Groupon and Living Social – how Belfast’s local businesses are cashing in on the trend.

Free advertising, incentives for customers to share offers, target marketing, huge boosts to cash flow, increased traffic to websites and ‘bricks and mortar’ premises... it’s easy to see why so many local businesses are taking advantage of daily deal sites.

Like most successful business ideas, the premise is quite simple. Daily deal websites, such as Groupon and Living Social, build a mailing list of customers who have signed up for news of discounts in their area. Each day the subscribers receive an email providing the details of the deals.  As the site becomes more popular with both clients and merchants, the range of services and goods increases and local businesses benefit from increased traffic to online and high-street stores.

Not only do businesses gain access to potential clients in their area, the advertising has a snowball effect, as subscribers are offered incentives to share the news with friends. The result is geographically-specific viral advertising that targets the most appropriate demographic without the high costs of a more traditional (less effective) marketing campaign.

For Paul Haslam, Creative Director of Belfast’s Web Bureau, these websites could prove highly beneficial to local businesses:

“Belfast-based companies could really benefit from the interest daily deal websites are generating locally. Online sales figures suggest a very buoyant market and websites such as Groupon help to carry some of that consumer interest from the internet into business premises. With high returns for small investment, they represent a very positive development for local companies, regardless of size.”

As more businesses in Belfast sign up with attractive deals, more customers are subscribing to the daily alerts to avoid missing out on the best offers. And with the severe weather warnings and stress about online purchases not arriving in time, discount vouchers are proving a popular choice this Christmas with the last-minute shopper!