Advertise on Groupon
Groupon is a deal website that provides printable or digital vouchers for daily deals offered by local businesses. The site allows merchants in various markets around the world to open an online store and post their daily deals via the site. This article will teach you how to advertise on Groupon.
Contents
Steps
Signing Up
- Go to the Groupon Works site. Unlike the standard Groupon deals pages, which is customer-focused, Groupon Works is designed for merchants.
- View the testimonials and see how Groupon can help your business.
- Click on the Apply Now button. It’s located on the far right of the Groupon Works menu bar.
- Fill in the application form. There is a short form to fill out to introduce your company to Groupon. Here are the sections:
- Personal information. This will be the primary contact person with your company for Groupon's sales and marketing team. Asterisked fields are required.
- Business information. This is just the basic contact information. Again, asterisked fields are required.
- Business details. This area is somewhat variable. The first menu is a broad overview of industries that would apply to your business:
- Business details, extended. Based on what you choose in the first menu, and additional menu is offered for more specific information about your business. For this example, we chose Service as our primary business, which resulted in the following secondary menu:
- The last section, "How can we help," gives the Groupon sales and marketing teams an idea about what types of offers would best suit your goals and business.
- When you are satisfied that the form is complete and reflects both your business and your goals, click the Submit button at the bottom of the page. Groupon's automated response page will follow:
- Await Groupon's call. You will be contacted by Groupon within 2 weeks to verify your account information, and to discuss the next steps for featuring your business on Groupon!
Types of Deals
- Determine which type of deal is right for you. Groupon started by offering daily deals that required a "tipping point," or a certain number of buyers before the deal was actually active. They've found that tipping point was always reached, so they've done away with it. They've also expanded from the simple 1-deal-a-day approach. Here's an overview of what they offer.
- The Featured Deal. This is the traditional deal Groupon became known for. It works like this:
- Consult. Work with your Groupon representative to create a custom offer that meets your business needs.
- Plan. Create an action plan to help your staff deal with the rush of new customers.
- Launch. Your deal will be featured for one day on the main Groupon site. This is the page that Groupon subscribers in your locale will see.
- Connect. Customers buy the deal, and receive a voucher in return. They bring this with them when they come to enjoy your offering.
- Redeem. You scan the voucher code they bring in, enter it manually into the Merchant Center, or write it down for later entry.
- Payment. According to Groupon, most business partners get paid in thirds—33% after 7 to 10 days, 33% after 1 month, and 34% after 2 months.
- Visit the What It Looks Like page to see a breakdown of each part of your deal page.
- Groupon Now. Groupon Now is an on-demand service that cater to customers actively exploring your neighborhood for deals. It relies heavily on their mobile application.
- Review the steps above for The Featured Deal. The significant difference is how the deal is launched. Rather than simply appearing on the Groupon website, the deal is pushed to the mobile app on your potential customer's smart phone. Rather than the printed voucher many may bring using the Featured Deal, the voucher will be on their phone.
- Visit the What It Looks Like page to see how a deal is structured on a smart phone.
- Groupon Rewards. This program offers rewards to your best customers based on your specifications. Groupon offers free analytics to help you track the success of your Groupon marketing efforts, see who your top customers are, and how much they've spent.
- Other offerings. Groupon has specialty deals for live music, travel and vacation getaways, national brands, and more. Your Groupon representative can help you determine what's right for your business.
Tips
- While there is no direct charge to have a deal on Groupon, or any other deal site in general, your profit will be significantly reduced for voucher-based sales. Rather than think about this as lost revenue, put it in your advertising and marketing budget, where it makes sense. Consider this: if you buy an advertisement in the newspaper, radio, or local TV station, it will cost $X—no matter how many people see it or use it.
Traffic from that form of advertising is very hard to track. You may see a 10% increase the weekend of the ad, but that could just as easily be the great weather. On the other hand, if you have a 10% increase and that's largely people waving a Groupon voucher, you know exactly how effective that campaign has been, and they are paying for part of your advertising bill.
Warnings
- Make sure your business can handle a rush of new customers. If you are selling muffins, for example, and you have a weekend when Groupon customers want to buy way more than you can possibly make, you will not be happy, and your customers will not be happy. In cases like that, limit the total number of vouchers available so that you can manage the influx.
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