Joe Says: “No longer is it only up to the Business owner (you) to say how they go about your marketing efforts. That decision now falls into the hands of the consumer… and their mobile phones! You have to take note and start using mobile today!”

Watch the video below to see what Google has to say about “The Mobile Movement”:

Mobile is Google’s #1 initiative:

In February 2010 Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that, “Google will consider ‘mobile first’ in all future endeavors.” In other words, anything Google creates from here on out will be first placed on the mobile platform and then be worked around for the desktop. He concluded by saying,.. “Mobile is pretty much the answer on everything.”

You may be wondering why everyone is hopping on the mobile marketing bandwagon…

This should help clear it up:

• Consumers are using their mobile devices to access the Internet more than ever before – and it’s expected to grow at astonishing rates over the next few years. If your business is not using mobile methods to attract customers, you are simply missing out on business.
• There are approximately just shy of 5 BILLION mobile subscribers across the world. This means that you can target pretty much anyone using mobile methods.

• Most mobile device users keep their phones within arm’s reach over 90 percent of the time. So if you use SMS Text Message Marketing, most of your messages will be opened and read by your recipients – usually within 15 mminutes. This leads to higher promotional redemption rates, which leads to more sales, which leads to more profits.
• Americans today are spending an average of three hours per day on the Internet from their mobile devices. Your business should have the proper mobile presence if you want to get a piece of this action.
• In 2009, approximately half a BILLION people went online using their mobile device. This number is expected to double within the next 5 years. It’s not too late to implement mobile marketing techniques in your business. This technology is still in its infancy and if you jump onboard now, your chance of success will be much greater.
• By 2013, mobile Internet usage is expected to exceed desktop Internet usage. This means that reaching your audience via mobile methods will be even more crucial if you want to beat your competition.
• According to Facebook official statistics from January 2011, more than 200 million Facebook users out of over 600 million (That’s approximately 1/3 of them) are using their mobile devices to access Facebook! The study also revealed that mobile Facebook users are twice as active as non-mobile users.

These facts indicate the serious impact that mobilizing your business will have on your sales, profits, and ROI over the coming months and years.

ARE YOU READY FOR THE MOBILE REVOLUTION?

See the full details here>

Joe Says: “As you can see the internet is making it easier for everyone to save. This is going to grow and grow and mobile marketing and SMS marketing is going to take over any other marketing methods. Ipad and Iphones are the way of the future”

Coupon clippers have taken over the checkout lines in record numbers…with record savings. But if you still think most coupon users have blue hair, you’re way off. With mobile and internet coupons gaining even more popularity discounted prices are a hot hobby across all ages and incomes, especially folks in their 20s and 30s. If you’ve been hiding your frugal habits, it’s time to let your lean lifestyle shine! Just how much of an influence do coupons have on the population at large? Check out the latest stats on coupon usage trends below.

1. 88.2 million consumers (47% of Internet users) plan on using online coupons in 2011
2. 92.5 million adult Internet users will use online coupons in 2012
3. 96.8 million adult Internet users will use online coupons in 2013
4. Every hour spent couponing in 2011 is worth an estimated $100
5. The average savings per coupon used was $1.44 in 2010
6. 74% of consumers search multiple coupon sources each week
7. 25% spend up to an hour shopping for the best online discount deals
8. 47% of respondents use more local deals and coupons than in 2010
9. Moms are roughly twice as likely to search for coupons online as other categories of women
10. 52% of coupon users spend more than 15 minutes per week searching for coupons
11. 25% of coupon users spend between 30 minutes and 60 minutes searching for coupons per week
12. $485 billion worth of coupons were distributed in 2010
13. 332 billion coupons were distributed in 2010, the most ever recorded in the U.S.
14. Consumers saved $3.7 billion using coupons in 2010
15. Distribution in 2010 exceeded 2009 by 6.8%, or 21 billion coupons
16. 87.7% of paper coupons were distributed in 2010 via newspaper inserts, for an increase of 19 billion coupons
17. Digital offers increased by 37% in 2010
18. The face value of coupons in 2010 increased 6.6%, to an average of $1.46 per coupon
19. 74% of coupons in 2010 required the purchase of one item and 26% the purchase of two or more items
20. The average coupon expired in 10.1 weeks in 2010, 10 days shorter than in 2009
21. Overall coupon redemption grew 3.1%, to 3.3 billion, in 2010
22. 78.3% of consumers reported using coupons regularly in 2010, up 14.7% from pre-recession levels
23. Consumer coupon use in 2010 added up to $3.7 billion in savings, an increase of $200 million over 2009

