Navigating the waters of the Group Buying craze can be tough, especially as a small business owner, you’ve already got plenty on your plate! In the past we’ve provided some guides and FAQs for merchants (things like our multi-part Group Buying Glossary, tips for integrating Daily Deals into your existing marketing, and 10 ways to create a winning deal) but we feel there’s no such thing as too much help!  Here are a few best practices to keep in mind as you consider running a daily deal:

1. Look for a great niche site! A site with an audience that best suits your target customer means better sales and more repeat business.  If you run the only doggie day care that offers pooch manicures, look for a great deal site that boasts a pet-friendly audience.  Ask the right questions, even if it’s not called “Doggie Daily Deals” you might find that previous pet-focused deals went over big with the audience if you just ask.
2. Prepare, prepare, prepare.  No, it might not be the zombie apocalypse but you should absolutely prepare yourself for the influx of traffic you’ll receive running a deal.  We’ve all heard the cautionary tales of salons, bakeries and restaurants who weren’t prepared, don’t be caught unaware!
3. Be smart about what you discount.  Know your margins, its crucial to make sure you’re discounting is in line with your margin so you’re not cutting too deeply.
4. Get creative. Do you sell a product that requires refills or have a service that’s only getting better the second, third and fourth time around?  Price accordingly, discount the initial visit on a service or the main product but cross-sell those refills or repeat visits to customers when the come to see you.
5. Don’t let it bite you. Make sure you’re prepared to deliver, if you aren’t able to fulfill your end of the purchase you will definitely hear about it.  Working to make sure you deliver top-notch customer service means you’ll not only garner repeat customers but also will be impressing a crowd that is already online and doing things (like reviewing you on Yelp!).

Want some other tips and tricks?  Check out our other merchant-focused blog posts.

We constantly preach that bigger isn’t better when it comes to your daily deal email lists but the truth is everyone is still looking for respectable ways to grow their email lists.  Here are a few quick tips for increasing your subscriber base:

1. Run contest but keep it simple.  Then make sure to announce who won via email, it gives you credibility to follow through and recognize the winner.
2. Prove it, socially.  Truth be told we’re all influenced by our peers, if you use your social channels to show how many people read your regular emails it adds credence to your requests for others to subscribe.
3. Reward referrals, same premise as #2.  Simply put, if someone is kind enough to refer their friends give them a big ‘thank you’ in the form of an incentive.
4. Engage people offline, are you sponsoring an event or attending something locally?  Get your name out there, ask people to sign up via a contest at the door or just a card they can leave with you.

Need some more help with growing your subscribers?  Check out our other posts on the subject here!

Just wanted to share a pretty entertaining post we’ve enjoyed by Hubspot.

25 Things You Could Buy with a Super Bowl Ad Budget

Some favorites…

2.) Direct mail the entire country of Sweden.

15.) Purchase about 35,000 shares of Facebook after it IPOs

21.) Hire Lady Gaga to follow your CMO around all day, singing “Happy Birthday” on repeat, every year for the next 145 years.

23.) Purchase enough color toner to print brochures that can span the Atlantic Ocean from Dublin to Boston. And then back again.

We don’t talk about how to help our merchants get bigger and better on this blog much but we definitely should.  Without the hard working, dedicated folks who have set out to open up shop and serve their communities we wouldn’t be here.  So today we wanted to salute small business with a round up of some helpful posts/tips from marketers!

1. Marketo’s Small Business Resources are a great starting point.  Marketo is a great marketing automation company full of smart marketers and we think the infographic they showcase on the page is a super-concise visual aid.

2. Hubspot, a favorite marketing tool we’ve mentioned before, shared data early last year on the importance of social media for small businesses.  Along with this post they have great, user-friendly tool kits (free!) that walk marketers and small business owners through social media tips and tactics.

3. We have posted more than a few tips and tricks for merchants, a quick list of merchant focused posts can be found here.

If you’re a small business, what’s the best advice you’ve gotten?  What marketing tools have brought consumers through the doors over and over?

Last week Constant Contact quietly acquired MobManager.   I say quietly because usually there is a bit of to-do and buzz when an acquisition occurs.  The acquired and acquiring companies publish press releases, blitz the media and generally make a big fuss about the move.  What does their quiet play mean for the industry and for them?  Taken in conjunction with Constant Contact’s acquisition of CardStar and BantamLive it looks like they are going to be finding a way to either join the deal space or at least integrate the functionality into their platform.    On the bigger scale though, it provides a clear view of larger more traditional marketing companies seeing the value of group buying as a tool in the marketers arsenal.

