How to Monetize Virtual Businesses on Groupon and Make Up To $100K THIS YEAR

As local business consultants and someone who wants to help grow local businesses we all want the path of least resistance when looking for clients to work with. Well the best local businesses are going to be somebody who is already spending money on advertising.

Where would you go to find somebody who’s already spending money on advertising, and can you find a place that has thousands of these companies? Where all you needed to do was get in touch with them, maybe go to LinkedIn or on Facebook, even a simple Google search.

Where you can find their CEO’s, their marketing executives or whoever makes the buying decisions. You can send them a video of what you do. Send them a training on why not using this platform and allocating that money to be spent on you and your services, not this platform that is a complete waste of money.

I was talking with a client of mine a few months ago and they are spending $15,000 a month on Groupon. You heard me right, $15,000 a month on Groupon. I asked them I said, “What’s your return in sales?” And they said, “Not many.” I was blown away. They have a guy who manages their Groupon ad, a consultant. They paid him $2,500 a month and that is in addition to the $15,000 spend on Groupon.

It made me really want to research the numbers and what was really going on with Groupon and the business model. The thing to understand is that Groupon is in business to make money for Groupon and their shareholders. Whether the local business makes money is not a concern for Groupon.

Business Insider, a website dedicated to business news similar to the Wall Street Journal but on a worldwide basis has some great research numbers on Groupon and how business owners truly feel about the service and if it is worth the money spent for advertise services on the platform.

Business Insider said that only about 1% of Groupon users become regular customers. Although it’s one the most effective way to get hundreds or even thousands of people through the door of a local business with one day’s advertising. The problem is that the cost of sale doesn’t really add up for the small business owner.

Generally, a local business only needs to convert about 10% of Groupon buyers into regular clients for it to make financial sense but based on the internal data Business Insider was only seeing conversion rates of about 1%.

Think about that for a second. A local business with a staff of three to four employees sells a thousand deals and only ten of these come back again and pay normal prices. That’s over a thousand-man hours (at least two months) of losses to gain seven new clients. Those are horrible numbers. I hope you can see the opportunity here and how big the opportunity is.

Groupon’s sales pitch to the local business owner is that by using Groupon they are going to get a huge number of repeat customers. Above I showed you that it is not the case. Another troubling number is about 30% of the people that transact on Groupon are tourists.

It’s only likely that 1% of customers are likely to be repeat customers. And 30% of Groupon customers are tourists and will never be repeat customers unless they are using Groupon. It makes it pretty easy to see that Groupon is not a good investment for a local business.

Here are other findings from Business Insider.

Groupon’s churn rate could be as high as 90%.

Out of all the local business owners who have run a Groupon deal, only about 10% are either planning to (or have already) run a second campaign. However, this 10% actually needs to be qualified as an increasing number of smaller local businesses now survive solely on Groupon deals.

This phenomenon happens when a local business runs a very successful Groupon deal but spends so much time servicing it that they lose all their original clients. They then have no choice but to go back to the well and run another Groupon deal just to ensure their survival. These local businesses are then caught in a deal-loop where they can’t escape Groupon!

Groupon is becoming a virtual local business.

A typical local business is built on word of mouth and traditional advertising. Groupon clients couldn’t care less about the quality – they just want the deal. And they know there will be another deal next month for the same service.

This has led to an interesting phenomenon where Groupon will offer certain types of services on a regular basis. So, for a material percentage of users, Groupon has effectively become a virtual local business, using different local business to carry out the service in question for users each month.

The Business Insider survey found these interesting results:

Here are the key takeaways from the survey:

About 30% of businesses considered their Groupon experience a success, and more than half of customers do NOT want to run another Groupon. 40% of Groupon customers, meanwhile, thought their experience failed. Only half said they would recommend Groupon to another business owner.

When you think about it, Groupon should be doing everything that they can to have a relationship with their local business partners. But you will see later in the survey and the results that it is far from the truth.

Business owners not only see very few returning customers, the majority of businesses that do Groupon advertising would not recommend the platform to other business owners.

Groupon was not a better service to work with than its rivals.

Most businesses said only “a handful” of Groupon buyers became repeat customers, suggesting that Groupon is not as effective a customer acquisition tool as people think.

Half of the businesses polled said they would NOT recommend Groupon to another small business. The other half would.

