Groupon is one of the fasted growing companies in the US; so big it just recently turned down a $6 billion dollar acquisition deal from Google.  It has done more than well for itself by helping small businesses build their customer base through email marketing.

If you wanted to try Groupon, you would agree to discount your product or service 50% and allow them to write up copy and distribute locally targeted emails using their massive database (40 million plus).  You have the ability to specify when the deal will go into effect based on how many buys you want before you will honor it.  In addition you can cap the buys to ensure you don’t end up with more business that you can handle at once.

After the Groupon is complete you benefit from the exposure and new buying customers, but when all is said and done, you earn only 25% of your original sale price.  To illustrate, say you own a massage clinic and you normally sell 20 massages for $1,500 ($75 each); you spend $1125 in discounts and Groupon services, and you will end up with $375 in your pocket.  One can make a case to defend this discount and revenue shortage but is there an even better way? 

How can you do it better?

How can you keep more of your money, reach the same amount of people, and not seem desperate?  Hire a marketing company (Plug: Calo Marketing & Design: www.calomarketing.com) that can write the copy for you and supply you with a database of prospects that have opted-in for email deals.

In addition you will receive ALL of the sign-ups versus just those that bought before the cap was met.  Possibly the most valuable benefit of creating your own Groupon is that you can then use the resources of the same marketing company to help keep those new and existing customers coming back.

Take the same scenario as above using a marketing firm and you will spend around $649 in discounts, copy writing, and distribution, and you get to put $851 in your pocket.  That’s 44% more profit than with Groupon!