Pitfalls and Mountain Highs of Groupon for Business Building
Groupon and daily deal sites like it…Living Social, Bloomspot, Woot are an opportunity for business building for the Healing, Coaching and Self-Help community. I want to share the pros and cons so you investigate with your eyes wide open and take strategic steps in growing your transformative business.
Wow, it’s quite something when you can get 1000’s of people buying from you and bringing you more business. The key is making sure that the strategy you’re taking is not going to bankrupt you in the process! So here is a caveat, Groupon is awesome, if done the right way, with the right strategy in place and in the right type of business.
Groupon, is fabulous for visibility. Especially if you’re fairly unknown. If you’re a big branded organization, there is danger of damaging that branding with discounted pricing or credibility, but for the small business owner, this is a fabulous medium to utilize. But you do need to be careful.
Here are 3 reasons why Groupon could be great for your small coaching or healing business:
1) If you’re starting out, have time on your hands that you’d like to be spending on clients, and need to build a clientele, doing a groupon will get clients coming through the doors.
2) If you want to sell a digital product, especially one that’s been hanging about on your ‘shelf’, you would be making income you wouldn’t have before.
3) Attracting a much larger community of potential clients or buyers, who haven’t worked with you before with the opportunity of building your community (email list).
There are a few things you need to have in place first. The time or staff to fulfill the groupons bought if it’s a service you’re offering. The ability to treat your groupon as a loss leader in some cases, and calculate any cost to your business. Eg: a spa owner offering a facial – will be needing to cover overheads, product and staff time. As well as not upsetting current clients when scheduling them in, becomes difficult. Schedule groupons to take place on the quieter days (yes you can specify those).
The majority of time Groupon is about visibility and driving traffic to your business, not about making money. Think about it as risk-free advertising. In traditional advertising you’re paying up front for something that might amount to very little. Being strategic with how you leverage that opportunity is of paramount importance to make the loss-leader (not always but sometimes) an income generator for the future, and for it not to be a black hole for your current profits.
There is tons to learn, so you can leverage the magnificence of Groupon and daily deal sites like it.
In November I’ll be hosting a free mini- telesummit Social Media for Soul-opreneurs on KeystoClarity Radio, where we’ll have a show dedicated to Groupon (and daily deals), out of the 6 we’ll be doing! Make sure to look out for an email announcement giving you more information about that sometime soon! (make sure you’re signed up on my email list and not just subscribed to my blog if you’d like to get it) And in the meanwhile let me know what you think about this article below. It would awesome to hear your comments and experiences. Each business is different, with different needs and offerings – which need to be taken into consideration to make a daily deal site like Groupon rock for you and to feel aligned with what you’re doing. Perfect to bounce off your business coach.
If you’re considering working with a coach and you’d like to explore strategies to grow your community and become visible to your clients, I’m currently looking for a few special clients. Just take a couple of minutes to answer a few questions first to see if we’re a fit. Click here to do that now. If there is a fit, we’ll arrange a Biz Breakthrough consultation to strategize on what you’re doing in your business especially with all the things we want to achieve by the end of 2012, right!? Woohoo! And it thrills me to know that you’ll be healing and helping more people. We WILL make this world a better, awakened and happy place.