The number one category for Groupon advertisers is health and grocery. It’s not in a healthcare but it’s health, like health and fitness. So, it’s like protein powders, energy powders, energy drinks. It is gym owners that are looking for new customers. So, if you look on Groupon you can see the categories listed. A close second is restaurants. Both are great businesses to work with.

As you can see businesses that are using Groupon represent a HUGE opportunity.

They are already spending money on advertising. Some are spending a lot of money.
They know that advertising works and they should be investing in their business.
They are not getting even a fair to decent return on investment.
There is a better than 50% chance they will never use Groupon again.
You can give them a better return on investment.

Here is what you will learn in this training course.

How to find businesses that are advertising on Groupon.
How to find the owners or decision makers of the business.
The best way to contact the business owner.
What services to offer for maximum profit.
How to present is as a win/win situation for the business owner and how sell and close the service to any business owner.

Goal Setting

“If you’re a regular customer of mine you may see a familiar section at the beginning of all my training courses. It’s the ‘Goal Setting’ portion. I do usually repeat it in every product…but there’s a very important reason. I like to give new tips on Goal Setting in each course.

Setting Goals and making daily and weekly plans has been a cornerstone of my success. Going through a simple goal setting exercise can only make you and I better, more successful marketers.”

Jim Mack

If you want to set goals you can achieve, do not focus on them. It seems that these words go against everything that is ever said about goals. A lot of people are talking about the power of setting goals but not many about how to achieve them. Yet, it is a fundamental key to an all lifelong success plan. So how can you set goals? How can you achieve them? What can you do today, tomorrow or this week that will get you closer to your goals? And what is the power of goal setting?

The challenge, of course, is that we hear about setting goals so often that we tend to take it just a little bit for granted. When you get yourself to a point where you have heard it so many times, you act like you know all about it. But you need to be careful not to get caught in that trap called the law of familiarity. It is the place where you get so used to it.

The prevailing thought is to think about what you want to do. Then, you set goals, write them down, stay focused on them and go forward. You check your list over and over again, come back to it, adjust it, and that is how you achieve your goals. But I believe it is not the way goals should be attained.

Some people even do it once a year, when they make a New Year resolution. They set goals, and they do forget it until a year later. These people usually have no power. They take the power of goals too lightly which brings us to some basics.

You have to realize you have to practice the fundamentals daily. Think about the great coaches in sports history for example. They often teach the basics to people that are already the best at what they do. These top trainers make them go through the fundamentals over and over again, hundreds of time, day after day until they can do it at a crucial moment.

Back to Basics

Should I remind you about Mr. Miyagi in “Karate Kid” with his wax on wax off? When you set goals, you have to go back and go through the basics every day. So that when you do it again, you understand how to do it even more efficiently.

“Repetition is the mother of all skills” – Tony Robbins

If you want to reach your set goals, you have to master your skills. The reason being is that along with your journey, you make new distinctions, set new goals or even change them. So, do not think for a second that you already know how to achieve them.

The bottom line often is that most people do not have a clearly defined set of objectives anyway. You need to go from the frame of mastering simple things over and over to achieve set goals. So, you have to break through the bonds of the past and look in a whole new way where you understand that you have to do whatever it takes and not be bored by basics.

Setting Goals is Powerful

Why do we need to set goals and use them? Are they important? The answer is that when you set objectives for yourself, you create the future in advance. You form your destiny and shape your life. Whether we know it or not, we all have goals.

As a result, know that your goals are affecting you. The problem is that some people have lousy goals. Those get you through the day, the week, the month or help you pay the bills but are not the kind of objectives that inspire you or make you jump out of bed in the morning. These goals do not create the drive you need to achieve something greater.

You must realize that very few people have a particular plan or even written goals. So, when you set goals, I mean real aims, you can create the power to grow, develop and expand your success. You must have something out there that is compelling enough to draw you forth and transform your life.

Reflection Time to Set Goals

Next, you have to know why you set goals, why you are doing it, and what you are moving towards. The reason being is that if you do not, you won’t get the most out of yourself. You have to take time to reflect so that you can set goals. It does not matter if you reflect for days; what is important is that you do it.

Then, take two or three days to design plans and how you can achieve them. You have to set goals that are well beyond your current ability or skill. It does not matter if you have yet no idea on how to make them happen. You simply have to operate from a principle that is talked about all over the world, regardless of what you believe.

