Shop owners employ various sales tactics to increase sales over time. One successful strategy among them is the ‘Buy One Get One’ marketing strategy. There are many variations of BOGO deals, like Buy One Get One Free, Buy Two Get One, Buy Two Get One 50%, and so on. BOGO is a proven sales strategy that helps in clearing inventory and boosting sales.

In this article, we will focus on how BOGO deals can benefit your WooCommerce store and how to set them up. 

Did you know that the oldest instances of ‘Buy One Get One Free’ date back to 1721, when Richard Bradley‘s book ‘A Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature‘ was sold under a buy seven, get one free promotion? BOGO deals are usually associated with food items and other low-value products in supermarkets. But nowadays many online retailers have been including BOGO deals in their shops, as they found it a successful marketing strategy. 

With that being said, let’s dive in. 

Benefits of using BOGO deals in WooCommerce

Clearing Inventory – BOGO deals helps in clearing inventory. You can clear out the stocks with this deal. Using various variations like Buy Two Get One, or Buy Two Get One at 50% will help you sell more from your store. Forget about low-selling products, clearing out the cart is as simple as that. 

Customers like it – Customers prefer BOGO offers more than any other promotional offers. They’re more likely to go for the ‘FREE’ deals than 50% discount offers. With Buy One Get One kind of deals customers will feel like they’re getting more at a lesser price. 

Marketing – BOGO deals attract more visitors to your website. It can be a great marketing method when used effectively. 

Better profit than other promotional offers You may wonder how BOGO deals can offer better profit when compared to other promotional offers. 

Let’s see an example:

Consider a product that costs $3 and is priced at $10 in your store. 

If you are selling the product for a 50% discount, the selling price would be $5 and you will get a profit of $2. 

When the same product is sold under the ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offer, you will receive $4 as a profit. (Selling price – the cost of 2 products, $10- $6)

Here are some examples of BOGO deals used on various e-commerce websites.

Setting up BOGO in WooCommerce

By default, there’s no option for BOGO in WooCommerce. We are using Smart Coupons for WooCommerce plugin by WebToffee for this article. The plugin has a free version available in the WordPress directory but it offers only some basic BOGO features.

If you are looking for advanced BOGO coupon features, make sure you have purchased and installed the premium version in your WooCommerce store. 

Creating simple BOGO

Let’s simple Buy One Get One Free offer in our WooCommerce store.

Step 1: Go to Smart Coupons > Add Coupon in your WordPress dashboard.

Adding new coupons in WooCommerce
Smart Coupons > Add coupon

Step 2: Add a coupon code and description in the provided area. Let’s add WPBOGO10.

Adding Coupon code and description

Step 3: Scroll down to the Coupon data meta box and the General tab.

General tab of Smart Coupon pugin

Step 4: Select BOGO from the Discount type drop-down list.

Selecting BOGO as discount type

If you want to allow free shipping, enable the check box.

You can set the start date and end date for the coupon. I’ll leave it blank.

Then there is an option to set the number of times you want the coupon to be applied.

Apply once: The coupon will be applied only once. No matter how many products you add to the cart. For example, for a Buy 1 get 1 offer, if you purchase 2 of the products, you will still get only 1 free product.

Apply repeatedly: The coupon will be applied repeatedly. For example, if you create a Buy One Get One offer, it will apply repeatedly as you add more eligible products to the cart like Buy Two Get Two, Buy Three Get Three, and so on. 

Selecting the number of times, the coupon to be applied

Let’s select Apply once here and enable the auto-apply coupon checkbox.

We have to set where we want the coupon to appear, either at the checkout, on my account, in the cart, or all of them.

Step 5: Click on the Usage Restrictions tab.

Here we will set the conditions for the coupon.

There are various coupon conditions available here, you can set them accordingly. 

More detailed configuration of smart coupon with minimum spend and maximum spend.

Minimum spend: Set the minimum amount spend for the coupon eligibility.

Maximum spend: Set the maximum amount spend for the coupon eligibility.

Individual use only: Enable to restrict using other coupons with the BOGO coupon.

Coupon can be used with: Select specific coupons that can be used in combination with the BOGO coupon.

Coupon can’t be used with: Select specific coupons to restrict using with BOGO coupon.

Exclude sale items: Enable to restrict BOGO coupons for items already on sale.

The plugin offers a lot of advanced options for creating coupons. To keep this article short let’s focus on creating a simple BOGO coupon. 

Enable Product category restriction and Individual quantity restriction checkboxes to restrict using BOGO coupons for specific products with a specific quantity. You can skip this if you want to apply the BOGO offer for all the products in the cart. 

I will select a product from my cart and set the minimum quantity as 1.

Setting product conditions for Nike Satan Edition shoes

As per the above condition, the coupon will be applied only when purchasing ‘Nike Satan Edition shoes’ from my store.

