Two absolute necessities in the world of daily deals;
- A superb product or service: A great deal on a poor product is still a bad deal.
- A properly structured deal: Inflating prices or just poor deal structuring will kill any chance of running a successful deal promotion.
Daily deals get a lot of attention and yes, it’s a fair assumption that Groupon is one of the major causes. I won’t go so far as to say that they have given the daily deal industry a band name, as they in fact put it on the map on a public scale and brought mass exposure. However, many deals and promotions they’ve run have given the coupon and deal industry a band name.
This is not to say that it is Groupon’s fault every time a deal is not structured properly or prices are inflated. Merchants are often times the cause of the trouble, and also overzealous sales reps can have great influence on how a deal ends up going.
So how do you know if a merchant is offering a quality service or product?
A superb product or service is subjective and a matter of opinion, however public reviews and user feedback can help a daily deal site make semi-accurate assumptions about the quality of a merchant’s offerings.
Your consumers need to be sure that you have done the research to ensure they don’t get ripped off. In the same way that I trust Google to provide me with relevant and accurate search results, I expect websites that broker deals to be high quality. Unfortunately, oftentimes that is not the case.
Consumers have a voice more so today than ever before in history. A quick Twitter search or Facebook search can show you real time feedback on a business. Although it is often debated, Yelp can also provide you some feedback. To those of you running a daily deal operation, researching your potential merchants is more vital today than it has ever been.
Groupon just got busted by ABC’s “The Lookout” for misleading consumers on how much money they were saving at a luxury hotel in the Dominican Republic.
“But the only way I can make money from running a daily deal is by inflating my prices.”
Not true. If ample time is spent to properly structure and execute the deal, prices do not need to be inflated in order to see profits from a daily deal. Build loyalty with your new customers, impress them, and bring them back to your business. Another option to consider is using a company like Merchant Post which allows you to structure your deal campaigns and connect with deal sites. Set deal terms that meet your ROI goals and run campaigns with deal sites that agree to them.
Some businesses can run a standard daily deal and come out on top. Others may need to bundle different packages together or even offer different price levels or potentially offer a daily deal only type of service. Pricing and structuring deals is something that needs to be carefully researched and developed.
So in short, the key is for a deal site not only to research the merchants they want to do business with, to ensure that the deal site’s offers are adequately represented by high quality, but also the sales rep should sit down with the merchant and help them to structure a deal that is most likely to bring the merchant the best possible results. The best possible results might be different outcomes for different industries or even for different businesses in the same industry, but it’s important to learn and help facilitate an offer that comes as close as possible to the merchant’s own goals (while feeding the deal site revenue as well).
Make moves today,
DailyDealBuilder.com
I originally posted this article on Daily Deal Media
