Despite often feeling like a relic from a different age, the humble scratch cards have persisted well into the 21st century. They’re still an excellent accompaniment to national lotteries the world over and offer cheap, fun ways to try your hand at making millions. Not that their odds are anything to write home about – you’re only slightly more likely to win the jackpot with a scratch card as you are via the lottery – but they’re cheap enough that most people would be happy to take those odds. And, really, there’s just something immensely satisfying about scratching off that strange silver substance to get to the hopefully winning numbers beneath.

This is the reason why you might want to pick up a scratch card at your local lotto stand or supermarket, but they actually have another, much more commercial use that goes well beyond their intrinsic value.

Scratch Cards As Promotional Items and Incentives For Your Business

Scratch cards make for excellent and relatively cheap promotional items that companies can use to promote upcoming events or even to bring  in new clients to a new startup. Obviously, these promotional scratch cards won’t offer millions in potentia earnings, but they can award discounts, cash prizes, freebies and other assorted goodies as a way to get more people to check out your business or to hype up upcoming launches, sales or high-profile events. 

Advantages of Using Scratch Cards to Promote Your Business 

• They’re cheap to produce and as long as you budget properly, the cost of the prizes that can be won should be more than offset by an increase in business.
• They’re fairly unique advertisements. Scratch cards are popular, sure, for advertising purposes but they still stand out from, say, flyers or posters as ads for your business.
• Because they’re mass produced, all you need to do is slap your company’s logo prominently on the card and, voila, the company’s name and logo is out there for the masses to discover.
• They’re fun. Potential clients won’t just enjoy the chance to win prizes but will no doubt enjoy this active and creative form of promotion. Especially if they’re nostalgic for scratch cards from their youth.
• They make for perfect rewards for retail stores, in particular. Make it that customers earn a card for every $20 they spend and they’ll likely spend more for a chance to win prizes. 

Scratch Cards for Fundraising

Scratch cards are also, incidentally, just as effective fundraising tools for your own charitable organization or to promote your favorite good causes. The same rules apply here as with using them in retail and they can be offered as incentive prizes for every $5, $10, $100 that is donated, with prizes coming from special donors – who can also use the opportunity to promote their businesses at the same time. 

Physical or Virtual 

The only remaining question is whether to offer them digitally, physically or a mixture of both. The answer is that it depends. Physical scratch cards are generally the way to go if at all possible as there is something to be said about physical media as promotional items and that scratch cards, in particular, are simply more enjoyable to play when you have to physically scratch away the silver strip rather than just clicking on something with a mouse or on a touch screen. 

That said, if your business is online or has a strong online presence, awarding virtual cards may well be the better option.