While business news and tech industry watchers bemoan the supposed short-life of the deals industry, we think this acquisition continues to show that deals aren’t going anywhere.

We’re going whole hog into the Valentine’s Day mania here with our gifting guide, take a look!

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Get a heap of Valentine’s gifts,
At little cost to you!

While the world scales back you can shower your Valentine with a myriad of gifts. Operation Shock and Awe Your Love commences now with nine awesome deals that allow you to buy, flowers, lobster, wine, earrings, and even a custom romance novel! This doesn’t have to be the year you scale back on Valentine’s Day. Give big and save big by mixing and matching today’s deals!

Click here for more gifts that will inspire romance!

What are you doing to embrace seasonal marketing in your daily efforts?

As 2011 drew to a close Martin gave his predictions for 2012, we’re not but 24 days into the year and already some of those predictions are the topic of discussion within the Group Buying industry.  Some of his biggest predictions centered around the collapse of the Groupon Copy-Cat model, while this comes as no big surprise, the industry saw a 7.6% decrease in the number of new deal sites in the latter half of 2011.   What does that mean for those of us still here?  It means we have to get more specific, as our own publishers have seen, the niche sites are seeing strong results, everything from deals for fisherman to travel to gaming.    Bigger isn’t always better (a refrain you’ve heard from us before), more like specificity is better when it comes to daily deals and reaching a loyal audience.

How do publishers and deal sites stay ahead of further consolidation? Know your audience, understand the demographics and cater to them.  Reach out to your subscribers, use the bit of data you have on their purchasing habits to better tailor your deals or just plain ask.  Get them to give you feedback on what they like/hate and what they what you to do more of.  Listening to the customer is nothing new but it’s the best way to be sure your audience is happy with your offering.   Want to read more about what impact relevant deals have on your daily deals site, we’ve done a round up of some good posts on that right here.

Here at Tippr we’ve recently taken one of our top resources and turned him into a Merchant Services guru!  Jared Hart has worked with Tippr in many capacities but has started looking at how we can better serve our merchants.  We’ll regularly feature posts from him on how our merchants can take advantage of the great information he and his team have to share.  First up, an interview with Jared on the creation of our Merchant Services team!

Q: Jared, I know I’m excited about the creation of merchant services, tell me about your team and the plans you guys have!

A: I am thrilled that we now have a Merchant Services team; it is my job to conceive and implement this department here at Tippr and I am excited about the work that lies ahead.   There are a lot of items to consider right out of the gate; process implementation and management as well as document/collateral creation and circulation are just a few of the things that we have to consider in these early stages. But what I am really excited about are some of the partnerships we have forged with other businesses and how those businesses can really help the merchants we work with.

Q: Awesome, tell us about some of those partnerships

A: One of the partnerships that I am referring to is FullSlate. FullSlate is an appointment scheduling software that is GREAT for small businesses. If you’re a small business owner who doesn’t have time to handle all of the scheduling details of your business, then FullSlate is right for you.  FullSlate allows your customers to make appointments via the web. It’s like having a receptionist that never sleeps!  The interface is clean, intuitive and user friendly.  It’s also easy to install and maintain and you can choose frequency and format for notifications

The other partnership I’m really eager to share is with SPARQCode.  SPARQCode is an electronic loyalty program that provides the business owner with an easy, hands-off method of creating customer loyalty among new customers. Using SPARQCode technology, you can create your own loyalty program to reward or incentivize customers for returning to your establishment. Business owners have the freedom to create whatever kind of rewards program you like.

While this is just the beginning for us we’re looking forward to new and innovative partnerships between great services like these and our merchants.

Next in our series with Jared we’ll be sharing some tips for making the opening day for your deal a success!

We’ve been seeking to expand our posts lately and reached out to Kelly Page, our favorite Social Media Consultant about town!  She’s got some words of wisdom for small businesses that are useful for both our publishers and merchants.

Today it’s not just about your company having a Facebook page or Twitter account. Social Media is about engaging with your followers, listening to what they have to say and writing great content to keep your audience coming back. The fine line of being successful is how transparent do you want to be to your consumers? Social Media is the gateway that let’s your consumers see the inside of your business and see your brand’s personality. People are looking for more than the latest deal or product, they want to know what is happening on a daily basis in the company, what are the employees doing, how and why the product was created and the list goes on. Consumers are smart and people in the social media space are even smarter as they’re getting news and information by the second in the social media space.

Social Media is letting the consumers into your world. So to step in the right direction we have 5 great trends to boost your visibility and be a great resource for your consumers while positioning your brand in the social media space.

