Get It While Its Hot -- GROUPON for Horse Businesses
Elisabeth McMillan
Today's tip is about a phenomenon I've been keeping an eye on for awhile now. Its called GROUPON and it is an advertising/social media hybrid that has been delivering huge results for many mainstream businesses -especially restaurants and retail stores.
However, I've been waiting to mention it because I wasn't sure how well it would work for niche businesses - i.e. horse businesses. So I've been hoping a niche service business to try it so I could see if it might work for a riding school program etc..
Well guess what? Today we got lucky! I got an email from GROUPON advertising riding lessons. So I clicked the ad to see how it was doing. Wow - they had already sold 131 lessons. It worked and - It is ON!
The basics of how Groupon works -
Businesses offer a discount to customers that is only good if a certain number of people buy it. GROUPON promotes your offer to a huge email/social media list and takes a percentage of the deal. Customers buy your product or service through GROUPON. GROUPON then sends you a check with in 24 hours of running the special and a list of the people who purchased it.
Upside: Lots of promotion! Hopefully you can turn your discounted lessons peeps into long term customers!
Downside: You may have a lot of cheap lessons to give! These could clog up your schedule. Be prepared! Also - be sure you have time to participate in the GROUPON discussion forum for your ad - people ask questions and expect a response.
Tips: View the "newbies" as contacts not customers. Then, prepare to turn a portion of these new contacts into customers. Have your marketing materials ready! i.e. Lesson Packages, Brochures etc.. Be ready to sell! And be sure to get contact information so that you can follow up with everyone whether they buy a package or not!
I realize, not all of you teach lessons and GROUPON is probably not a good fit for selling horses or getting boarding clients but it certainly should be considered when promoting a lesson program, Mommy, Pony and Me programs and/or camps. (It might even work well for an event - hmmm I actually have a few ideas forming here that could work for boarding stables, breeders and racehorse trainers but well....we'll cover them at a later date). In the meantime I do recommend you all learn more about GROUPON.
Check out the email I got - I hope this link is still live when you receive this.
Learn more about GROUPON
Update: As of 6:00 pm they have sold 341 lessons. The offer will stay live for 2 days more and it will be interesting to see what their total sales are. We've done a bit more investigating into GROUPON and it appears that they charge between a 25% - 50% commission. LivingSocial is another coupon company that has a similar program.
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