How to do better than Groupon in building local advertising market share

 
 

Sent to you by khalil via Google Reader:

 
 

via OJR on 12/22/10

By Robert Niles: This year's hottest buzzword in online news publishing - on the business side - has been Groupon. Business managers at start-ups and legacy media websites alike have been pushing the concept of "group coupon" services, such as Groupon's, as the next great potential savior for publishing online. Personally, I don't think online publishing needs a savior. Despite what some folks at journalism conferences might have you believe, online news publishing is doing just fine, thank you. Newspaper companies might be missing their fat, monopoly-era profit margins but plenty of smaller publishers have found ways to stay in the black. That said, every one of us would like to find new sources of revenue for our publications. That's why so many of us are taking a long look at Groupon and similar services. Now, I've only used Groupon as a consumer, not as an advertiser nor as a publisher. But, based on my experience as a consumer, here are a few ways that I believe an entrepreneur could improve upon Groupon. Better targeting I don't drink, so every Groupon offer I get for discount wine, beer and bar drink specials goes straight into my trash folder. Why waste the bandwidth sending this stuff to me? Many consumers click the link to unsubscribe if they get too many of these badly matched offers, reducing the market pool for the service. Sure, Groupon's got millions of users and won't miss those who opt out because they don't want stuff such as liquor deals. But if you're trying to compete with Groupon, this is an area where you can do better.

 
 

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