The New Hyperlocal Business Opportunities that Groupon spawns

Business Insider’s Evan Britton’s article How Entrepreneurs Can Cash-In On The Groupon Fad provides a glimpse of the future of hyperlocal marketing by listing five new opportunities inspired by Groupon. I’ll list these methods and expand on Mr. Britton’s list with concrete examples:

1. Create a blog.

The blog platform, particularly WordPress, is ideal for creating a customized website that can be leveraged as a community media resource to display and distribute daily deals. Only two industries create “hyperlocal” blogs – new journalism and real estate. New media companies like Patch.com and Examiner.com recruit locals to report on their community. Real estate professionals are beginning to understand that it’s more important to engage their community by providing community media and commentary instead of pushing real estate talk to an audience who is not listening to, or even cringing at their message.

2. Build a deals directory

Any web service that curates and organizes information can be called a directory. The proliferation of Daily Deals services needs a directory to find them. TheDealMap organizes and geolocates aggregated deals onto maps:

It’s simple to create ticker tapes of Daily Deals on Facebook to aggregate a community audience for deals:

3. Consult

Local advertising agencies will add coupon campaigns to their service portfolio. All these social media managers can add value to campaigns by delivering social media marketing solutions that enhance campaigns and create buzz.

4. Affiliate

Competition is fierce as Groupon clones proliferate in every city. Only Groupon, LivingSocial and few other couponing systems can finance and field national sales forces. The rest will need to work with local affiliate media partners in order to scale. It’s been well documented that local media needs revenue sources, and couponing fits as an affiliate advertising vehicle.

5. Start your own deal site

With all the Groupon clones, there’s no need to build your own couponing system. White label coupon systems – Adility and Wantsa are two – will enable local media companies and networks to develop coupon campaigns with their advertising clients. More interesting, both above companies also focus on providing a service to syndicate coupons across a network of media sites, so coupon campaigns can extend their reach through them.