• Internet – 263%
• Direct Mail – 69%
• Magazine Pop-up – 51%
• Instant Redeemable – 48%
• Electronic Checkout – 39%
• Free-standing Insert – 36%
• Digital Promotions – 31%
• Shelf Pad – 30%
• In Store Advertisement – 27%

Sources:

http://bit.ly/NFaFHw

http://bit.ly/MZr8ZP

http://bit.ly/NFaFHx

Joe: This is an example of SMS broadcasting. Voupons is VERY different and the consumer send the deal to their own phone. The redemtion rates jump to over 50% when this is the case. And you are also building email and sms lists for future engagement”

According to a new Juniper Research study, mobile couponing is poised to reach redemption rates of 8 percent by 2016.

In the “Mobile coupons – the road to redemption” study, the research predicts which markets and trends are expected to grow by 2016. The study also looked at issues that must be overcome to make mobile coupons viable.

“The major challenge on the user side will be ensuring relevancy – once someone starts to receive too many badly-targeted offers, or even worse, unsolicited offers, they will view mobile coupons as spam and cease to be part of the market,” said ” said David Snow, senior analyst at Juniper Research, Hampshire, England.

“On the retailer side, the major challenge is having both the redemption technology in place and staff trained to use it,” he said.

“If a motivated consumer arrives at a store and cannot redeem the mobile coupon for some reason, then everyone loses.”

Mobile clipping
Over the last two years, mobile coupons have grown because of the number of channels they are now available on, per the Juniper study.

Mobile coupons that were primarily only available via SMS and MMS in 2009 are now being sent to consumers through more advanced ways with mobile email, mobile payments, applications and mobile Web.

The study also found some interesting statistics that divide mobile coupon usage by location.

The Far East and China will continue to be a hot area for mobile couponing and is expected to generate almost $45,000 in mobile coupon redemption by 2016.

However, mobile couponing is predicted to particularly grow in the United States and Europe with more advanced mobile platforms, per the study.

“The growth in North America and Western Europe is closely linked to the growth in smartphone and mobile app and mobile Web adoption and location- and person-aware mobile coupon schemes,” Mr. Snow said.

“Mobile coupons have been more widely used in the Far East and China, but they are more SMS-based and therefore more limited in personalization,” he said.

See more details >

When you turn on your laptop and surf the internet, you are most probably to look for the best deals for the day. For you to avail big discounts, you have to buy in large volumes. Groupon started to make daily-deals because they noticed that a lot of people are looking for best deals everyday. The biggest competitor of Groupon is Woot which was snapped up by Amazon.com that gives additional $100 million.

For those who are unfamiliar with daily-deals, here’s an overview: an organization who offers an everyday deal through daily-deal sites needs to show a satisfying discount (usually 50%). And then, a particular minimum number of clients wants to get the deal, they have to pay for the upfront payment and look for a coupon that they need to present to the business. If the number of clients did not reach the minimum number needed, the deal will be canceled.

Groupon started its operation in the year 2008 and Chicago is their first market.  Since then, Groupon has become internet darling however, they did not continue to reign. As the internet continues to develop so as the ways of the customers to find their needs.

Associate Professor Utpal Dholakia of Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Small Business conducted a research. He asked the 150 firms that were clients of Groupon for the past year. Around one- third of the respondents said that they are not happy because their daily-deal offers had not been profitable. Forty percent of them mentioned that they not make an every day deal again. Also, the researcher discovered that Groupon prospects are tend to be one- time visitors and did not become regular clients.

The study showed that the business model of Groupon are not good enough to withstand the fast change of the internet. Furthermore, the researcher suggests that Groupon should improve their system.

Some of the recommendations of the researcher are as follows:

• Designing deals that will sure to hit the market. Make sure that deals will not only best for the existing clients but also for new customers.
• Widen the coverage of deals so that small businesses can also benefit from it. Determine if the deal is well suited to small businesses.
• Design a deal which helps develop the relationship between Groupon and their clients. Offer a 20% discount so that the customers will visit three times instead of offering 60% discount to consumer all at once.
• Avoid offering discount that way too big for you may end up losing your profits.
• Offer deals on merchandise that you are looking to discharge or underutilize the services you want to develop.

