Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Groupon has made significant waves in the online marketing, advertising, and promotion industry. While online SEO, PPC, and social media strategies are all helpful in trying to entice potential customers to simply view your business, Groupon gets them to reach right into their pocketbook and hand over the money.

To give you a brief overview, Groupon is a company where people in major cities across the US join up to receive notices of great deals, usually at substantial discounts. When they receive a notice of a deal each day, they have a limited time to buy. You get to name the minimum number of Groupons you wish to sell in order to make it profitable. Through social media and sharing with friends and family, your Groupon can reach hundreds even thousands of local buyers that otherwise may not get your marketing message.

While 97% of Groupon merchants want to get their marketing message through their system again, what does it really take to make Groupon successful for your small business?

Prepare Your Inventory

There is nothing worse than offering a great deal and being totally unprepared to handle the extra sales. Some small businesses experience an increase in sales tenfold due to the power of the Groupon social aspect. If you want to submit a deal to Groupon, do your best to forecast and prepare your business to handle the sudden and sharp increase in business.

Prepare Your Employees

Your employees will never forgive you if you don't let them in on the Groupon deal. When suddenly a business gets hundreds of new customers or thousands of calls out of the blue, the staff should be well prepared to know the deal, greet customers, and even work extra hours to handle the calls.

Determine the Proper Price Point

This is important for your profitability. If you give a $25 Groupon for $50 worth of merchandise at your store, but the average sales are only $30 - $40, your customers aren't getting the full deal, and you are not making any extra money.

One of the strategies to a Groupon monetary deal is to get customers to come in and spend more than they already paid for. For instance, say in the above Groupon scenario, your prices actually create average sales of about $75. That means on average, a Groupon patron paid $25 to buy $50 worth of goods, but pays you an extra $25 directly. They still only pay $50 on a total value of $75, so both the customer and you win on the deal.

Engage and Follow Up With New Customers

One important detail that many small business owners fail to do is follow up with those customers who redeemed a Groupon to your business. Without this strategy, most Groupon customers are a one-time-only phenomenon.

You must make the effort to retain your Groupon redeemers so they become repeat customers. Groupon gives you a way to track those who take part in each deal. Use that information so you can welcome a customer to your store. Thank them, make them feel at home, and welcome them to come back.

Do your best to obtain contact information so you can send follow up messages to get their feedback, as well as even allow you to offer another incentive to return.

Learn to Limit Your Deal

A Groupon may be a great way to drum up some extra business. But what if your main goal is to increase the customer base at a new store location? Or perhaps try to sell certain products deemed "slow movers" at a particular location?

You can work with Groupon sales to create the deal with specific parameters. You might offer a 50% off Groupon for your restaurant, but only at certain locations. Or you may offer a half-off Groupon to your mattress store good for only the surplus of last year's Serta mattresses.

Groupon has many small business success stories. Log on to their site for merchants at www.grouponworks.com and read a few case studies. Watch their helpful videos. If you think Groupon could benefit your small business, give them a try. Even if you break even on a Groupon deal, you can still come out ahead with an increased customer base and exposure.

Your small business needs a company logo. Whether it includes spiffy graphic depends on your taste, but the font of your company name is vitally important to reflect your business values, professionalism, and marketing effectiveness.

What are the font classes and usage guidelines for creating an effective logo?

Font Classes

• Serif Fonts - Serifs are the little "tails" or "feet" that help add flair to a font or typeface. These are traditional fonts and are typically used in financial or other conservative industries for logos.  Serif fonts include the popular Times or Times Roman, Garamond, or Courier.
• Sans Serif Fonts - These fonts are more modern and clean and add a friendlier element to a company name logo. Serif fonts do not have the little feet or tails, and they include fonts such as Ariel, Tahoma, or Verdana.
• Script Fonts - These fonts are more flowing and calligraphic in style. Script fonts look more like a handwritten cursive and are used more in creative industries for logos.
• Display Fonts - Display fonts are usually more decorative and unique. Movie poster fonts are usually display fonts. Think Goonies or Jurassic Park. These are also used in more creative industries or for businesses who want to create their own unique look.

