
Subscriber lists increase when customers share their finds with friends, and many sites encourage the process by offering incentives to users who convince friends to make purchases. The generally lower pricing of Facebook ads makes this platform a popular choice for companies looking to grow their lists of subscribers in new or forthcoming cities.Ĭall it group buying or social commerce, but most daily deal sites are either made or delayed based on the activity of their users. Many Groupon clones rely heavily on paid advertising to generate site traffic, and the market for keywords isn't cheap in regions heavily saturated with daily deal sites.Īd platforms from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Pandora, and others allow refinements by geographic location, making it possible to set up hyper-local advertising in tandem with hyper-local deals. While each city-specific page within Groupon shares the same content and meta information (with the exception of the city name itself and all relevant coupon details), other companies - especially those that don't have the extensive location directory that Groupon boasts - can stand out by placing a greater focus on ranking their sites for relevant city-specific search terms.Īs AdAge published in September, LivingSocial spent $2.29 million in one month on advertising through Google. For Groupon, more than 100 of those pages are the main entry for a city, like However, very little customization has been performed on the city level to rank these pages for location-focused searches. Groupon has 32,000+ pages indexed in Google, and LivingSocial has more than 40,000. While LivingSocial and Groupon get a lot of attention for the amount they spend on online advertising, a carefully executed organic search strategy could help young or small daily deal sites acquire traffic within their target markets. What's the best way to describe your new daily deal, one deal a day, or social shopping site? For many, the words that convey the most meaning are, "Like Groupon." So if you're a Groupon clone, what is your online marketing strategy?

In the battle of nomenclature, Groupon may have already won. Having already achieved levels of success, Groupon and LivingSocial rely heavily on user discovery, communication, and online advertising to push their brands and names further into the market.