It is a common law which is the power of absolute belief and faith. If you can get inspired enough and find a goal that is exciting enough, you can figure out a way to make it happen. Even if right now it seems impossible, you can pull it off.

Set Goals in Every Area of Life

You have to set goals for yourself in every area of your life. Set them personally, emotionally, socially, physically and financially. Create an ultimate aim and what you want right now. You need objectives on who you want to be, how much happiness or passion you desire, and how you want to live every single day.

No matter the pages it could take, you should describe everything in detail, even the person of your dreams.

Now you have to implement them. Of course, some of your goals will not work out, but you can achieve most of your set goals. A massive change will occur as you follow through. Your level of confidence will boost, and your faith, as well as your abilities, will change radically.

Behaviors vs. Focus for Set Goals

You need to realize that when you set goals for yourself, they are outside of your control, so if you spend too much time focusing on your goals, you never achieve them. By contrast, if you focus on your behaviors rather than your goals, then you can achieve your objectives.

You alone can see to your behaviors. They are what you can control. So, you have to ignore the part of your goals that you cannot influence and focus on the part that is in your control which is behaviors. Once you focus on your actions, day after day, you begin to learn all the information you need to reach your set goals.

When you visualize your goal as already achieved, it puts you in a position where you can focus on a plan to make it. Behaviors are short term based when we set goals; it is usually seven days. So, you have to think about what you can do today, tomorrow and this week, write them down and go for it.

The Define Precision of Goals

You should act with intelligence because what is real today is based on your past, on your previous experiences. So, if you limit your future based on your past, you won’t go anywhere. You need to set goals that are big enough to drive you. So, do not stop and go “How do I do it?”

It is not the first step. The initial phase is getting it all written down, and if you do that, you can create and shape your own paradise, whatever you choose to create. It starts with a simple process of taking these generalized dream impulses and then to define them with more precision.

That is the power of goal setting. There is something beyond just what you understand of writing something down. Something happens! You become a creator when you set goals and put them down on paper. You get a clear vision while you can make them happen.

Therefore, you need to ensure that you not only set goals, but you get entirely clear why you want them. it is a fact that there is a fundamental core in goal-setting that can change your life and the answer is that purpose is stronger than the outcome.

The Motivation behind Set Goals

The meaning of it is that the purpose of goals is not so you get things but of what they will make of you as a person. I am in the phase of realizing that right now. Most people set goals blindly. They desire and focus on material things. And there is nothing wrong with that; I want you to have as many things as you want because that is part of life too.

It is part of the manifestation process of creating results when you set goals. But if all you do is to focus on getting things, it may cost you your integrity of who you want to be, of what you want to create in your life. So, you got to be careful!

Sales Training – How To Sell Anything

I’m going to share with you three powerful secrets that you can use to sell anything to anyone. The very first secret is this: how do you turn something that’s a commodity? How do you sell a product? How do you sell a service in such a noisy marketplace?

Number one. People don’t buy because of logic. People buy because of emotions and they justify it with logic. People buy based on emotions and they justify with logic. I want you to think of something that you want to buy in your life. It could be a car. It could be a house. It could be anything. I want you to picture that.

Once you have that in your mind, I want you to ask yourself this question: why do you want to buy it? Why do you want to buy that particular item? Why do you want to own that item? Why is that?

It’s a new suit. It looks good on you. It’s a new dress. It’s a new car. It’s a new house. It’s that vacation, but why do you buy it? I want you to dig a little bit deeper. If you peel through the layers, I think you’ll realize you are buying emotions.

You buy the item because of greed, you want to make money, or you want save money, or it’s because of generosity that by buying this item is going to help other people.

Have you noticed sometimes, even the companies out there, if you buy this particular product, they’re going to donate a certain amount to charities? You buy because of generosity. Maybe because of shame, that if I don’t buy this, I’ll look foolish. If I don’t own this, I’ll look foolish, or it’s fear that if I don’t buy this, I’m going to be missing out. I don’t want to miss out. It’s an escape that you go on the vacation. Your 9:00 to 5:00 job is driving you crazy and you said, “Oh, man. I need some time off.” Maybe he’s doing it, buying it because of escape.

