in that moment of excitement, they are an easy target to hit with a testimonial request.

This of course applies for those sending out digital invoices as you’ll need some sort of link put in where customers can easily click and type in their review. The easier the process, the higher the possibility of getting a testimonial from your customer.

There are several software tools out there that can help you put in a customer testimonial link into the template of your invoice. A perfect example of this is InvoiceBerry. It allows you to create templates of invoices that can be amended with only a few clicks.

You can also have multiple versions of an invoice template ready to send off depending on your needs. This is how you can really benefit by turning your invoice into a powerful promo tool.

3. New Product or Service Announcement

Do you have a new product or service that you are about to launch? Are you scavenging for ways to advertise it and reach out to customers to make them aware of it?

What could be a more clever way than to subtly leave a link or mention on each invoice that gets sent out to your customers?

You will be surprised at how this technique can be. It’s the quickest most efficient way of reaching out to your existing customers while also billing them for their purchase. What can be better than that?

This is another reason for all you folks currently using traditional invoicing method to switch to online invoicing. There is so much flexibility to enjoy with online invoicing that you really can’t get with the traditional paper invoices.

Just imagine having to create a new template and printing out hardcopy prints of it each time you wanted to make a product announcement or communicate something to your clients.

So why not switch to a simple and efficient tool like InvoiceBerry that allows you to automatically build on your invoice templates within a few clicks.

4. Free Reports or Downloads

Who doesn’t like a freebie? Whether that’s a free download, report, e-magazine or anything that can easily be given out on the web, this promotion can translate so easily on your invoices.

It’s another technique of making sure your customer leaves absolutely delighted with their purchase. Who knows, that could translate into more referrals or testimonials for you. A total win-win situation, all by adding a simple link on your invoice that leads your customers to a freebie.

Here again, those businesses using online invoicing software can easily embed them into their invoices whenever they are running such a promo and then take it off when it has expired. A few clicks and you’re done.

5. Request Feedback

This is almost similar to requesting a testimonial. However, this might have more appeal to your customers as it simply means that you are giving them an immediate and quick method to leave their feedback whether positive or negative.

Thus if someone purchases your product or service, but have something to point out to you at the same time, they know they are welcome to, by seeing that link on your invoice prompting them to leave feedback.

This is a great way to get more and more customers reviews so that you can build and improve on your products and services in the long run.

6. Exclusive Sneak Peeks

Exclusive sneak peeks don’t always have to be on social media platforms. It kind of takes away their exclusivity doesn’t it?

How about you promise your customers that after a purchase they can enjoy some exclusive sneak peek into what is soon to be launched so they can line up and be the first ones to grab their favourites before they’re all sold out?

Any such marketing activities can do really well on your invoices. Your invoices are the perfect target market. You want to make sure you are reaching out to just your customers, your existing fan base that has tried out your products. So what could be a better channel than your invoices?

7. Discount Codes

No better way to make your clients or customers keep returning to you than offering them discount codes on their purchases. This is a great technique that marketers use to keep current customers happy and turn them into more long term loyal customers.

However, have you ever thought of using this technique on your invoices? With no extra investment needed, you can simply start offering your clients discounts codes on the invoices.

8. Acknowledging Loyal Clients

We all know how important it is to build solid relationships with your customers and to nurture those relationships into more loyal clients. So what better way could there be than through your invoice. If you’re using online software, you can quickly customize your invoices to acknowledge your returning customers.

A simply impersonal message on their invoice will jump out immediately and show them that you acknowledge and recognize them because of their repeat purchases.

So here are 8 solid ways to start using your invoices as effective promo tools. Enjoy seeing a great improvement in your marketing activities through this absolutely free and effective channel.