Here is a great discussion with the Kern Organization on the age gap of digital minded younger demographics and whether or not they will to continue to respond with print and direct mail messages. I’d agree that any kind of marketing regardless of print or digital platforms, and audiences young or old will always have an impact if it is relevant to the recipient.
Local coupons and deals have always been appealing to the public because there is something in it that directly benefits the interested consumer. Direct mail will always have a place in the household.
The type of headline we ran here probably isn’t exactly the kind of thing Groupon wants to see circulating throughout the Blogosphere these days, considering all the negative press the company has been getting lately, but it is a conclusion drawn from some new academic research.
That research, from computer scientists John W. Byers and Georgios Zervas of Boston University and Michael Mitzenmacher of Harvard, finds that ratings scores on Yelp for businesses running daily deals are 10% lower on average.
In our line of work in local marketing (and primarily small businesses), we come across business owners, colleagues, friends, and family that have yet to accept social media as a difinitive change in the way we interact as a buying society. Yet, I find that they have a Facebook page, linkedIn profile, shop online, have a smart phone – using apps, and/or are joined into some form of online forum or network. It’s not just the thirty-somethings and kids using this technology. It’s professionals and baby boomers alike, and when businesses 3 years ago were looking to find ways to use social media for business, some found huge success connecting with their audiences while others were late to adopt, and left at a competitive disadvantage.
As a representative of Valpak, I am proud to say our company provides the digital marketing tools to help businesses utilize social media and incorporate the digital end of marketing into their print media. With Valpak.com, our coupon app, and expertise in this field, we – a print company, can merge the two forms of media for outstanding results. So if your business has yet to create profiles that showcase your work; are late to get on the social media wagon, and/or still have a website that your nephew made 7 years ago, consider this…Youtube gets 2 Billion searches per day, Facebook has 750 million users, and Twitter as of yesterday reached 100 million active users. Shoppers are looking for info on your company, and checking your references online. Are they finding it?
Below is a link to a recent article on CNN news regarding the issues the postal service is facing and some consumer opinions. Naturally, Valpak utilizes the USPS exclusively in the delivery of Valpak, and they intervied our own C.O.O. Jim Sampey.
The recession has encouraged a host of deal-seeking behavior among consumers, including searching out online and mobile coupons as well as taking advantage of daily deal offers, which have risen in popularity dramatically. And thanks to television shows like “Extreme Couponing” where shoppers save hundreds of dollars during strategically planned supermarket visits, old-fashioned coupon-clipping is back in the spotlight, too.
Though shoppers still scour the Sunday paper for coupons, those free-standing inserts have the lowest redemption rate of all formats, according to NCH Marketing Services. Instantly redeemable grocery coupons featured on the outside of a package were the most likely to be claimed, followed by coupons downloaded from the internet, at nearly 17%. Health and beauty products had a 13.6% redemption rate for the same digital format.
These days every new entrepreneur understands that an innovative product or service is necessary, but not sufficient, to start a business. You have to build a web presence with marketing content to get visibility above the 50 million other new websites created every year, and attract the customers you need. But most entrepreneurs don’t know where to start.
Of course, there is a plethora of “experts” emerging out there, who are anxious to lead you down that path, for a large price. So I’m always on the lookout for some real experts, and some pragmatic guidance on how to attack this issue. Recently I was reviewing a new book on content marketing, “Accelerate!” by an expert and friend in this space, Arnie Kuenn, which offers guidance and examples on new and modern approaches for the rest of us:
Build a blog. According to Hubspot, websites that have blogs get twice as many inbound links, 400 percent more indexed pages, and a more than 50 percent increase in traffic, compared to websites without blogs. Search engines and people love blogs these days.
Great article found from The Squeaky Blog. Click the blog link for full article.
Chicago-based start-up, Groupon has taken the world by storm with their daily deals, offering consumers deep discounts from featured retailers. But is their business strategy focused less on the merchants who offer these deals and more on their own profits? We’ll begin this post with an example of a Groupon offer hurting a business and follow it up with an example of how it has helped a business in order to try and determine what can be done to create a mutual benefit for consumers, merchants and Groupon.
This is an excerpt below from a great article on Groupon. Click the link at the bottom to read the full article at TechCrunch.
Editor’s note:This guest post is part of an in-depth series looking at the daily deal industry written by Rocky Agrawal, an entrepreneur who has worked on local products since 1995. Read Part I,Part II, and Part III also. He blogs at reDesign and Tweets @rakeshlobster
Imagine you’re a small business owner. You have to choose between two propositions:
You can pay $62,500 for marketing. You’ll get a whole lot of customers coming through your door. No guarantees if they will ever come back, but they’ll come once.
I’ll pay you $21,000. You get $7,000 in about 5 days, another $7,000 in 30 days and the remainder in 60 days. In exchange, you’ll give my customers cheap products for the next year.
I’ve been working on local for a long time and I know it’s hard to get small businesses to spend money on advertising. Really hard. Even getting $200 a month ($2,400 a year) is a high hurdle to meet.
There’s no way a business will sign up for #1. Most merchants would laugh you out of the store if you asked for $60,000.
Except they are. In droves.
Although they sound completely different, #1 and #2 are really the same—it’s the Groupon business model.
With all of the “Deal of the Day” sites like Groupon popping up selling off gift cards at half their face Value, the question of profitability often arises. Here is a good article weighing the options for advertisers.
Click below to read the article at Business News Daily.
The recession has encouraged a host of deal-seeking behavior among consumers, including searching out online and mobile coupons as well as taking advantage of daily deal offers, which have risen in popularity dramatically. And thanks to television shows like “Extreme Couponing” where shoppers save hundreds of dollars during strategically planned supermarket visits, old-fashioned coupon-clipping is back in the spotlight, too.