Today, there are lots of similar websites that offer the same services. However, Groupons continue to strive to give the best deals for their clients.

SMS marketing is one those considered as mobile marketing. This is one of the advertising techniques which can be grouped even with these mobbing van and bill brads. They are considered mobile since the ad message itself travels from one place to other through handy or movable media. SMS marketing works by sending bulk email messages to a huge number of recipients. The messages are advertisements of new products and services, product discounts and notifications. The sender of the SMS advertisements has pooled several mobile numbers of prospect clients where messages are to be sent. However, like all advertising messages SMS which are sent to recipients will not all get the desired results since naturally, the recipient may not like the messages sometimes and may not even respond to it.

There are many advantages that SMS marketing can offer to both small scale and large scale businesses. In fact many establishments have shifted to the use of SMS marketing as one of their advertisng techniques instead of investing so much money for TV, radio and newspaper ads which are too costly and the audiences are uncontrollable. Take note, anyone can see the advertisement even they are not your target market. Sometimes, TV, Radio, Newspapers and magazines can only reach smaller segment of your target market due to time and distance limitations. However, with the use of SMS marketing, these factors are not hindrances. Being a least costly advertising technique, it can reach to as many recipients as you can where you have control as to who will most likely receive the message. Besides, it can also reach directly to the target market without having junked like emails. People are always going mobile and they have their phones with them. As the SMS reach their inboxes, your ads will really be read.

A mobile advertising and promotion company can be of help to maximize SMS marketing efforts. The use of SMS advertising works with a code that is assigned to the establishment. The code will serve as an interface of the client and the establishment who sends the SMS ads through the server of the SMS promotion company.

You can find various ways how mobile marketing agencies can be of great help for the company.  As an innovative adverting, SMS ads  are suitable and can cater to any type of business organization and can reach to any type of audiences. If you have a small business which you would like to be popular, you can utilize a smaller community to employ viral advertising for your business. Select a few number of people whom you will send the SMS and let them forward this message to their network of friends. You will see how it works for your business in generating sales leads.

Make way to SMS advertising provider which will offer you several benefits of mobile advertising. You can search the best one and pay for minimal cost. You will definitely be able to find out how effective SMS marketing is. If you have some doubt, you can contact an SMS advertising service provider for a free trial and gauge how they can help you.

Joe Brown wrote “focusing on a single discount may trigger the subsequent world-wide-web gold rush”.

This statement was true in case of James Black when he posted a colonic irrigation session in half-price at a site where he runs. He is not expecting that it would be a great hit.

Usually, when people heard of better deals they immediately rush for it. Another example:

Five hours after the deal was posted on Jumponit, there were 530 vouchers sold for $49 session in North Bondi Clinic.

Daily deals can also be an effective tool for advertisement. Groupon a global leader in net group getting was offered by Google of $6 billion previous month. LivingSocial, the second player joined forces with Jumponit. Netus and Ten Network – a net investment enterprises venture in Our Deal. Nine Entertainment Co has also launched its very own website, the Cudo and they are taking their advantage in media empire in promoting it. Meanwhile Spreets have gained investors from Facebook.

These sites aim to provide a single discounted deal. This deal is not only beneficial for customers but also for companies. The customers will get the best deals and the companies are provided the opportunity to expose their products and services in a large number of audience.

Groupon pioneered such business model which is now being imitated by many. You can find plenty services of this kind in Australia.

Rigby is not the only one who predicted the impact of this kind of business  strategy. The five leading daily-deal sites are Jumponit, Spreets, Cudo, LivingSocial and Scoopon. Rigby said that it would be difficult for small businesses to compete with the larger ones.

The fact that merchants need not to pay for upfront expenses gives an edge for smaller companies to choose daily deals as a form of advertisement rather than do conventional advertising. The only expenses in this type of advertising is the payment of the operators who do the day-to-day offers.

However, Cudo is using mainstream advertising to promote their websites. Billy Tucker, Cudo’s chief executive said their objective is to get their deals in front of the largest possible audience.