Whatever those reasons are, those are very often emotional reasons. You buy because of emotion and you justify it with logic. Think about when you’re selling something to somebody. Are you just talking about features and benefits, what this thing will do for you, or are you pushing those emotional hot buttons?

I remember one time I was in an Audi dealership and I was approached by a salesperson and said, “No. I’m just browsing around.” He said, “Do me a favor. Let me grab the keys to the new A6 and just sit in it.” Now at the time, I’d never owned an Audi before. I had a car. I didn’t need a new one. He said, “Do me a favor. Start the engine.” I said, “All right.” I did. He said, “How do you feel?” Well, it feels pretty good. I said, “Let’s take it around the block”. Now I knew exactly what he was doing.

It’s a lot of money. It cost a lot of money, and if you think about that, what am I buying? I’m buying emotions. What I’m buying is this: I’m buying how I feel driving that Audi, I feel good. You know what? I bought the damn Audi.

Emotionally, it takes me there. This is cool.

People buy because of emotions and they justify it with logic. You have to understand that. Don’t push your products. Don’t just push your services. Don’t push the features and benefits. Think about what are those emotional hot buttons that you’re pushing?

For this training think of the hot buttons:

Only on average less than 5% repeat customers that will pay full price
Cheap new customers
Getting on the “discount or coupon hamster wheel”
You can give them targeted customers paying FULL PRICE
They can spend less with you than Groupon

Number two. People don’t buy their way into something. They buy their way out of something. It means people, very often, they’re buying something they have a problem they want solved. They want to buy their way out of that problem. People who don’t buy the drill, they want a hole on the wall, so what is it that you are helping them solve? What problem? What is that thing? You have to understand.

I always say the amount of money that you make is in direction proportion to how deep you understand your marketplace’s pain. The amount of money you make is in direct proportion of how well, how deep you go, how much you understand your marketplace’s pain. You have to understand what it is. What are the pains that people have, and how can you help them relieve some of that pain? Think about that.

Above we covered the emotions of the pain point. We are going to solve them. As we talk to the business owner we want them to feel the pain. But the good news, we are going to relieve the pain.

Number three. People don’t buy products and services. They buy stories because when there are so many choices out there in the marketplace on the internet, any product that you want, there are hundreds and hundreds of choices. How do you stand out? How do you add emotions to a commodity, a pen? You’ve heard the “sell me this pen” story. What’s the difference between a $2 pen or an $800 Montblanc John F. Kennedy Limited Edition exclusive pen, $800 pen? It’s the same pen. It has the same functions. Story.

When you add story to an item, suddenly when you add the John F. Kennedy, the president’s story attached to a brand or logo, it is 10 times more valuable. It is 100 times more valuable. It is 300 times more valuable than a particular pen all because of story. It writes the same. A $2 pen, you can write, too.

That’s the difference, so think about what’s the story? How can you inject stories into everything that you do? Maybe it’s an origin story. How did you get started? Why do you do what you do? Also stories of your customers. You can use my stories of how I helped businesses that were spending money on Groupon and felt that was the only way they could keep the door open. We were able to solve that problem and get the phone ringing and new customers coming in paying full price. And they became REAL REPEAT customers.

This is the secret to selling anything to anyone. You need to add your style and way that you act, speak and write into your sales copy or presentation. Make it your own. Own it.

When I approached that first Groupon customer so I could get him on board with my services and moving off of the Groupon Hamster Wheel, I started the conversation like this. “What if I told you that you can take that $15,000 in ads spend on Groupon, and use a portion of that with me to get a real return on investment? And I can actually make you money in the first month, instead of you losing money and hoping those clients come back? Would it be worth a 10 minute conversation?”

It works every time. Well…most every time. These business owners know that Groupon is not the best way to grow their business. They are looking for a better alternative. This is where you are making a win/win presentation.

The thing is they probably have not been approached on the phone or in person who promised SEO, Facebook ads or website design. But they didn’t approach it from the angle of helping solve the pain they are experiencing with advertising with Groupon. Nothing was presented that was going to relieve the pain point they had.

Finding Businesses Advertising on Groupon

The first step in finding local businesses to go to groupon.com and begin to pick a category. The great thing about businesses on Groupon and the website is that you can operate this business from anywhere in the world. Groupon is a world wide website. Those businesses don’t have to be local to you.

