I feel like a Groupon (deal of the day site) failure. I tried out Groupon as a merchant. I’m the “side deal” in Orange County, CA from today (Monday) through Sunday. Groupon supposedly has 125,000 people in their mailing list for Orange County.
So, the deal went live around midnight California time, the email went out, and it’s now 6:30PM in California. The main deal (for a spa) has sold 428 and I’ve sold 4. That’s F-O-U-R. The spa has sold over 100 for every one of mine.
Now granted, there are still six days left, and I am the side deal, but only four sales - really?
Part of it is that I am just embarrassed. I’ve been stressing out about this for weeks, wondering if I’ll be able to cope with the influx of telephone calls and orders. This is a family business, and I was trying to figure out if we needed someone else to deal with pre-sales calls. I cleared the whole day in anticipation and made sure all hands were on deck.
Want to know how many calls I got as a result of this? One. Uno. One measly phone call. Now they were excited about the product and wanted to talk to their family before they purchased it for their mother, but still - what a let down.
I’m sure some people are waiting, and I’ll get more orders as the week progresses, and I realize I have a specialty product, but still - I’ve got to think that four orders after 18 hours on Groupon is some kind of low.
I’m not even getting that much traffic from Groupon - I’ve gotten 43 visits from Groupon.com so far. I’ve gotten more in the same amount of time just from people doing Google searches.
Anyway - I just wanted to vent/share. It’ll be a long week in anticipation…
Um sorry, I don’t know how to tell you this gently. This can’t possibly appeal to anyone under the age of 35. It holds little appeal for those even…under 45, I’d reckon.
Every wedding I’ve been to in the past 6 years has had some cd/powerpoint/multimedia presentation. And it was always put together by a friend or family member. For free.
Your thing is also very specific. Only voice recordings, right? Perhaps you should have offered a variety of deals, as in “$25 gets you this or $20 gets you this”. Also, your descriptions weren’t powerful, you didn’t state “for weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries, and family reunions”. Or “send your far away relatives the sound of your voice”. I had to reread the thing twice, and most people will lose interest before that. You really need to create a message for people; be the creativity they aren’t. Put images and ideas in their head.
Plus you’re at a disadvantage, in that Groupon is mostly popular for restaurant and spa coupons.
Hi - thanks for the comments.
With regards to the descriptions not being compelling, were you referring to the Groupon site, my website, or both? I agree that the Groupon description wasn’t very compelling, but I don’t have control over that. They write the copy, and I can only recommend changes if there are inaccuracies.
For my web site, I have dedicated landing pages for Bar Mitzvah’s, Mother’s day, etc. I used to have a section off the home page that talked about all the uses, and maybe I should reprise that…
Thanks for the comments.
I’m afraid I concur with the previous comment – and you have to realize that Groupon is geared more towards the 20- and 30-something crowd so your demographic may not even be seeing the deal.
I think you’d be better off buying ad space on marriage or celebration cites, really.
I don’t find the product appealing. The idea of having only audio messages seems… um… kind of stupid? I’m 35, and when I read the description, I think:
a) 1997 called, they want their idea back.
b) I could do that myself in 10 minutes using Google Voice
c) $50?? For reals???
I’m not trying to be mean – as painful as this is, take it as a marketing wake up call. You have learned that your target market and Groupon do not have much overlap. Who buys your product, why do they buy it, and where can you find more of them? Until you can answer these questions, you’re just throwing spagetti at the wall in terms of promoting your product.
aaelghat, I was referring to the copy on the Groupon, not your site. It’s too bad they did it; the Pittsburgh ones always seem to be fairly good.
Expanding on what **Gukumatz **said, I bet you could do really well on Indian marriages. If they have the wedding in the US, all the relatives in India could call and record their blessings. If they have the marriage in India, all the US relatives could call and record as well. I don’t necessairly think you should advertise on shaadi.com (since everyone there is still looking, I think) but on sites where Indian brides and families that have someone engaged are in the planning stages.
Also, marketing in Florida (for all the seniors wishing to send their kids & grandkids,) might work but I dunno how you’d do that. You’re using the internet to market something geared towards older people, which might be the biggest problem so far.
15 sales now, it’s getting better.
That’s good news. You might be grateful if it doesn’t get wildly successful. There have been stories in the paper lately about businesses whose Groupon was TOO successful and they found themselves tied up for months giving discounted rates and nothing else, to the detriment of their business.