Social buying – also known as daily deals – is a concept that has recently seen very large growth in the Australian market. Social buying refers to services such as Scoopon, Groupon, LivingSocial, Cudo and numerous others that offer discounts on products and services. The goal of using these companies is quite simple; they are not aimed at making profit, but to gain return customers and increase brand visibility. Whilst each individual company will have a different strategy, in general they are free to use – however make a profit through a commission on each of these sales.

The benefit of utilising these services go further than increased brand visibility. A social buying website will create a complete online marketing campaign for the product or service that you choose to discount, and these campaigns usually run for between 1 and 3 months. This at minimum includes a custom tailored email marketing campaign, search engine optimisation benefits and a near guarantee of increased business in the short and long term.

 Key Features:

  • The service you provide must be at a discount of between 50% – 90% of the original price.
  • Their commission is a maximum of 50% of this discounted price per sale.
  • There is an average of 200 – 400 purchases of each sale.
  • An average of 20% – 40% of customers gained from the deal return.

Benefits:

  • Full online marketing campaign, including email campaign and search engine optimisation. They provide copywriter and graphic design services no extra charge.
  • Flexible payment plans – choose whether to get installments throughout the campaign or a lump sum at the end.
  • Highly localised advertising.
  • Full analytics suite – learn customer demographics, trends and get feedback.
  • All customer inquiries dealt with by the service.
  • Very large existing customer base.

Negatives:

  • These sites aren’t aimed at making your business a profit – their sole purpose is to generate return customers and increase brand visibility through their extensive customer databases.
  • You must apply to and be selected by to be used by one of these companies, which can be a slow process.
  • In general only one of these services can be used at any one time.

Should You Consider Using a Social Buying Service?

A social buying service is unmatched for generating fast and consistent leads – your brand and services are opened to a huge new market. If you can offer a service that has very low overhead costs to your business, it is also possible to generate a profit from these, however in most situations, it is likely that it will be financially loss making in the short term. The ideal situation to use these companies is to introduce new products or services to the market, and if your business needs a quick and significant customer boost.