(8 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)
Loading ...[This is an excerpt from my new book, Groupon: Why Deep Discounts are Bad for Business]
In this section, we take aim at one of the most frequently quoted fallacies about using such sites for your local business.
“We couldn’t get that type of publicity” is frequently seen in testimonials by business owners on these online discount sites. It’s the old any publicity is good publicity.
Right. Tell that to BP or Toyota…
No, bad publicity that you didn’t have enough wait staff for the crush of people who came in with their BOGO or enough product you advertised at an unbelievable price or mediocre food gets you nowhere to building your business.
In fact it hurts you…
How To Service The Crush?
Sitejabber.com had a comment from Robert F,“Moore Massage does indeed charge $95 for an hour of hands-on therapy. Groupon’s $45 discount is such a deal. Such a deal that a claimed 1002 groupies punched their ticket. Methinks they’re now victims of their own collective enthusiasm; not to mention groupon.com’s and its partner’s greed. To wit: it would take Moore’s massage mavens 41.5 days to administer 1002 one-hour sessions—provided they provided the service 24 hours a day.
By the same token, 546 cooking class attendees? How long will it take the Cape Ann Whale Watch to work their way through 2557 tickets? In other words, even if groupon isn’t a scam, it is. I mean, what do you call it when you pay money for something up front that you can’t access within a reasonable amount of time?”
Here’s why Groupon and other online discount site customers’ discontent is so bad…
Because everyone can update a Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp or Twitter account with a few taps. And they will. Remember, they had to tell at least 50 friends to get the deal. Anything wrong and they’ll do the same.
Reality: Business is Work
Much like after 9/11, we are in a different environment than many of us have ever faced. We can’t hide from the truth – business is work.
A marriage is work.
Raising kids is work.
We see what happens when people don’t take care of those things.
When you’re in denial about your business, the financial results can be devastating. When it closes, everyone sees what the owners should have seen.
Some business owners I read about seem OK with hoping for better days using a “deal.”
But isn’t that fairly naive? Nothing changed about the way they do business. For them I’d suggest now is the time to take off the bib and get to work making your business better, not indulging Groupon clippers with “Santa Claus” marketing.
Tomorrow: Part 9: Shoppers Need To Feel Smart
- Part 1: Groupon Review: Worst Marketing For Your Businesss
- Part 2: Groupon Business Review Horny For The Deal
- Part 3: Alien Danger Using Groupon For Business
- Part 4: The Perfect Storm
- Part 5: Training Customers to Wait
- Part 6: Fallacy of Converting Coupon Users to Profitable Customers
- Part 7: Local Businesses Need For Immediate Results
- Part 8: The Groupon “getting the word out” Fallacy
- Part 9: Shoppers Need to Feel Smart
- Part 10: Groupon For Business – No Magic Bullet
- Part 11: Groupon For Small Business: No Deal – The Final Review
Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®, has helped hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses in every major industry, including hospitality, manufacturing, service, restaurant and retail. He is a nationally recognized expert on retail business strategy, customer service, sales, and marketing. With over thirty years experience beginning in the trenches of retail and extending to senior management positions, he has been a corporate officer, franchisor and entrepreneur.
Learn how to improve your business with The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business.
I just wanted to say thank you for your blog! It was very usefull.
Groupon is earning a negative reputation for selling coupons to low quality merchandise and businesses that go out of business or otherwise cannot deliver the goods or services paid for. Do you want to be associated with that reputation?
Groupon will claim a very high subscription count and promise to give you great exposure. You should not care about their total subscription count – how many active users are in YOUR market?
Turns out it is impossible to unsubscribe from Groupon’s email notices. Thus, their subscription count is greatly inflated with dissatisfied customers who never see the email marketing promised by Groupon.
Yes, Peter is quite correct. They have cleverly hidden the “can’t unsubscribe” issue by creating a cute interactive unsubscribe web page. Search for any string related to unsubscribe and your are engulfed in hits for their site.
Since their IPO is coming up they don’t want low numbers even if you can’t stand them and won’t ever come back – there’s plenty of new suckers out in the world.