Week #12

If you are interested in a coupon network, think about a coupon deal you could develop. What product or service do you think would be one that would increase traffic to your business? What are the benefits? What are the downfalls of coupon network use?

I'm very familiar with 3 coupon companies. Living Social, Amazon Local and Groupon. I personally think they are a disgrace. I seriously feel that they have been taking advantage of business people from the onset. I used them when I re-opened my business San Marcos  in May of 2012 (had it in Carlsbad for 6 years). The reason I used them was because the options for marketing had changed so drastically that I felt stuck. Radio was to expensive, yellow pages didn't work anymore, mailers were expensive and never really worked well (people just toss out the mailers with the rest of the junk mail).

I gave the coupon companies the benefit of the doubt. I tried them all and they did not work for me. My independent contractors (massage therapists and esthetician's) refused to take any of the clients because the pay when so little. I personally had the responsibility for all the consumers that came from the coupons. I ended up working 4 times harder for several months trying to fulfill the appointments that were scheduled (12 hour days) and I made less than a quarter of what my normal price was.

The first round Living social took $8000.00, gave me $4000.00 and it took me 4 months to fulfill the orders! I was supposed to re-book those clients but the problem was, they wanted the same pricing as Living Social gave them. I couldn't pay the over head from the loss income due to my "new pricing".

After 2 rounds (6 months) of running coupons they caused my business to fall into a financial whole that I couldn't climb out of and because of that, I closed my business 14 months after I re-opened it.

I knew of a few businesses that used these companies that felt the payoff was good for them. They were able to "up sell" other things once the consumer came to their place of business. My business was mainly made of of services. Very little inventory. The few that I spoke with said they only used the coupon companies for one to two rounds though because of the loss you incur and work that is involved in servicing the client.

Looking back, I should have signed up with Yelp immediately. I was fearful of Yelp and waited about 10 months before I signed up and started having my clients write reviews for me. When Yelped began to work for me it was too late, I was already to far behind. I closed in July of 2013 and my phone rang for appointments from Yelp for several months after closing the doors. And, instead of paying literally 10's of 1000's to the "coupon vulture" companies, I should have hired a Social Media Manager to get the word out for me. I just didn't know at the time what to do.

I know I've talked about this story in past blogs but I think it's important for people to understand the right way to market their business. Social Media is the way that it is done these days and anyone not promoting their business with these means are missing some important steps.

Constant Contact was a good inexpensive way to email my client list and now that they have expanded to do more for businesses I will definitely use them again once I have gone back into business as a designer. I will also set up Mary up with this company in addition to Google+ for blogging and connecting with new potential clients.