Go to groupon.com and pick the city you want to focus on.

Next you will choose your category

For this example, I chose Health and Fitness and now I can pick my Sub Category

In the category Gyms you can now begin to find businesses to contact. And Begin to put together your list of businesses to contact.

For this example, I chose Flaunt Fitness.

Since you are not shot-gunning our prospecting or for a better way to explain it, trying to contact everyone and everybody, you want to do your research. At the bottom of most Groupon offers you will see contact information or the website.

It is important to take a look around the ad on Groupon and see the amount of detail that has been put into the ad. It will tell you a lot about the business.

Go to the website and start to check out the business and look for opportunities. Website design, lead generation, reputation management, etc. AND contact information.

Since there are so many ways to monetize and help these business owners there are several things to look at.

Website design and on page SEO (complete info and pages)
Facebook and Facebook posts (are they current and up to date)
Pay per click activity
Make sure everything with their online marketing is up to date.

Here is the contact information for Flaunt Fitness. If you go to the “Instructors” you will find the owner there. This is not the case with every business. I recommend you do more research even if you find everything you need from the website.

See if there is a company Facebook page and take a look at things that will help you pick up pain points or things that the business is doing very well to help in your rapport building when talking to the client.

Take a look at other social media sites like twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Their twitter page show that they have not engaged in tweets or updates for several months. Here is another talking point and way to monetize.

I always like to look at LinkedIn for a couple for reasons. The first is that I can find out the owner possibly by searching LinkedIn if I am having trouble. In our marketing to these owners, we want to personalize as much as possible.

In addition, I am looking for ways to monetize. You can see that Flaunt Fitness really has an incomplete and way below average LinkedIn page. You could easily charge $127 to make them a professional LinkedIn page that you can have done on fiverr for $10.

Things that seem to be little things such as LinkedIn profile design, twitter posts and on page SEO can really add up and they take such little effort to fulfill as a service.

I have seen an increase in my bottom line this past year of over 35% by adding simple services like Facebook posting and LinkedIn profile design.

In this example also, I am able to find and contact the owner. If I want to I can connect with the owner or contact as well. I hope you can see how valuable this is.

You will want to do this exercise for each business you want to contact. The great thing with Groupon is that you don’t have to be niche specific. You can in one day send emails to a restaurant, a fitness center, a cleaning service, a tanning salon etc.

Put the information into your spreadsheet and you are ready to begin to contact the business owners and get that first client.

Your spreadsheet that is included should have all the details and boxes checked. Website, contact info, email, Facebook page, twitter, Instagram, overall design of the webpage and SEO flaws. All these can be done in addition to lead generation.

How To Sell Your Services To The Local Business Owner

So, when approaching or contacting a business that has been advertising on Groupon do your research. Make sure you have the spreadsheet included in the course in front of you, so you can keep organized. After you have gone to groupon.com follow these steps:

Find 20 businesses a day you want to contact.
Are those businesses using pay per click for advertising?
Do they have a website? What does it look like?

a. PRO TIP: Perfect for website re-design and update

Are they on LinkedIn?
Are they on Facebook?
Are they on any other social media platforms? Twitter, Instagram etc. If they are on those platforms are they engaged? Posts, pictures, up to date information.

. PRO TIP: Perfect for Social Media Management

While you are checking out those websites and doing your research you will want to find their contact information either on LinkedIn, (make a contact request). Facebook business pages will often have an email contact address in the company information. Or the website will always have a contact us page.

If your prospects do not have contact info on their website, a LinkedIn page, Facebook business page, twitter account, Instagram page you should look at these as a money-making opportunity.

Email and Messaging the Business Owner

I recommend sending a custom message to the business owner, not a canned message. With this marketing you are not going to use a shotgun approach. You are going to use a sniper rifle. The reason is that we have done our research. We know the statistics of what Groupon truly offers. We can solve the problem and reduce the pain that is perceived or not realized.

You will want to record a screen shot video so that you can send it to them in your email. The video needs to hit the key pain points and how you can solve those pain points. Here are the highlights. This video needs to be in your own style and pace.