Move on to the Giveaway products tab. From this tab, you can set which product you want the offer to be applied to.

You can set the giveaway product from the following options.

  • Specific product
  • Any product from specific category
  • Any product in store
  • Same product as in the cart
Selecting the giveaway product type from the drop down list

Let’s set a specific product as our giveaway product and product condition as Any from the below selection.

I will add Garfield Whatever T-shirt with a 100% discount. You can also give a discount on the price amount.

Selecting the specific product for giveaway

Step 6: Click Publish to save the coupon.

Testing the BOGO coupon

Now let’s test our BOGO coupon.

Go to the product page.

Click on Add to cart and proceed to cart. 

Nike Satan edition shoes product page

You can see the coupon is automatically applied. 

Choose the required size for the giveaway product. 

The giveaway product will be added to the cart.

BOGO coupon successfully applied on Nike Satan edition shoes

Creating BOGO variations

As said in the introduction, you can use different variations of BOGO with this plugin.

  • Buy Two Get One.
  • Buy Two Get One at 50%.
  • Buy One Get One with a $5 discount.
  • Buy Three and Get any one product from the list for free. 

Let’s create a ‘Buy Two Get One at 50% discount offer’ in our WooCommerce store. 

Go to Marketing > Coupons > Add Coupon.

Enter the Coupon code and Description

Select BOGO as the discount type, and set the number of times to ‘Apply Once’. 

Set ‘Make coupon available in’ to Checkout and Cart.

Go to Usage Restrictions Tab.

Enable Product category restrictions and Individual quantity restrictions. 

Select the required products and set the quantity restrictions as needed. 

I’ll add Nike Sports shoes from my cart and set the quantity restrictions to 2.

Setting product condition for Buy Two Get One at 50%

Let’s leave the rest blank and move to the Giveaway products tab.

Select the giveaway product as specific product from the ‘Customer gets’ drop-down list.

I will select Nike Satan Edition shoes as the giveaway product with a discount of 50%.

Adding Nike Satan Edition shoes specific giveaway product

Click Publish to save the coupon.

Now go to the Product page to see how the coupon works at the front end. 

Add the product to the cart for checkout. ( Add 2 Nos. in quantity, as per the offer condition)

Nike Wearallday Running Sports Shoes product page.

There you can see the discount offer on the cart page. 

BOGO Coupon applied for Buying 2 Nike Sports shoes will give 50% discount for Nike Satan edition shoes

How to use WooCommerce BOGO Coupons effectively?

ECommerce store owners often relate BOGO coupons with the Buy One Get One deal in physical stores. Even though the purpose is similar but the strategy can vary when compared with walk-in stores.  

For a physical store, the store owner can create a promotional strategy and offer a free product or discount of his choice. When it comes to an online store, you should rely on an automated coupon plugin and create a set of discount rules for BOGO coupons.

Following are some of the best practices for using WooCommerce BOGO coupons effectively:

Choose related products for BOGO 

It is best to offer related products with Buy One Get One free offer. Let’s say for example if you are selling riding gear in your store, you can create a BOGO Coupon for a biker jacket with riding gloves as a free product. These two products can be beneficial when purchased together. 

Create urgency

Urgency can push your customers to complete the checkout process. You can create urgency by adding limited stock alert banners or timers etc. One thing you have to keep in mind is that, do not extend the offer period too often. 

It’s fine to extend the offer period for a while, but if you do it over and over, your customers will have the tendency to wait as the discount coupon is always available.

Don’t overdo it: 

The golden rule for any marketing campaign is that don’t overdo it. You may find it working sometimes, but gradually it can cause negative effects. If you are selling all your products with BOGO discounts, customers will always expect a discount all the time. This can seriously affect your profit curve.

Use WooCommerce BOGO variations:

You don’t have to offer a free product all the time. As mentioned earlier you can create your own coupon rules just like in a physical store for offering discounts and free products. Use different BOGO variations like ‘Buy any two shirts and get a t-shirt for a 50% off.’ Similarly, you can use different BOGO variations on your WooCommerce store.

Enable auto-apply coupons: 

It is important to make the WooCommerce BOGO coupons easily accessible for your customers. Enabling auto-apply coupons will bypass the process of manually entering the coupon code at the checkout. This can increase convenience for your customers.

Conclusion

BOGO deals can be a win-win strategy that benefits both customers and shop owners. Customers can benefit from coupons discounts and free products, whereas store owners can increase sales and attract new customers. 

Create your own coupon rules system for your store website. The plugin we discussed in this article can help you create advanced BOGO rules and discounts on your store. If you are looking for other plugins to create BOGO coupons in WooCommerce, read our article on ‘5 Best Plugins for WooCommerce BOGO Coupons.’

We hope this article helped you in understanding how to set up WooCommerce BOGO coupons and how to use BOGO coupons effectively. If you have any thoughts on your mind, let us know in the comments. 

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