Groupon Self-Serve Advertising - Local SEO/Consulting Tool?

[fm1234]

Read this interesting bit about Groupon's new Stores feature, and thought it was worth sharing as an idea for people doing a lot of local business (obviously, in the markets served by Groupon.) Small businesses are overwhelmed with advertising choices, and the whole concept behind Groupon can be a little baffling to business owners -- so if you have their ear on design/SEO why not produce some additional billable hours in the form of consulting on the Groupon ad platform?


Frank

 

[joevis]

That'll last until people start buying 90 percent off coupons for pizza places that don't exist.

 

[bauss]

never knew groupon had such a steep cut... very surprising.

 

[Spades]

It's becoming more apparent that they are struggling to maintain their rapid growth. With "side deals" and now this Groupon Store thing popping up in all of the major cities they are starting to dilute the very model that made them who they are -- a simple daily deal.

 

[blogspotter]

There goes my next Million Dollar Idea

 

[rome212]

Waste of time, they need to focus on what works. Their business was built on simplicity now as a merchant who barely knows how to login to their own facebook, now they are asking that person to jump through some stupid hoops and create a store.

 

[imkazu]

Waste of time, they need to focus on what works. Their business was built on simplicity now as a merchant who barely knows how to login to their own facebook, now they are asking that person to jump through some stupid hoops and create a store.

somewhat agreed, don't fix it if it isn't broken
think the new digg was guilty of that same error

 

[justo_tx]

Sounds like a win to me. Despite Groupon's massive success it has two items working against it.

The whole deal a day model that some point out as a virtue, which it is, does limit the amount of revenue a given city can generate in a day. As long as Groupon vet's the merchants wanting to participate they are opening up a new channel without the constraints of one deal a day without cannabilizing their existing model, even if one merchant drops the daily deal option for a store coupon Groupon can just run the next merchant in line, they have a backlog of merchants wanting to get in the daily deal, sometimes up to a few months depending on the city.

Second, Groupon's biggest cost is its sales force, they've got around 1000 employees according to Crunchbase, most of those are sales people getting on the phones and working to close new merchants. By offering these store coupons Groupon is keeping their boosting their margins for a selling a Groupon because the cost associated with the salesman has been removed.