Save up to 50-90% | Great for the consumer, but what about you (the vendor)
You may be asking yourself as an outdoor business owner whether or now you should be utilizing the daily deal websites for your business. Knowing how these sites work and knowing how to use it for your business can affect your company in big way.
Be Loyal
When a customer finds that you’re offering a trip for $150 when they just went fishing with you for $250, your client is not going to be happy. Make sure you’re prepared to handle clients that learn that you’re offering a discount. Communicate through email and on your website in order to keep the lines clear.
Don’t dilute your Brand
As soon as you start “giving away” your trips on a daily deal site for 30%-50% off, you’re clients will react. Most likely they will like it and book a trip. But this means that you just earned a client that will pay for your service when it’s discounted. Is this the client you want to attract?
Make sure you offer the same deal on your website that you’re offering on a daily deal site. Wrap this new price as a Limited Time Discount type deal so that clients know that they’re getting a special discount.
Run the Numbers
Are you’re losing money? STOP! No matter how much good exposure you’re getting in the world, it’s not worth losing money over it. We’ve heard that companies are setting there prices lower than their break-even price and are calling it “Marketing Dollars”. Good luck getting your customer to react nicely when you bring your prices back up.
Example deal we’ve seen: Fishing Trip is $150 for a half day trip and normally is $250. Then the deal site can take 50% or more for booking you that trip. So you’re left with $75. So you’re now looking at a $250 trip for $75. Can you afford that?
The truth of the matter is that you’re not going to see a huge increase of business directly from the daily deal websites. This doesn’t mean that you’re wasting your time though if you’re using them. They are great for filling time slots and gaining some market share but be aware of your brands exposure and try your best not to undersell yourself.
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We bring this up because our guides have been asking us if it’s worth it. Our team figured that we would try to shine some light on the question on our blog. Please feel free to reach out to us and ask any question you have for us. If we don’t know the answer we’ll find out who does.
