Daily Deal Sites – Look Beyond What You Read

You’d think from all the hate that’s been written about daily deal sites, and the way they are all a thing of the past as a means to market your local business, we wouldn’t like them either. You’d be wrong. There’s an awful lot that goes into making daily deal sites enhance your local business, and a few well-publicized failures, shouldn’t be the reason to avoid the daily deal model. As a matter of fact, when you take a close look, the lion’s share of them “failures” had plenty in common, particularly a glaring misunderstanding of the best way to run a daily deal promotion, poor negotiation of their deals, and not keeping track of their new customers redemption and spending. Given that they had unbelievable fails in these areas, is it any wonder they failed?

So why all the hate?

The well-publicized financial and structural changes Groupon and LivingSocial have been going through are often cited causes of dislike. The press is only too quick to point out the unfavorable issues with some daily deal sites. They repeatedly point to things like spam complaints, a crowded marketplace of daily deals to pick from, “deal hoppers”, customers who hop from deal to deal and rarely become a regular customer.

3 Ways for you to help make Daily Deals work for your business

• Understand the financials! – Be sure you clearly understand the numbers as far as your deal is concerned. Know your average sales volume and don’t exceed it with a daily deal. Negotiate credit card processing fees: most major daily deal sites will pay these!
• Follow up with your new customers! – As many as 60-75 percent of these daily deal customers are trying you out for the first time, so it’s extremely important to have a plan to coax them back for a return engagement! Offer another coupon, or other incentives to ensure that you see them again!
• Don’t go too big, too quickly – Start conservatively, so that you can learn the ropes and not be overloaded by the deals, and leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Daily deal sites aren’t dead, you simply need to understand how to best use them for your business.