Business Owners, a question

[newracer]

I think it is good and bad, I know two restaurant owners that did Groupon and Living Social. One still uses Living Social every few months and he said it keeps him busy during the normal slow times. The other said it sucked and would never use it again. I have bought deals on both for lots of different products and services with mixed results. I bought a house cleaning service one when we were selling our house. When I scheduled the cleaning I told the manager that we would be looking for a cleaning service to use at our new house, they still did a shitty job. On the contrary, I bought one for carpet cleaning and they did a kick ass job and I will always go back to them for service.

[asmo]

Groupon is very anti-2A.. Fuck them.

[spqrzilla]

Bailey Guns, if you were the majority of the customers who bought Groupon, my business clients might still be using Groupon. You aren't.

Criticism of Groupon isn't attacking you just because you buy the coupons.

[ChunkyMonkey]

You have to upsell hard as you attract coupon chasers. Be careful of bad review snobs too, coupon chasers act like millionaires but won't spend a penny more.

[Bailey Guns]

2 points: I said it didn't work for every business. But to classify the users as "bottom feeders" is just wrong. Second, Groupon may be (or may not be...I don't know) anti-2A. But I've sure seen a lot of gun-related ads on Groupon and Living Social.

And why do you think King Soopers advertises something like milk as "Buy one, Get one"? It's to get customers in the door. It's not because they're making money by giving away free milk.

[ChunkyMonkey]

2 points: I said it didn't work for every business. But to classify the users as "bottom feeders" is just wrong. Second, Groupon may be (or may not be...I don't know) anti-2A. But I've sure seen a lot of gun-related ads on Groupon and Living Social.

And why do you think King Soopers advertises something like milk as "Buy one, Get one"? It's to get customers in the door. It's not because they're making money by giving away free milk.

In this case, yes. Groupon announced early this year that they are banning gun related businesses.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/22/technology/groupon-gun/

[TFOGGER]

I have had good luck with Facebook ads, and they are dirt cheap. I looked at the economics of Groupon, and with my already thin margins, it didn't make any sense. I've used Groupon to buy vacations, and there are good deals to be had, but it probably makes more sense in that industry, as a room generating 30% of it's normal revenue (after Groupon's cut) is still better than that same room remaining vacant. Like Carl, when I use Groupons locally, I tend to be the guy that buys extras and tips well.

[Firehaus]

I've had decent luck with offering a yelp deal like spend $10 for a $25 credit. Yelp takes $3, you get $7.

Groupon is a parasite, like most parasites, once businesses wizen up and shed them, they will die.

This is not a personal attack either. If even 20% of the customers that used groupon were like Bailey, I'd be doing more offers.

But I'd guess is he's in the upper 1%.

[<MADDOG>]

Have you ever tried Amazon Local or Groupon or anything like that?

I am giving it a whirl for the next 6 days and was curious if anyone else had tried it.

Back on post: my suspicion is that "it depends".

If your business relies heavily on a service moreso than a physical product, then I would stay away from it. As some have stated; the model works well in restaurants and retail, wherein the customer usually ends up buying more than the discounted item. Carpet cleaning (a service), not so much.

My $.02

[Jim B]

I am sensing a theme here.


Hopefully my other marketing venture works better then this one.

Have you tried Google Adwords (paid search)?