The 5 Reasons Why Groupon Like Company's Are Bad For Your Restaurant

Anybody thats thinking of doing a groupon like coupon or feature for your restaurant. PLEASE READ THIS NOTE and understand the 5 problems you will encounter .
1) Deals are discounted 50% off retail price. Example $15 for $30 worth credit. Sounds great but we are giving 50% off of which groupon keeps half of the sale. Business owners are keeping 25% percent of what they normally make on any sale.
2) Attracts the wrong customers for your business. Most restaurants that have done these deals complain that the new customers are just out for the deal and will spend as little as possible to redeem the voucher. You will encounter lower tips and rarely will you turn them into good returning customers.
3)Too many customers to soon. The power of group buying can rally enormous numbers of people to your business. Its good to earn new sales, but the high traffic in a short period can be a recipe for disaster for a business thats not prepared. Man power issues, customers suffering with waiting times or food not coming out quickly. Results can effect your online ratings like yelp and word of mouth by unhappy customers is never good.
4) Lower profit margins, forget about making any profits from customers that buy the deal. Most businesses that feature these deals are lucky to break even. Remember your making 25% of what you normally take in.
5) No customer addresses gained. The single most important thing in the restaurant business is capturing your customers email address.
I agree with this article completely, as i have featured groupon with my restaurant and it was the worst marketing move i have ever done. Pleae understand the problems before you commit to these deals. I would like to point out that these deals are very helpful for companies (insurance, accountants etc) for gaining new clients.

thxs Jeff Killeen "phoenix arcadia business specialist"  Facebook link

Business Identity.. Who are you?

In many ways, your business is like a person. It has to have a personality, values and vision. You can dress a man or woman to look a certain part, however, it does not take long to find out that good looking person in the business attire knows what he or she is doing.The best part about dressing and playing the part. Eventually it becomes intergated into your personality.
I believe that having or building a solid brand is the key to longevity in any business. Based on my experience in the restaurant industry with many owners and operaters. A strong brand reflects the owners personality and vision. The most successful businesses i know or watch have long term vision and have a desire to produce something important and needed. The businesses that are out to make quick money come and go quickly. Businesses that love their vision and know there sense of purpose in their community are the successful survivors in these tough economic times.
Its often easy to lose our personality, vision and values in this fast paced world, when things are going fast and your working like a mad dog . Take time to sit back and answer these questions. Whats important to you? What kind of experience do you want your customers to have and take away with them? What are you known for? Whats your mark that you leave on your community around you?
In these tough times with upset americans and marches and economic woes, distrustful politicians. We can always ask these questions to ourselves and manifest them into our business and build something important , successful, rewarding to our community.
Thanks for following my page .
Jeff Killeen   Phoenix/Arcadia Business Specialist

Interenet Marketing Small Businesses

When doing internet marketing for small business, you have to run an even tighter and more planned campaign than if you were doing it for a large business. The smaller the business, it seems, the more tightly the plan should be. Large companies have a much larger advertising budget, so even if their online marketing strategies aren't very successful, traditional advertising can make a huge difference for them.

But smaller businesses typically don't have thousands of dollars to spend on the more common forms of advertising. Online marketing often becomes the main thrust of the marketing campaign, so it's necessary that it's done very well.

An advantage that small businesses can have over large corporations when it comes to marketing online is that they're more likely to have a very focused niche. While large companies have niches, too, sometimes larger companies market a variety of products and services over a very broad customer base. Then marketing each individual niche has to be a separate campaign.

When internet marketing for small business, you'll probably only have to worry about one very specific niche. You'll know exactly what your customers are looking for, and can focus on filling that need with every aspect of your marketing plan, instead of having to spread the campaign over several different groups of consumers.

Internet marketing for small business, because of the smaller budgets, often doesn't involve heavy pay-per-click advertising. The cost involved with PPC ads can end up being quite high with not necessarily a very big return. If you have a specific budget set up for PPC marketing, then by all mean use it, but monitor the returns very carefully so you can abandon keywords that aren't working and focus on those that bring in the customers.

Search engine optimization is an excellent method of internet marketing for small business. There can be expense involved if you pay a marketing expert or an SEO service to handle this branch of your marketing efforts, but the money spent will probably be well worth it. This is also where many small businesses fail.

They don't make sure their content is optimized for the search engines, so it's very difficult for someone to find them unless they're searching on the company name. People search for what they want, though, not the company that might have what they're looking for. So internet marketing for small business should always include a plan to get your website higher in the search engine rankings on the best keywords for your company.

Part of the search engine efforts should involve getting other websites to link to yours. Search engines don't just take keywords into account, but they also pay attention to a website's popularity with other sites. The more sites that link to yours, the more valuable your information is according to most search engines. These methods of internet marketing for small business can get a small company's website ranked well ahead of a corporation's, all while spending much less money on advertising.