“Hey <first name> I saw you on Groupon running this ad.
I know that it can be very costly running Groupon ads from the costs of the ad to the discount you have to run so that you get people calling you or coming through the door.
Here is a video of exactly what I could do for you and exactly why you can allocate some of dollars that are going to waste with Groupon and get you a true return on investment.
Imagine actually getting repeat customers that are paying FULL PRICE, not coming back looking for a discount.
Our marketing system will get you leads coming in every week and these will be potential customers that will NOT be looking for a discount.
We can get you more customers and phone calls faster than you might think.
If you want more information let me know. Just reply to this email with “I’m interested” and the best time and phone number to reach out to you or if you want you can call me anytime at XXX-XXX-XXXX

In your email you will want to include this message with the video. I have included a video sample in the course that I send in my emails.

Email Number 1

Subject: There is something wrong with your Groupon ad

Hey there <first name> PRO TIP: Always use the name of the owner!!!

I made this quick video because I saw your ad on Groupon and I wasn’t sure if this was your first Groupon ad or you have done several.

First, I love your <website, products, restaurant, Facebook page, reviews> <you are building rapport and personalizing the email> and because of that I wanted to reach out to you.

I have a lot of clients that got sick of Groupon for a lot of reasons. While Groupon’s big selling point is getting repeat customers or turning Groupon customers into full paying customers or clients, here are the real numbers.

⅓ rd of Groupon customers are tourists. That repeat customer they promise isn’t even from your local area.
It is well known that these are the worst clients of all time because they’re bargain hunters. Not just somebody who wants a bargain, but they’re actually bargain hunters.” They go online, looking to be cheap. They will do anything to be cheap. If they are going to be a repeat customer, it will only be with a Groupon.
Less than 5% of Groupon customers come back as a full paying client. I find that very interesting that people can be sold on Groupon when those are the worst customers you could ever possibly find because they are cheap. They’re super cheap. Who is your client, not a bargain hunter.”?
Less than 15% of businesses that do a Groupon want to do it again.
Generally, a local business only needs to convert about 10% of Groupon buyers into regular clients for it to make financial sense but based on the internal data Business Insider was only seeing conversion rates of about 1%.

I know that is a lot of bad news. But here is some good news. My company can find you clients or customers using your ideal customer profile. We can target the demographic of your ideal customer profile and put your offers and website in front of an actually ideal client. Who is the client or customer you are looking for, not a bargain hunter?

I would love to hear back from you. Reach out to me at XXX-XXX-XXXX or just reply to this email.

Best wishes,

<Your Name>

Email Number 2:

Subject: Did you see my email about the mistake on your Groupon ad?

Hey there <first name>

I sent you an email the other day about your Groupon ad that the serious issue that a lot of my present clients had with Groupon and how we helped them out and helped their business.

I made a quick video for that email. I included it in this email. If you can find that email I went over some serious problems local businesses have with Groupon and the “bill of goods” Groupon sells them on that just aren’t true.

⅓ rd of Groupon customers are tourists. Repeat customers….not without a coupon.
It is well known that these are the worst clients of all time because they’re bargain hunters. They will do anything to be cheap. If they are going to be a repeat customer, it will only be with a Groupon.
Less than 5% of Groupon customers come back as a full paying client. They’re super cheap. Who is your client, not a bargain hunter.”?
Less than 15% of businesses that do a Groupon want to do it again.
Generally, a local business only needs to convert about 10% of Groupon buyers into regular clients for it to make financial sense but based on the internal data Business Insider was only seeing conversion rates of about 1%.

If you look at the numbers you can see how Groupon is a win/lose proposition. They win, you lose. I know that is a lot of bad news. But here is some good news. My company can find you clients or customers using your ideal customer profile. We can target the demographic of your ideal customer profile and put your offers and website in front of an actually ideal client. Who is the client or customer you are looking for, not a bargain hunter?

I would love to hear back from you. Reach out to me at XXX-XXX-XXXX or just reply to this email.

Best wishes,

<Your Name>

Email Number 3:

Subject: Are you really happy with Groupon?

Hey there <first name>

I sent you a couple of emails about your Groupon ad. I’m guessing one of two things. You are really happy with offering discounts or you didn’t see my previous emails

I made a quick video for that email. I included it in those emails. If you can find that email I went over some serious problems local businesses have with Groupon and the “bill of goods” Groupon sells them on that just aren’t true.

I have a lot of clients that got sick of Groupon for a lot of reasons.