1. Pinterest:

The new social networking site for 2011 was not Google+, Twitter or Tumblr, it was Pinterest. Users can post photos to one of the 32 category boards and leverage their brands by categorizing their boards while people are following their brand. You can run contests, showcase photos for new product arrival, highlight your brand personality, display sectors of your company and engage creative communication between consumers and your brand. Here is a great article by Constance Aguilar, a social media strategist and account manager at Abbi Public Relations on leveraging Pinterest for your company.

2. Google+

Google+ was originally invite only when it launched in June 2011. They opened to the public later and in October 2011 opened the gateway to brands. The future is still unclear where this will go in the social networking space, but it is clear that for SEO and the Circles function where you can group consumers into categories, i.e. circles, and talk directly to them is a feature that will be useful in engaging to like minded consumers versus the broad post that Facebook uses at this time which directs to all followers. This is an untapped resource which marketers will find useful to them.

3. Facebook

Facebook will break the 1 billion user mark in 2012. With the introduction of F8 this past year, the timeline feature  has no set launch date for brands but Facebook has been hinting at it. When that does happen it is going to be very important to brands. Content is what is going to get your brand into the news feature, thus your engagement and strong content as well as design is going to be key. If the content is not resonating with your audience, based on the new F8 you will not come up in the news feed. So no longer is a like meaningful on Facebook, it’s going to be all about truly engaging your followers. Until Facebook announces the new timeline will be opened to brands and not just personal pages, you have time to get ready and create a strategy and content that will boost your brand. Great article here by Todd Wasserman who asked ad agencies what the brand timelines might look like.

4. Twitter

Promoted Trends launched in April 2010, this is the new advertising platform for Twitter and it’s going to gain momentum. Last year 500 advertisers launched 6,000 ad campaigns and Audi referenced a hashtag in their Super Bowl campaign. Many campaigns are now promoting tweets, retweets and encouraging engagement on Twitter in their offline and online campaigns. Twitter is the fastest way to get the message out there in 140 characters and you can target your audience through following people in your business and finding consumers right in your market. Twitter is the mainstream social media channel. Engaging with your followers, listening to what they have to say and following the trends in this space is one of the quickest ways you can boost your brand awareness. Twitter is growing; it may have as many 450 million users, but no one knows how many people are really active users. Yet it’s a audience that is tuned to getting information by the second and responding quickly.

5. Digital Media

Not only are the social media avenues the mainstream to consumers and brands, but we look to 2012 at the rise of mobile and tablets for the consumer. The iPad user spends 6 times more on an app than the online web user. Kindle users are on the rise and internet connected TVs are predicted to be 65% of TVs sold in 2012. This is not a trend, but a viable avenue that will be coming to the media space. Mobile commerce is already making its mark in the consumers hands. Amazon and eBay are reporting billions of dollars in sales taking place via mobile. It’s estimated that mobile transaction volume will grow to $670 billion by 2015. Take a look at Adam Ostrow’s article on 5 Key Digital Media and Advertising Trends for 2012.

The social media space is an ever changing arena. Trends can come and go and we will see lots more emerge for 2012. We’ll keep you up to date on what is happening in this space. Here’s to engaging with your consumers and taking your brand to the next level.

Kelly Page is a Social Media Strategist with her own client base ranging from businesses to non profits to the publishing industry. She teaches Social Media/Advertising class at University of Washington and works with businesses to build successful strategies in the social space. You can find her on Twitter @specialkrs1 and at http://kellyshowalterpage.wordpress.com/

Lately it seems healthcare is all over the news, from questions about whether the Supreme Court will make a ruling on the recent healthcare legislation to stories about how consumers use healthcare related daily deals to fill gaps in their own coverage.  As a deals provider we started thinking about the ethics of providing healthcare related deals.  Is it what is best for the consumer and for the deals provider?

We haven’t really decided yet but if you plan on sourcing health-related deals for your subscribers remember these three keys:

Reputation
Just like with any deal, picking a reputable merchant is key.  No one wants to go see a doctor/dentist/etc. with horrible bedside manner, poor reviews and a general bad reputation.  Pick someone who is respected and well reviewed on sites that review medical/dental professionals, it’s not just their reputation on the line here but yours too!

Location
As always, location is key.  Pick practices that either have multiple redemption locations or are geographically close to your subscriber base.

Price & Value
We all know healthcare is expensive but the whole point of these deals is to provide good quality of care and service at an affordable rate.  If you question whether the healthcare provider is inflating the value of the service, call around.  Find out what the generally accepted costs/value of similar services and treatments are.

At the end of the day sourcing quality deals is always important but even more so when it comes to how it can affect someone’s health.  Source good quality services and providers and your subscribers will be well served.