Our clients ask for our opinion about “daily deal” sites like Groupon and Living Social all the time, and to be honest, it truly depends on the business. The idea is excellent- offering your services at a discounted price to your customers in exchange for innovative advertising. That being said, with anything you give at a discounted rate, whether it’s coupons or Facebook /Twitter discounts, too much of a good thing starts to lose its appeal. Unfortunately, it seems that’s what’s happening to Groupon and Living Social, according to this recent Mashable article. While still heavy hitters in the daily deals market, the novelty of the daily deal has worn off as new daily deal sites are popping up all over the place and users are overwhelmed with multiple emails a day. Kindles offer their own daily deals for their users, Facebook killed off their daily deals application after only four months and Yelp is struggling to keep theirs afloat. Groupon, the inventor of the daily deal, has seen declining web traffic and is banking on a new location-based daily deal system called GrouponNow, while LivingSocial has actually seen an increase in web traffic. It will be interesting to see who will carve enough of a niche to come out on top.
