Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Don’t Believe Everything You Read – Daily Deal Sites Can Work!

You’d think from all the hate that’s been reported about daily deal sites, and how they are all a thing of the past as a way to market your small business, we wouldn’t like them either. You’d be wrong. There’s quite a bit that goes into making daily deal sites enhance your local business, and a few well-publicized failures, shouldn’t be the reason to avoid using the daily deal model. As a matter of fact, when you take a close look, the lion’s share of them “failures” had quite a bit 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 customers redemption and spending. Given that they had unbelievable fails in these areas, is it any wonder they failed?

So why the hate?

The well-publicized financial and structural changes thecorsetcenter.com and LivingSocial have been going through are often cited causes of dislike. The press is quick to point out the unfavorable aspects of some daily deal sites. They frequently point out things like spam complaints, a crowded marketplace of daily deals to choose from, “deal hoppers”, customers who hop from deal to deal and seldom become a regular customer.

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

• Know how the money works! – Be sure that you know how the numbers work in your deal. Determine what your average sale is and don’t attempt to exceed it with a daily deal. Also, make sure you negotiate credit card processing fees, as many of the daily deal sites will pick these up.
• Have a strategy for following up – Up to 75 percent of these daily deal customers are new to you, so be sure that you have a plan in place to entice them to return, whether that be another coupon, or….?
• 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.

The death of Daily deal sites is grossly overstated, and you can still use these to grow your small business, if you take the time to do it correctly!