Groupon can do wonders for your business if you do it right. Here is how you can do a daily deal special like a marketing pro and see some profit in the long run.
Step 1: Do you need to do a Groupon?
If you already have a ton of customers and can’t handle anymore. Don’t do a Groupon. Do a Groupon if you need more customers.
Step 2: Remind yourself why you are doing this
You are doing this to get repeat new customers. Repeat new customers will help you grow your business. The way you get repeat customers is by providing a great product and amazing service.
Step 3: Ask All Your Employees
Ask yourself and the people you work with if they are ready to handle a ton of new customers. Give them a warning that the next few weeks will require a little extra work from their end and you appreciate it. This is important because you don’t want your employees to treat the customer like crap and have your online reviews go down. See the graphic below:
Step 4: Cap the Amount You Sell
Only allow a certain amount of Groupons to be sold. The Daily Deal sales guy will try to make you do an unlimited amount but that is what he is trained to do. Cap the amount you can handle. My suggestion is figure out the number of new customers you can handle in a 14 day period and double that.
If you make your cap amount to be unlimited, you and your team will be overwhelmed and won’t be able to provide great service devaluing your business reputation. Worst of all this will drive business away in the long run.
If Groupon pushes you to sell more than you should go to another daily deal competitor like LivingSocial, JuiceInThecity, or the hundreds of other competitors.
Step 5: Train Your Employees to Upsell and Be Nice
A. Treat daily deal members really nicely. They are customers you NEED to come in again.
B. At the end of your service with the customer. Ask if they have had a positive experience and to do you a personal favor and review your service on Google Maps, Yelp, or Foursquare.
* Almost all new restaurants I checkout are through Yelp and Google Maps. You can really get a ton of positive reviews with a Daily Deal burst and this can help you find new customers in the long term.
C. Remind the customer that you are a small business just getting things off the ground, so if they have any friends or family that would be interested in your service you would be happy to offer them a 10% discount.
I also encourage sending a personal “Thank You” email at night with a direct link to your business on Yelp and Google Maps.
Step 6: Stay Organized and Force Repetition with Email Addresses
Add all the email addresses from the daily deal into a email newsletter service like mailchimp or iContact. Send out monthly updates with a coupon (something small like $1 off or free 15 minute consultation). Remind the customer that you still exist and greatly value their business. One service I’ve seen people use and like is MobManager to help keep their daily deal customers organized.
50% of your users will unsubscribe from your newsletters, be okay with that and keep plugging away.
Step 7: Enjoy Your New Repeat Customers
Congrats on the new business you deserved it!
Are there any steps that I missed or things that could greatly help a positive outcome for businesses doing a Daily Deal special? Please, let me know in the comments.
Structure your Groupon to have stipulations.
For example only offer it on Monday – Thursday or only if they spend $50 or more. This will help you squeeze more profit from the Groupon.
Not a bad idea if it doesn’t frustrate the customer.
It sucks when you find out after you bought a Groupon that you can’t use it on weekends. Nobody really reads the fine print and it sucks when businesses expect you to do that. It feels like you just got scammed.
interesting post! Only 27% of people who buy groupons go back to the business a 2nd time based on stats
Great stat! yeah it is really low! Which is the problem.
They need to follow the steps above so they don’t lose a ton of money and time.
Rishi – what time frame is the 27% based off of?
Not sure. What stats have you heard?
This is right on for the types of things they should watch out for! Also, they need to look at a lot of the terms carefully. Don’t pay the credit card fees. Don’t sign exclusivity agreements, etc etc.
Hey Chris – good points. You have to pick your negotiating battles.
Awesome post Rishi.
I’m in the process of creating a local SEO course for small businesses, and one of the bonuses will be a special report on “how to profit from daily deals” – you’ve included some great tips in here, and one of them I didn’t even think about was the fact that the business will get more reviews as a result of running the deal. And of course, that helps their local SEO rankings.
Great stuff!
Thanks Pete!
I think they key thing is to ask for reviews. I only add a reviews if the business owner asks me.
What do you think is the most effective way to ask customers for a review? Did those business owners ask you in a certain way that made you more likely to post a review for them?
For example, do you think it’s a good idea to provide a rationale / reason why you’re asking for a review (e.g. say something like “Rather than advertise, we prefer to grow by word-of-mouth, so we’d love it if you’d post a review – would you do that for us?”)
Would you recommend business owners give their customers incentives to post reviews?
I’d love to get your take on this. Thanks!
Pete
Hi Pete,
I think a short honest explanation is all you need.
“We are just starting out and if you liked our service we would really love a review from you on Yelp”.