Would you like saving from 50 to 90% in restaurants, activities or products? Well, I do, and that is the reason I have signed up to get daily e-mails and alerts about the biggest savings in my city, Miami.
Living Social and Groupon are the two social-buying websites with a fantastic proposal. Both of them offer daily deals on handpicked experiences for incredible deep-discounted prices. The idea is to buy the deal you like and then share it with friends through the different social networks; if some of your contacts buy the same deal, you get yours cheaper or for free. How cool is that?
This is an excellent iniciative because not only saves people’s money but also gives the opportunity to new and small businesses to be known by locals. For example, in Miami there are so many cool things to do, but we might know half of those. With so many options, sometimes the easiest thing is to go to a familiar restaurant, or just stay at home and watch a movie. As a result, we miss out on trying all the cool things our city has to offer. Through these websites, you can know about them and spread the word about them.
For instance, through this websites, I have had the opportunity to go to new restaurants and do activities I did not even know were available to do in Miami. I have done kayaking, going on board on a 50-foot Catamaran to watch the sunset in Key Biscayne, saving 50% in restaurants and going to well-known festivals such as United Way Miami Wine and Food festival for half price.
The founders of these two companies realized the huge power that have e-marketing and the word-of-mouth through social networks. Social media is leading the biggest transformation in communication and advertising since e-mail. When using Facebook and Twitter, big corporations can tailored their message and business to specific geographic areas.The power of social media also gives to small businesses the chance to grow faster when people start commenting, recommending and talking about them on their social pages.
Basing a business in social networks is somewhat challenging because the easiness of using this tool brings more competitors into the game. For example, small business can imitate or enter the market with a business model like the ones Livingsocial and Groupon have. However, since the competition gets harder, people gets more creative and we can end up with such amazing proposals as the ones Livingsocial and Groupon are offering.
Social media brings both opportunities and threats to businesses, but no doubt those networks are transforming and building up new markets, communications, and small and big corporations.
We are all Livingsocial media.
http://livingsocial.com/about
http://www.groupon.com/about
http://e-marketingforsensiblefolk.blogspot.com/2011/03/groupongroupies.html
