by Pat Kitano on March 24, 2011 in Breaking News, Hyperlocal, Local advertising, Real Estate, Social Commerce, Trends
Groupon-like deals can work for real estate, but not as a typical $10 for $20 worth of product purchase. Real estate can’t be sold as a 30% off purchase price item (although they certainly tried variations of this at California real estate investment clubs in 2005). Real estate marketing has generally relied on variations of [...]
by Pat Kitano on March 19, 2011 in Hyperlocal, Local advertising, Social Commerce, Trends
On Media Transparent last October, I explored the idea of real time deals, which requires consumption of a daily deal within a limited time frame. Merchants with perishable products – seats at a restaurant, theaters, hotel rooms, airlines – want a deals system that quickly and efficiently fills excess inventory, especially at a moment’s notice. [...]
by Pat Kitano on February 12, 2011 in Advertising, Hyperlocal, Social Commerce, Trends
In this age of Groupon, consumers are ostensibly looking for and testing new business relationships with coupons. Price has become a commodity, and now local merchants need to distinguish themselves based on service in order to build and maintain a loyal customer base. I myself have been witnessing a vast sea change on how banks, [...]
by MarkArmitage on February 1, 2011 in Social Commerce
This article is posted by Mark Armitage, Director of Marketing Communications for Socialshopping.com. You’ll find his contact details at the bottom of the post. Following their much-publicized (and ultimately unsuccessful) $6 billion bid to buy Groupon in November of last year, keen observers of the social commerce space anticipated that it was only a matter [...]
by Pat Kitano on January 24, 2011 in Advertising, Local advertising, Social Commerce, Trends
Before Groupon, the local advertising dollar was spent primarily on local media – newspapers, TV and radio – and the well documented stagnation in media ad revenues put a lid on employment opportunities for local sales reps. Groupon, with its Daily Deals, essentially spawned a brand new local ad channel in 2010. Here are five [...]
by Pat Kitano on December 29, 2010 in Advertising, Hyperlocal, Local advertising, Social Commerce, Social Media, Trends
Yesterday’s news of Groupon’s massive $950 million financing round wasn’t unexpected, and just confirms their intent to build a sales army to dominate SMB business in the same way Yellow Pages held sway over local advertisers in the 20th Century. Morgan Brown explains the new Groupon strategy well: Groupon knows that in order to grow [...]
by Pat Kitano on December 8, 2010 in Social Commerce, Uncategorized
With Groupon currently the poster child for social commerce, there’s a lack of true social interactions in the current nascent state of social commerce beyond “sharing” the deal with your buds. The group buying concept is essentially another ploy to get folks to buy something in the traditional e-commerce sense. How do deals become social? [...]
by Pat Kitano on December 1, 2010 in Advertising, Hyperlocal, Local advertising, Slideshows, Social Commerce, Trends
The next phase of Group Buying Systems View more presentations from Pat Kitano. Groupon announced its new Deal Feed that allows consumer to customize and monitor and filter the types of deals and merchants they want to track. The Deal Feed works in coordination with the new Groupon Stores product so that consumers can “follow” [...]
by Pat Kitano on November 4, 2010 in Advertising, Hyperlocal, Local advertising, Mass Media, Social Media, Trends
Facebook announced yesterday that businesses can add deals and rewards for their customers who check in through Facebook Places. The impact on local advertising is huge: 1. Deals will be everywhere The “Deal” becomes the currency of local advertising because it is performance based, efficient for reaching the customer and isn’t burdened with the CPM-based [...]
by Pat Kitano on September 19, 2010 in Advertising, Hyperlocal, Local advertising, Social Media, Trends
The recent mainstream media articles demonstrating evidence of Groupon’s shortcomings (including last week’s article) are focused on the consequences of its massive distribution capabilities and non-local presence. First there was the dodgy fake deals in Brazil, then there was a business owner saying offering a Groupon deal was the worst business decision she ever made, [...]