Ten on the other hand is using The Circle, its morning program to promote their offers from OurDeal. They are designing their deals in a way that will fit their audience.

Spooner admits that their competitors’ marketing strategies are effective however, they believe that nobody has formulated the best model yet. Spooner are studying every possibilities of improving their own model.

However, not all companies are capable of producing or delivering the promise of that daily deal so operators are carefully handling things preventing to produce demand that cannot be satisfied as this greatly affects the image of the website.

Virtual coupons come out to be one of the best advertising tools that has been proven to generate huge amount of sales.  It is noticeable that most of the coupons are attached to junk mails, and discount booklets, online coupons have emerged successfully. It is predicted that in 2011, almost half or even more than half of all on the net shoppers will use digital coupons. Its expansion to use the mobile phones to claim coupons has also received overwhelming responses from shoppers.

“Several factors account for the rise of digital couponing,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report, “Coupon to Groupon: New Channels for an Old Tradition.” “The recession, the greater use of your world wide web as a buying and analysis channel, and, needless to say, the immense popularity of each day deal web sites like Groupon and LivingSocial have made a brand new kind of on-line deal hunting.”

Currently, eMarketer estimated that two million US adults will redeem a web based coupon or code for use either on the innternet or offline not just once but more often.

The virtual or digital coupons greatly vary from day by day deal sites for users to have plenty of choices. Users may use the coupon in advance or use accumulate more in order to obtain bigger discounts.

As reported by Morpace, 32.5% of internet users have used Groupon coupons, as an example. Unlike other internet coupon customers, Groupon customers are young like those who belong to 18-to-34 age range. This brings Groupon users to an increased income. Groupon users also include those married people who are also coupon savvy.

The age profile of Groupon users has shown some changes according to Experian Hitwise. In the end of January 29, 2011, the biggest concentration of Groupon customers are ages 55 and older (37.5%).

“Daily deal web-sites like Groupon and LivingSocial cater mainly to compact companies,” according to Grau. Further, he explained: “But national manufacturers have been intrigued by their prospective and several have launched each day deal offers. Before taking this route, manufacturers should really have an understanding of that everyday deal websites and regular on the internet coupon web sites appeal to unique demographic segments and meet diverse customer needs. Also, the two kinds of websites have completely diverse business models, affecting how offers are structured.”

Coupons are effective means of promotions. However, you have to consider first the many factors that affect your business before introducing special offers.

Here are some advantages that coupons may give to your business:

1. Because of the rebates and expiry dates, customers tend to rush immediately to your business to avail the special offers.
2. Coupons are also an effective way to determine the number of people who follow a certain offer. You have to be careful in planning for promotions and coupons to have an effective campaign. Using Voupons is very efficient, it allows you to monitor and check the stats of your campaign.
3. Another benefit of using coupons is that it is also an efficient tool in determining the impact and effect of a certain offer, news or copy. You may offer a coupon for group A and a different coupon for group B. Compare the data gathered from group A and group B. It would be the best evidence of finding ways to improve your business.
4. If the coupons are not beneficial to someone who received them, it is very easy to give them or pass them to your friends. Voupons allows the recipient to text and send the coupons he received to his friends if he is not interested in them.

There are also disadvantages of using coupons. Many companies are discouraged of using coupons because it affects the image of the business. Incorrect promotional strategies may give a negative impact in your business and it will affect your future plans. But Voupons will surely not let this happen to you. Voupons offers a more sophisticated and better way of promoting your business.

Another factor to consider is your goal. If you want to attract the attention of the people towards your business, then giving coupons is a great way. If your goal is to drive traffic, using coupons will be of great help. If you give people tempting offers and they liked them, you definitely have a positive feedback and your company will surely have new customers.

Normally, companies tend to look for ways to attract new customers but they

forgot to thank and attend the needs of their current customers. Remember that keeping current customers re cheaper than acquiring new ones. Give your loyal customers special coupons like special discounts or exclusive services.

