Getting Your Groupon On

I feel like I have been living under a rock! It has been all over the news and the web. They have over 12 million subscribers and have saved consumers of 1.2 billion dollars. How did I miss it? I still don’t know  but anyway. I am talking about Groupon of course.

The concept is very cool. A business sells discounts through Groupon and the “groupon” is only activated when they have received a specific number of buyers. You can watch the number of groupons sold change as the days of the deal go by.  Some businesses reported expecting to sell 500 groupons but in fact sold over 2000! This may not be the average but the potential is huge. One of the best parts of the program is the fact that they “feature” your offer which calls attention to your offer. The Groupon team will write the copy and setup the offer for you at no charge. You supply information about your business, what you want to offer and some photos if applicable and they do the rest. Not bad, no outlay of advertising dollars until you see results. This is almost unheard of these days!

And apparently, the Groupon team is very choosy about who they feature because you don’t pay until they sell your groupons. Now you ask, “What does it cost when the deal is done?” I don’t know. You have to fill out a online form for someone to contact you and since it doesn’t fit in our market we will not be taking advantage of it.

Keep in mind if you decide to do this, coupons and discounts should be based on consumer perceived value. Do your research and compare to similar products/dishes. Something priced too low could be perceived as cheap or low quality. Something priced too high for the perceived value may sell to a few consumers but you will miss most of your target market. The difficulty with perceived value is that it means something different to different people. Don’t do what FTD (the florist) did and jack up the price then give a discount. Oh, yes they did! Consumers are savvy buyers these days so keep it real.