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Online promotion can bring you closer to your target consumers. However, before you go ahead and use daily deal websites, you have to learn what it is and how it works.

Are daily deal websites right for your customers?

For business owners, daily deal websites attract customers by targeting their personal interests, like their everyday needs and wants of people. Daily deal sites help people to save more money through the use of coupons and these sites let customers see how the business works and what benefits they may get for their own convenience.

How do these deal websites work?

Normally, business owners will offer a significant deal on a product or service. Group buying websites promote these deals through email and social media networks. These websites take their cut while customers get the rest. Deal promotion all over the Internet world is ongoing 24/7 as new customers come in and approach daily deals online. Business owners get new customers, gain attention, and, at the same time, earn higher profits.

Does advertising really work?

Advertising is a method of exposing a product and service. This is commonly used to draw public attention to goods and services. Promotional services are everywhere and these services continue to grow as new advertising methods are fast changing and becoming more effective and cost-efficient.

Majority of customers tend to be influenced by advertising. They sometimes depend and base all their purchasing decisions on promotional services while others rely on word of mouth. When it comes to daily deals, advertising works on deal content and pictures. And websites carry their promotions on how deals are presented and defined.

Here are some of the effective promotional services online:

Social Bookmarking: There are social bookmarking sites that are popular for sharing online favorites. If you are familiar about StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg, these are the ones popular for sharing your favorite sites and articles. This kind of promotional service lets you share your online interests and links that are connected to your business.

Website or blog: Having your own website or blog can be an effective marketing tool for your business. This kind of marketing tool will help customers to easily track your business. This is where customers get helpful and extensive information about products and services you have for your business.

Article Marketing: Making an article that connects your business to customers is one great method. Write an article about products and services or anything that relates to your business, then post it to your business website or blog. You might as well want to try making a product and service reviews for new customers.

Social Networking Sites: In relation to article marketing, you can promote your product and service articles and reviews through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. This is also one great method to promote your business online. Through this method, millions of users will get to visit your website leading to rank and drive traffic in search engines. This will also help your customers know your business. This is a new wave of advertising because you are given the chance to easily promote your business to many targeted friends online.

 
Over 300 exhibitors and 12, 000 visitors will gather this coming April 24-26 for the Internet World UK 2012, a gathering of the brightest minds and companies in Internet industry. This event will exhibit the latest products and services in E-commerce, connectivity and hosting, content management and social media. If you are into marketing and online business, this definitely is an event to watch out for.

Now on its 20th year, Internet World is now Europe's largest event for digital business. Facebook, one of the most successful entity in online business, is set to grace this event and will even conduct a key note presentation and workshops. This will surely make this event a great opportunity for the heads of different advertising companies and online marketing to come together in achieving their business objectives.

This event will conduct educational forums, seminars, conferences and other activities participated by industries authorities and experts. Visitors from all over the world will join this event to know more about the innovation and latest updates about strategies for marketing and online business.

Internet World will surely equip the people in this industry the education, suppliers and network  that is essential in implementing digital business. Being an entrepreneur in the 21st century is a really  challenging endeavor. This kind of event will bring confidence to medium and large enterprises to engage and further develop their business.

Come and get the must sought after information from the brightest minds in the industry today!

 
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Keynote speakers at the London trade show; Click on the image to enlarge
We're nowhere halfway 2012 but it looks like something electrifying is in the air. The excitement is culpable in London where the Olympics is up. Another good thing to be held there is the upcoming Internet World 2012.

If you must know, Internet World is Europe's largest event for digital business and its 20th yearly event will take place in London on the 24th of this month.

It will be interesting to see new trends and forecasts for online deal websites and other e-commerce portals.

Is your business already registered?
 
Congrats to all companies who participated in the recently concluded Ad:Tech Sydney Digital Marketing Show 2012. Once again the leading event for the digital marketing and advertising community in Australia and New Zealand showcased great innovation.

A lot of renowned companies as well as new comer in the tech and digital industry shared their new technology and services. To name a few:

    -      EA SPORTS
    -      Commonwealth Bank of Australia
    -      WakaNetwork
    -      Forrester Research
    -      Vodafone Hutchinson
    -      Citi
    -      NOKIA
    -      Google Australia & New Zealand
    -      Samsung
    -      Deals Direct
    -      Canon Australia
    -      LinkedIn
    -      The Nielsen Company   

See you all tech enthusiast to AdTech’s next stop which will be in Melbourne, Australia this coming March 28 and 29, 2012.