Font Usage Guidelines

What makes a font the right one for your business logo? Here are a few things to consider:

• Make it easy to read - Most importantly, you want customers and readers to easily understand the font. Don't get too creative and make your logo unreadable for the sake of a unique or decorative font. If you're uncertain how the font will be interpreted by your target audience, stick with a serif or sans-serif font.
• Stick with industry standards - If you are in a type of industry that typically uses a certain type of font, use what works. As mentioned, serif fonts are traditionally used in banking, finance, or other conservative industries. Cool and crazy fonts can be more liberal with creative industries like architecture, graphic design, or web design.
• Don't use copyrighted fonts - Be sure that you don't steal a copyrighted font. For example, Disney or McDonalds each uses a distinguishable and recognizable font. Don't get caught using a font that could easily cost you money in litigation fees.

Your font style speaks volumes about your company, and choosing the right style can ensure you make the perfect first impression.

There is no need to lecture or explain the necessity for utilizing social media marketing for any small business. While it's easy to set up small business accounts on multiple social media sites, most small business owners do not have the strategy tools necessary to make the most of those accounts.

Although there are many possible strategies that may be useful for your business to use online, we bring you 6 of the ones we feel may be most useful for small business owners.

1. Draw Traffic Back To Your Blog/Website

   One of your overall goals with online marketing should be to increase traffic to your website or blog. If you have a company blog, that should be your "Grand Central Station" for posting detailed and updated information.

   Using your social media accounts, you can simply post teasers such as "Read how [your company] made this customer's day" and include a link back to your blog. A short post on social media accounts can contain more detail like, "Big Sale This Weekend - 50% Off!" and include the link so interested customers can read more details on your blog.

   Of course, if you don't maintain a blog, use a link to your business website.

2. Use Tools for Automatic Scheduling and Updating

   Who has time to update every single social media account multiple times a day? Thankfully, there are tools you can use to help you write down a list of updates at one time and schedule them for posting later.

   Seesmic is a helpful tool that can be used on desktop computers and mobile devices. Write your posts and schedule them to publish later on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Flickr, Foursquare accounts, and others.

   Hootsuite is another online social media dashboard that helps you manage multiple social media accounts, and view statistical results.

   TweetDeck is a downloadable app that is its own browser for managing updates and contacts across multiple social media sites.

3. Vary Your Posts

   While you should be posting often to your social media accounts, your updates/tweets/posts should not all have the same tone or information. If every time you updated you simply wrote, "blog update (with link)", your followers would soon be weary of such monotonous posts.

   While it's acceptable to post simple backlinks occasionally, it's always a good idea to include posts with links to pertinent YouTube videos, or even photos, or even posts without links at all. Consider an occasional post simply stating, "Loving this day!", or "I heart my customers!" This gives your social media account the attention it deserves, plus it adds a touch of human element, rather than a robot-like statement.

4. LinkedIn Strategies

   Your LinkedIn account can gain more credibility when others "recommend" you. It's easy to do, and all you have to do is ask. Also, consider connecting with other similar small businesses on LinkedIn groups. Get involved with conversation and chatter.

5. Upload Photos

   Your social media account "icons" should be a thumbnail of your business logo. Use your own headshot if you are the sole proprietor professional like an accountant or attorney.

   In addition, don't hesitate to upload photos of your facility or events onto Facebook, or share them on Twitter via Twitpic. Photos will help give your business a much more professional appearance and help you become more trustworthy to your followers.

6. Engage Discussion

   One easy strategy to help gain new followers and retain the ones you have is to engage discussion and encourage conversation. For instance, say you own an ice cream shop. On Facebook, you might post an update asking a question like, "How do you beat the summer heat?". Get your followers engaged. The undercurrent, of course, is to stimulate them to think of your business when they are ready to cool down with a cone at your shop.

   Or start a conversation on Twitter using words or phrases preceded by the hashtag "#". Encourage other to retweet your posts.

   And most of all, encourage followers, fans, friends, etc., to all join you on your blog and comment on your posts. You may be surprised at some of the discussions, and be sure to monitor discussions to keep them civil and friendly.