For improving your brand awareness, Groupon leverages the power of group buying and many companies have taken advantage of its location based offers and promotions.
There is much debate over how effective Groupon is for companies in the long term. Consumers who use Groupon tend to be bargain hunters who will use the product/service once and move on to the next company who offers a good deal – difficult to brand build.
However, the advantage of Groupon is that it gets your brand out there. The deals are relevant to consumers in that specific area allowing the company to build a database of customers, followers on Twitter etc. for future promotion. It also gives companies the opportunity to increase revenue when the consumer comes to their premises by upselling/link selling their products and services.
It is clear Groupon is effective in the short term and in order to make it worthwhile in the long term it is crucial to use the database correctly.
One word of caution we would recommend to clients – use Groupon sparingly, as it doesn’t do much for high level brands.