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In my previous post Putting A Cap On Vouchers, I stressed how important it is to limit the number of deals to run. It will help local merchants not to get caught up with high potential loss in running a daily deal.

As I surf the net today, I stumbled upon this very interesting and informative case study and a guide to making daily deals work for your business. Author Emily (of dealupa.com) emphasized 4 must-have elements to designing a profitable deal: (read from original source)
  1. Expiration Date – Set the last day of your deal to a slow day...
  2. Quantity – Know the capacity limits of your business...
  3. Price – Determine the minimum price to cover cost...
  4. Terms/ Restrictions – Offer deal for new customers only...

The Dealupa.com author also added a case study wherein she laid out a sample computation to have a profitable deal offer as well as deal offer with high potential loss. Check it below:

How to price: (read from original source )
COGS - Cost of Goods Sold
ACS - Average Customer Spend

1. Offer Price - COGS > $0  or
2. ACS - Value of Offer + Price > COGS

Maximize Overspend:
Rules:
1. Overspend = ACS - Value of Offer
2. Value of Offer < ACS

Know Your Capacity:
%Utilization = X%, Customers/month = Y
Rules:
1. Quantity Available (per month) < Y/X
2. Cap on Offer = (Y/X) * (#of MOnths)


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With so many deals being tossed around online, it's hard to spot which one is the real or the fake bargain. Worse, you never know which bargain is coming from a good source.

Here are some typical Red Flags that you should watch out for when confronted with a too good-to-be-true deal:

1) Merchandise or product has no image

2) Product's serial # (if any) matches that of a stolen good posted online

3) No contact information of the source of the bargain, only email account

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Have you ever heard of the term extreme couponers? They are coupon-loving customers who pair coupons and sales to clear off store shelves. They are not actually not good for business that's why some stores have tightened their policies on entertaining coupons to put a stop to the extreme shopping behavior.

If you can't relate a bit to that information, it only means that you're not yet into the coupon shopping bandwagon. It can be good or bad, depending on how you see shopping for value. The more important matter if you plan of embarking on using coupons online is the credibility of the coupon website.
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_Below are the Top 7 Coupon Websites I'm recommending to you:
1) Coupons.com
2) Facebook Coupons
3) Coupon Network by Catalina
4) DealNews
5) DropDownDeals
6) Waka Network Online Deals
7) RetailMeNot

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_I got a friend who runs a small business in Houston who ran a deal in one of the big deal sites recently. Everything went well. He did not expect unimaginable profit but he did gain more customers which was his intention to begin with.

Running A Deal

The only mishap he encountered was not putting a cap on the number of vouchers he originally wanted sold. It was a good thing that he fixed the problem with the website's merchant assistance program. He followed my advice to put the information in writing and with proof on the deal site's system.

Lessons Learned

Selling a tremendous number of vouchers may seem exciting in the beginning but if you have a small business with very few employees, you may soon find yourself bombarded with customers you can’t possibly handle. Worse, over selling vouchers is a sure way to put unnecessary financial stress on your business.

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Got deals. But do you have reviews?
_The significance of reviews on Google Local pages has increased with Google no longer pulling in reviews from Yelp and other third-party sites. If you must know, product or service reviews are just one of the many factors that affect Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings. The secret is in getting many reviews -- good ones hopefully -- that can let your business stand out.
 
Where To Get Reviews
 
It's usually disgruntled customers who leave honest reviews, but there are still mild-mannered opinions about the product or service that you can find online. It won't help that you have many reviews but 80% are pointing out your merchandise flaws.

A strategy to help make your product deal matter online is to send a message to your Facebook fans or email list and ask them to leave a review at your Google Place page.

Also, try sending out follow up or reminder postcards with a call-to-action to review your business. Present it as a link asking for a review on your web site.
Or you can display a sign by your cash register or hand them a flier with their receipt asking for a review.

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_It's that time of the year for filing tax computations. A good deal I spotted over Dealster shows a service with a low price of just $39 ($119 in value that include both personnel and small business packages).

The company is Comp-U-Tax and I rummaged online to find good reviews about the company, so you're in good hands with these guys on board.  If you don't have your W2(s) by now, Comp-U-Tax promises that the W2(s) from last year should be arriving in your mail box soon. They have a simple online form with Live Email, Chat, and Phone Support. Check the deal here.

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