How do you deal with your customers? This isn’t a question of how well you reach out to your brand or whether or not you have good rapport. While both are key, we want to know how you wheel-and-deal with your market. Since the advent of mobile-based bargaining, everyone wants to check-in to get a great deal. Do they check-in to your business? If so, what kind of incentives do you offer to keep them checking-in?
To see how competitive brands *deal* with their target audiences, let’s look at geolocation-based bargain hunting. Groupon and Google are helping the hospitality industry find ways to bring incentives to the social+local+mobile “solomo” marketplace.
Groupon is a popular location-focused web portal that connects consumers to products and services offered for a limited time (usually for one day) and at a 50 to 90% discount.
Not only does Groupon’s email-subscriber offers yield fast results and more revenue, they build brand value through a unique deal-sharing model. Subscribers can forward Tweet or Facebook the offer so their friends can signup and get in on the action, as well.
Today, for example, Elite Brights’ of Baytown, Texas offers a discount to Groupon subscribers in cities throughout North America on its teeth-whitening product. Smiles, of course, are meant to be shared, and the ambitious campaign counts on that happening.
What will change the hospitality niche is Groupon Getaways. This new service partners Groupon’s amazing deal-communication model with Expedia.com’s travel agency. With Groupon and Expedia partnered, tourism brands are beginning to launch daily deals.
Want to learn more about how major brands navigate the emerging social+local+mobile marketplace? Check out Geo-Loco Conference on November 3rd in San Francisco.
Similarly, Google will soon launch its travel-bargain search service. Unlike the daily deals of Groupon, Google will return travel and hospitality queries with the best choices to help plan a more affordable and most enjoyable holiday escape.
How about once your target market of tourists arrives to their vacation destination? Tourists have a number of options to explore and check-in via their mobiles. Engage with restaurants by using UrbanSpoon. Follow along on the tour with HearPlanet. Share—and view—the latest travel pics via Tweetie. National Geographic Adventure explains.
This means that travel and hospitality businesses must remain competitive, simply because the all-seeing eyes of Google will know (and tell) when these businesses don’t have the best deals in town or the best deals in the world. Talk about social pressure.
Note: Facebook Deals is currently testing its product in select cities. Read more.
With this in mind, you can imagine how far we’ve come from classic daily-deal sites like Woot.com. Daily deals that have geolocation-based component are more likely to be shared because usually the people that you interact with most are in the same city.
Read more about Groupon Getaways and Google’s travel search service. Think about ways you can turn your deals into offers that spread around local markets like wildfire.
