Make the Most of Your Groupon Marketing
Posted on | June 28, 2011 | 18 Comments
Daily deals are the latest trend in internet marketing. You’ve probably heard of them, and may be on a couple of lists yourself. I receive daily emails from Groupon, Living Social, and BtoB City, a new daily deal site for businesses. I saw a terrific example last weekend of how one business is on track to make the most of their Groupon marketing.
You may have guessed from the incredible deals that these are usually loss-leaders for businesses. The business offers their product or service for a loss to get you in the door. The business often takes even more of a loss than you may think – the product or service will be offered around 50% off the normal price. In addition to that, the business pays the list operator (Groupon, Living Social, etc.), about half of what they take in, so they’re really looking at getting only 25% of the normal rate. On the other hand, there’s usually no up-front fee, so you look at it as your marketing budget. That’s what you pay to get someone in the door. But the key is to keep them coming back.
On Saturday, our local Groupon deal was for Tricks Gymnastics. They have dance and gymnastics classes for kids. While the dance classes are mostly filled with girls and my boys don’t like anything they consider, “girly,” they still love to bounce on trampolines, dive into the foam pit and climb the ropes. We were actually going to a birthday party there that same afternoon for one of my six year-old’s best friends. I was ready to buy the deal right away for my son – four weeks of gymnastics classes for only $25! I went over to their website to make sure one of the classes would be a good fit for him. Here’s what I saw:
Look at that! They had a message right there, on the home page, just for me, a Groupon
customer. It showed me they cared, they were ready to provide me awesome service, and they knew just what questions I might have. I was impressed. I clicked through, read the class descriptions, then went back to purchase my Groupon. When we went to the birthday party that afternoon, we stayed after to see the class schedule and to decide when we’d start. The staff person was super helpful and even checked the ages of the other boys enrolled to help my older son decide if he’d like to join in.
As great as they’ve been so far, this is still part of the first step – getting us in the
door. My thought when I purchased one month of classes was that this would be something fun for my son to do over the summer. We’re not really planning to keep going after that. Their job is to convince us otherwise. That’s what will make it worth it for them – a new customer paying their regular monthly rates ($72/month for the classes my son will be taking).
What’s the next step? How can they convince us to enroll long-term? For starters, they need to provide an awesome program that my son loves and begs to go back to. They need to make me feel like he’s getting something valuable out of it. Maybe they’ll even come up with a follow-up offer, like a lesser discount if we commit to three months. From what I’ve seen so far, I think they’ve got it all planned out. I think they went into this with a strategy, and you should too.
Have you ever tried offering a coupon through Groupon, Living Social, or another daily deal site? How did it work out for you? Do you have any creative ideas on how to get the most out of daily deal marketing?
Please comment below and join the conversation!
Tags: daily deals > Groupon > loss leader > marketing > Tricks Gymnastics
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18 Responses to “Make the Most of Your Groupon Marketing”
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July 24th, 2011 @ 12:35 pm
I am a huge fan of daily deals and think it’s a fun way to buy and save money. Although Groupon and Living Social are getting the most attention there are many other sites you should check out that specialize in other niches.
July 24th, 2011 @ 6:08 pm
Yes, lots of people are jumping into the Daily Deals market now. It will be interesting to see which ones make it. I like your strategy of going with a specific niche. Good luck to you!
July 26th, 2011 @ 5:10 am
That was a good move by Tricks to have the website ready for the Groupon offer. Too many small businesses think “business in usual” will result in great results from Groupon. The key is proper planning and execution of this plan.
The small business owner needs to get the contact info from the new customers if they want Groupon for their small business to be successful. It sounds simple, but I have purchased over 20 Groupons and zero businesses have tried to get my email address or follow up with a special offer.
The small business must also train their employees for this promotion and how are they going to handle their loyal customers.
Groupon can be a great way for a small business to get new customers, but it is not a permanent marketing strategy.
August 2nd, 2011 @ 6:06 pm
Thanks Kristin! I appreciate your well wishes. I love your site and have found some really useful nuggets here. Thank you!
August 4th, 2011 @ 7:26 am
Groupon is one of those things that I didn’t look into very much even though I’ve heard so much about it. Didn’t Google even try to buy them a while back?
August 8th, 2011 @ 12:29 am
I love Groupon daily deals and discounts. I has variety of categories from which we can choose our products at a cheaper rate. Now Groupon also entered into the mobile business also with variety of deals and discounts.
August 9th, 2011 @ 10:11 am
@Dan Yes, Google did try to purchase Groupon back in December. I’ve read Groupon had concerns about anti-trust litigation and Google didn’t accept their proposed ‘break-up fee’ in case things didn’t work out.
August 16th, 2011 @ 7:56 am
We were working with a local business who used Groupon and offered a really competitive pricing on their product– I’m sure Groupon is a great way for some businesses to attract new repeat customers but it really depends on your niche as this customer has an excellent, highly rated product but saw few repeat customers due to the Groupon even though they provided great service and followed all the traditional Groupon marketing tips.
August 22nd, 2011 @ 9:38 pm
Anytime you tailor make an offer for a specific group of users and one of those users finds your page your conversion rates are going to be great.
Groupon is no different. Goood job at the end of the day for Trick Gymnastics.
September 30th, 2011 @ 2:29 am
I have heard of Groupon before, I’m not sure if they offer coupons in my country, I’ll have to check it out.
September 30th, 2011 @ 10:57 am
Thanks for reading, Rowan. It looks like they do have Groupon in Australia: http://www.groupon.com.au. I’m not sure how long it’s been there, but I’d love to hear back on any news that would be helpful to other readers.
October 17th, 2011 @ 6:05 am
Not sure this will work so much for Web Design but I’m willing to have a think about it. When you have a service, I think you need to have a package that costs a fixed price and you need to be able to churn that service out quick smart. Good article. Thanks,
/Brian
October 23rd, 2011 @ 2:14 pm
Very well done. I love how responsive they were and the fact that they understood where their traffic was going to be coming from.
November 5th, 2011 @ 12:28 pm
I think most stores do it wrong. It is great to use a deal like this but you want to make sure you’re going to get the best out of it and the most important is to make sure that the customers come again at the full price. So you got to give extra attention to them and make sure to have them subscribing to some sort of mailing list so you can sent them more deals or expose them to your brand many times!
November 15th, 2011 @ 11:15 pm
I love Groupon daily deals and discounts. I has variety of categories from which we can choose our products at a cheaper rate. Now Groupon also entered into the mobile business also with variety of deals and discounts.
November 27th, 2011 @ 5:11 am
Wow, thanks for the info. I didn’t realize that businesses were taking such a loss to use Groupon. I agree, it does help get people in the door and aware of their products and services.
December 2nd, 2011 @ 12:33 pm
Groupon can be huge for small businesses. And it is so true that they need to use the discount deal or time period to win over the groupon member. Using it right on the site like this and welcoming them first is one of the best examples I’ve seen.
December 10th, 2011 @ 11:44 am
I love my daily Groupon and Living Social emails. This is actually a really insightful post because rarely do you see anyone talking about what a great marketing tool it is. It’s one that I think is overlooked. Hah, you kind of inspired me and I’m thinking about doing a Groupon for my catering business!