Groupon madness!

Groupon! www.groupon.com I don’t know anyone who haven't heard of Groupon. It’s become viral! It’s a great marketing opportunity for businesses and way to increase their future foot traffic. People really respond to deals that are over 50% discount, who wouldn’t? However, for a business’s standpoint, (especially smaller to medium size) there is no cap on how much would be sold to help protect the business from too much loss – Groupon wouldn’t want it any other way – according to a small café in Portland (Possie’s café) who agreed to get advertised on Groupon which was featured on March 9^th 2010. Although they met new customers, the business lost nearly $8,000 with their Groupon campaign (http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/09/groupon-gone-wrong-one-customers-sad-tale.html) Groupon CEO Andrew Mason had stated that the companies do have caps. Perhaps, Possie’s café didn’t fight or negotiated enough on the uptake, or perhaps the Groupon advertising deal (%loss vs gain) wasn’t quite clear enough.

So, if Groupon approaches your business to be part of their network, make sure you understand what you’re getting into and learned from Possie’s cafés story. Though this Groupon retrospect almost put me on borderline boycotting Groupon, I’ve learned something and that is, like the sad tale link above, stated in the end, fight for everything!

Suffice it to say, I am not boycotting Groupon, in fact I like Groupon, it’s effective and have bought many of their featured groupons in the past. It is a service mail advertising, I’m religious about opening up my email from Groupon to check out everyday deals – sadly enough it’s sometimes exciting!