how does groupon work? utilizing flash marketing to grow your business

Utilizing Flash Marketing for SEO

How Does Groupon Work?

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Background on Daily Deal/Flash Sites

• Two Initial Strategies:– Flash Sites – limited availability (lack of

time & lack of service/product/merchandise)• Two days only or 100 dresses maximum

– Group Buying Sites – minimum purchasers for deal to go through and price to pass. • 200 people must buy for $40 price, 300 = $35

• In the past two years - shift towards a flash combination.


History of Daily Deal Sites 2010


Early History of Daily Deal Sites

• Gilt Groupe was the first daily deal site founded

• Followed by Living Social (2007) & Groupon (2008)

• Currently: – Groupon owns 50% market share, LS owns 25%– 33% of daily deal sites closed in 2011-2012. – 798 in the Q3 & Q4 of 2011-2012 alone. – CPC Value Jumps - $8 (’10) to $23 (‘12).


How Does it Work?

• Consumer gives Groupon an email, city & age/gender

• Receives emails with offers for services/products

• Groupon gets a commission & merchant gets last portion of the sale along with new customers.

• Example: Pair of Jeans - $100 retail– Sold @ 50% discount – User pays Groupon $50– Of $50 (you keep 40%) - $20 = 80% discount

• Issue: Businesses can’t handle influx from a Groupon and decide not to continue or go out of business.


How to Benefit from Daily Deals

• Barter for your cut, payment details, CC fees.• Take control of the scheduling• Provide upsell incentives (belt for those pants)• Set Goal Targets and stick to them

– Max vouchers used, price, combinations with discounts

• Train your client to handle the expected influx• Help retarget customers & build a brand

– Require emails, facebook likes, tweets– Build a social & connected community– Restaurant Survey – Online Discounts– Retarget, Retarget, Retarget – Email marketing,

social, etc


How Flash Sites Can Compete in 2014

• Serve a niche market and stick to it.


Think of unique ways to feature clients

• Online Gaming Niche?



• Selling online goods (cards, stickers, utilities, etc)



• Send version 1.0 to Groupon Goods to prep for 2.0



• Team up with other programs!


Utilize Sites for Grassroots Campaigns

• Living Social ran its first non-profit campaign in 2011 to support the Red Cross in Japan - $2million in donations


Target Audience for Linking Opportunities

• 2,800 backlinks to this grassroots page.– Download the full

list then perform outreach

– 3.6K backlinks at its peak

• Team up client with a charity or non-profit

• Groupon keeps 0%

• Reach out to those organizations and show a new fundraiser.


Groupon Gives Too!

• Groupon’s “Big Give” push occurs in late November.

• Both local and national - team up with local charity

• For every $5 donation, we’ll match with our own company.


Benefits to Daily Deals

• Potential natural link building opportunities– Unlinked mentions can be targeted too.

• Local targeted keywords as well as national– Run in 40 different cities – “jeans in scottsdale”

• GoogleOffers growing steadily (new opp)• Increased referral/direct traffic to site• Ability to re-target new customers afterwards• Increased brand awareness and recognition


Search Benefits to Daily Deals

• Traffic from Groupon vs. Organic Traffic Study


Watch Out For….

• Increased traffic which overloads your servers– Downtime onsite which leads to poor UX.

• Difficult Customers – Once they get a deal, customers are

usually not willing to pay more.

• How to retarget customers and increase LTV– This is the key to successful campaigns –

learn how to retarget and bring back those consumers.

• Late Redemptions– Customers forget about deals and want to

redeem late. Draft a plan early to prepare for this.


Key Takeaways

• Craft a strategy that would work for the client

• Find products/services you can discount• Help clients brand strategy • Provide them with pros & cons – help

execute across multiple teams

• Interesting Personal Stats– – 41% of our daily deal coupons went

unredeemed– 58.23% of our customers engaged in upsell

• With an average upsell value of $44.82

Questions?