A few of our customers have been trying out a relatively new form of advertising and digital promotion lately. A website called Groupon offers a way to reach more people than you would ever think possible – especially during a ONE DAY promotion! Here’s how it works:

• You offer a coupon or a discount on your goods or services
• Groupon offers this coupon on their website for an entire day in your location (usually the closest city or regional area)
• Once your pre-established limit of people have purchased your coupon, the deal is “on” and everyone will receive that coupon
• You get 1/2 the coupon price. So let’s say your normal rate is $100/hour. You offer a coupon for $50/hour – you get half that and Groupon gets the other half ($25 for you, $25 for Groupon).
• Customers usually have a one year expiration on the coupon.

So what is the benefit of offering such a reduced price for your services? First, you get exposure. The users on Groupon may have NEVER heard about you before – they may not even be golfers. But if the deal is good enough, you just might have helped the game of golf by enticing them to want to learn how to play and introduce a new person to the game. So your brand awareness goes straight up. Second, you bring more people into your doors. More people means more repeat business, more residual sales (maybe they buy lunch at your club after the lesson), and you get a chance to show off your skills, talent and facilities. They now want to tell their friends about the great lesson they just had – a little word of mouth advertising, anyone? Third, a statistic on the amount of people that actually redeem their coupons is around 40% – this means that you won’t be inundated with a ton of lessons at once and you won’t really be losing that much money. From all the repeat lessons you could get you’ll definitely make up for the discount you gave.

Some real world examples:

Brian Ondrako, a PGA Teaching Professional in Raleigh, North Carolina used Groupon last year and had an overwhelming 300 people purchase his coupon for 50% off his hour lesson rate. After the promotion, his lesson package sales went up by 30%. He saw more people come through the doors of his driving range and purchase merchandise, food and beverage, and range balls.

Mike Mueller, a PGA Teaching Professional in Kansas used the website, livingsocial.com to do the same thing. Livingsocial.com is very similar to Groupon in that it offers one-day deals to geo-specific areas. The website traffic that incurred from his deal was enormous – over 300 unique visitors in a 24 hour period.

Brendon Elliottt, head professional at Winter Park GC, offered a Groupon deal for greens fees at his golf course. They sold over 400 coupons and saw a dramatic rise in play at his club. The resulting residual sales was terrific.

One more great benefit to offering a deal on Groupon or LivingSocial.com is the amount of traffic that your website will generate! The more people that come to your website, the more they find out about your business and what you have to offer.

If you have any questions on how to get a deal like this up and running, give us a call, comment, tweet, facebook message, or email!