Nope.
In our day-to-day work as a Virtual Assistant company, we have the pleasure of working with many small businesses, restauraunts and entrepreneurial retailers. As a practice, we personally advise them against using group-buying sites like Groupon and Living Social. The main reason? Our inherent goal is to always help our clients’ businesses grow and generate new revenue. Group-buying sites are not in line with those goals. They often force a business to loose money, because the business owner pays a 50% fee-for-service on top of offering deep discount, translating to a net of only 25%. In this economy, profit margins are tight, so netting a 25% profit is detrimental to many small businesses.
Most small business owners will argue that they can take a hit one time to gain a repeat customer. However, launching a daily deal generally fails to generate repeat business. The customer buys the deal because of the deep discount and has a difficult time getting back into the “full price” mindset.
A far better way to generate new business is to work with a professional Virtual Assistant to create a proven marketing plan and calendar.