When you have decided to try coupons, you might want to consider these tips:

1. Design is the key in attracting people’s attention effectively. But this does not mean you have to hire a professional graphic artist. You just have to have proper layout, an eye- catching but relevant title and image. Of course you have to include your company address, contact information and  your website. Be careful not to include plenty of things that will confuse the readers, that means do not include unnecessary information.
2. Indicate an expiration date so that the readers will be encouraged to use the coupons immediately.
3. Do not use tricks that will ruin your reputation. Remember you decided to use coupons to get your business known and to gain good impressions form the customers. Avoid writing statements that are not true.
4. Also specify the conditions in your coupons like ‘This coupon is good only for selected items(wines, glasses)’ to avoid confusions.
5. Come up with an effective delivery option. You may use the ‘snail mail’ or use emails. One way of an efficient way of delivering information as well as promotions is through Voupons. Your customers are just one click away and the response time is instant. Using ‘snail mail’ is not a wise idea for its name suggests, it takes a long time before your mail will arrive to its recipient. Email will surely gets to the recipients immediately however, it is usually trapped by spam filters, if not, they just left unopen.

As a summary, the success of your promotional campaign depends on the response of your customers. Of course, we all want to have positive feedback from our customers so promotional strategies must be planned carefully.

Mailing list is one of the most important factor in the success of a promotional campaign. If you want a higher response rate then you have to consider broad-based list.

The offer should also be well- planned. This will determine attract the interest of your customers and prospects. Another is the design in which the customers will see first before they respond. It is also recommended to repeat, customers may not mind the first offer so you have to repeat to make them take an action.

Groupon recruits people to sign up to its email database before the site will be launched as scheduled in the next month. The company has been so overwhelming that there are a lot online people who signed up. Living Social, being known as the second industry player in the Australia marketplace has joined the an existing organization, Jumponit.

Since there is an existing Australian enterprise that applied to use the Groupon name in Australia and has been approved; the Chicago organization has been forced to use the website deals name Stardeals in Australia.

Groupon has sought the services of the lawyers Clayton Utz to take action against Scoopon. Scoopon is a Victorian enterprise that has been offering on the web deals on products and services in Australian cities for more than four years.

An intellectual property action within the Federal Court in Victoria in August has been also initiated by Groupn. If the mediation on January 21 fails, then court hearing awaits on 4th of February. Groupon is also taking actions against Scoopon in Illinois with the claim that the latter practiced federal trademark infringement, unfair competition and deceptive trade, this is even to the fact that Scoopon’s business is within Australian shores.

It is noticed that daily deals websites only offer discounts and promotional price offerings to merchants and shoppers confined locally.

As Groupon spokeswoman Julie Mossler has stated: “The [Stardeals] web site is live to accept subscribers but we are not however offering deals at this time.She further stated that “We hope to be undertaking so inside the subsequent month.” According to an intellectual property lawyer, Trevor Choy, Groupon pays the consequence of not registrering its trademark as it extended the global market.The US case was doomed to fail, he also added. “Groupon’s lawyers should understand that US laws can only be implemented within US territories.

The use of E-coupon is trending online. In Australia, a lot of e-coupon savvy have joined the large pool of e-coupon shoppers while the 2 of the Australia’s coupon sites are also getting utmost popularity.

Just as e-coupons explode as new e-commerce practices, Australians’ likes to coupons is starting to heat up. The mainstream media outlets for instance the Day-to-day Telegraph and a Present Affair lately have been telling stories about them.

Affiliating with the coupons websites can benefits retailers and online sellers since the use of coupons can drive huge volumes of visitors to the site. Those shoppers who would like to save are searching for out coupons prior before buying. Frost & Sullivan is predicting that online shopping in Australia sums up to $12 billion this year.

When coupons are used, the retailers will be able to sell even the expensive items which are also usually used in upselling. This is very advantageous for sellers to reach their sales quota and attain the profit margin. So in Australia, where can you find the best online coupons?

This time, take a look of the reviews about the online social communities that have driven huge number of potential buyers and sales leads to their online stores by using coupons. The case studies are also shown about how the online marketing people have planned out the coupon strategies like what Dell has utilized.

Check out for the two websites – OzBargain and RetailMeNot. They have enabled their communities to share information, give positive ratings and promote the online coupons to the buyers out there. Like Dell, other companies that have utilized the online coupon strategies are Emirates Airline, Domino’s Pizza, Avis Car Rental, Weight Watches and Vodafone to mention a few. Actually there are plenty of them and a lot are joining since the use of coupons has been proven to work in increasing online sales.