Tips: Your Military Rewards and How to Win the Hearts of the Military Community

After several years I have seen some great Rewards and some that do not meet our criteria for a free ad. The basics of the Reward include:

1. Must have a dollar value or percentage off and be a unique offer to your military community.

2. Think of it as a coupon that a service member would bring in to you, so they know upfront the advantage of using your service or product as a military family

Now some ideas how to make it the draw that pulls folks into your business!

1. Say thank you to the service members and their families! A simple opening line, Thank you for your service says a lot to your readers and future customers.

2. Offer something unique! Bring them to your business with your innovative ideas! Consider your audience and what appeals to them. Each category of business is unique but our Featured Military Reward winners have shown some great ideas and reached a larger audience because of it! The military community is young and mobile and internet savvy!

3. Many acronyms or terms are unique to an industry but not always understood by the general public. Did you use any? If so, do they need a short explanation or do they belong somewhere else in the ad.

4. Grab them with details of what you are offering! Do not say, “call for details”. That is a very obvious effort to not provide information about your offer and makes it easy to skip and go to the next ad or offer.

5. Remember you can offer specials but the basic Reward must have a year long timeframe to match the date of the ad. So offer a Veteran’s Day special on top of your Reward! For example, Military personnel receive 10% off our service and products! Take an additional 10% over the Veteran’s Day weekend! Your Reward can be updated or changed at any time!

6. Do not offer something that is already free! I have seen some real estate Rewards that offer “Free Comparative Market Analysis” or “Free Home Buyer services” that are normally free to the general public. We do not accept those Rewards as meeting our criteria for a free ad and most folks would quickly understand that and simply move on to another ad anyway.

7. Compare yours to others Rewards in your area and category. Look at your competitors! We all do comparison shopping and why not have the best ad and Reward possible? We bring the military community to you; now you have to win them over!