⅓ rd of Groupon customers are tourists. Repeat customers….not without a coupon.
It is well known that these are the worst clients of all time because they’re bargain hunters. They will do anything to be cheap. If they are going to be a repeat customer, it will only be with a Groupon.
Less than 5% of Groupon customers come back as a full paying client. They’re super cheap. Who is your client, not a bargain hunter.”?
Less than 15% of businesses that do a Groupon want to do it again.
Generally, a local business only needs to convert about 10% of Groupon buyers into regular clients for it to make financial sense but based on the internal data Business Insider was only seeing conversion rates of about 1%.

If you look at the numbers you can see how Groupon is a win/lose proposition. They win, you lose. I know that is a lot of bad news. But here is some good news. My company can find you clients or customers using your ideal customer profile. Who is the client or customer you are looking for, not a bargain hunter?

I would love to hear back from you. Reach out to me at XXX-XXX-XXXX or just reply to this email.

Best wishes,

<Your Name>

If you send the email and follow up just like I have laid out you will have potential clients calling and emailing you. Trust me, there are business owners out there that would love for you to take that $15,000 or $8,000 or $6,000 or $3,000 or whatever in ad spend in Groupon ad spend and spend it on direct response marketing with you.

Contacting Your Leads

Now that you have your lead list of at least 20 business owners per day, it is time to reach out to them and promote your services. You are going to use an autoresponder to contact your leads. This will automate your email campaign so that you can work smarter and not harder.

Contacting Leads Using an Autoresponder

An autoresponder is a series of messages that we put together that automatically sends to the leads that we find. We let the program do the heavy lifting for us. The video tutorials will give you all the help you need.

What we are doing here is taking the emails we found above and placing them into the autoresponder, and letting the program do the work for us. This allows for you to get fully interested people coming out the other side. Fair word of warning…it has happened to us. Once you send enough emails, somebody is going to get upset with you along the way. You can’t get around this. Just take it in stride. I always tell myself that it means that my emails are working!

As you write more emails, the better you will get at it. You will learn what works and what doesn’t. In most autoresponders, you can see your stats like the open rate (the percentage of people who opened your emails),

click thru rate (the percentage of those subscribers that opened the email and clicked the link in your email). This will begin to let you know what is working and what isn’t.

Why Use An Autoresponder

We use an autoresponder, so we don’t have to send each and every email by hand. Even if you copy and paste think about how much time it would take for you to send just 300 emails per week? Maybe 6-8 hours. This is crazy, and we would never ask you to do this. Time is too valuable.

Side note: I know for this next step in this e-book you might not have your autoresponder set up yet. Please go to the video for this. We want to make sure it is set up properly. Sometimes with these types of steps it would get lost in the words. So, we have an over-the-shoulder video going over step by step of how to put it together. So, before you go to this next step go to the video and get your autoresponder set up.

Begin Contacting Your Leads

Now that we have some leads, you will place them in your autoresponder. We are assuming that you have taken the step to set up your autoresponder already. We are using getresponse.com, I like this program. Another good one would be rebump.com, both of these programs will get the job done. Just know in our video that we are going over getresponse.com

Now it’s time to start sending out emails! This is exciting for me! Why? Because emails are money! This is not a joke. They are like money! The larger you grow your list, the more money you will make here.

Follow Up – They Will Call Or Email You Back

We let the autoresponder do the work here. You want the business owner to call you then you simply say please call me at the end like we did above. Let’s say you are working during the day, then when they respond that they are still in business, you say when would be a good time to contact them or call them. That is your foot in the door, and they are expecting and wanting you to call them.

That is a totally warm call. I personally don’t like cold calls. I will cold call only if there is a business I really want to work with and know I can help. It really is a rare breed of person that can-do cold calls on a daily basis. I know for sure I am not one of them. That is why I like my autoresponder to do the work.

Success with a warm or cold call is simple. But easier said than done. You must be motivated and have the will to succeed. Your brain works in amazing ways. It allows you to create visions of the future and dream about achievements. How do you envision your success? How will it change your life? Learning to visualize your future success is important to overcoming sales call reluctance.

Autoresponders are great for prospecting and lead generation, especially for cold prospecting. After someone signs up for a quote, but goes cold later on, he or she represents an ideal opportunity for follow up via Autoresponder.

You can create a 3-5 email message series to warm up your cold leads and breathe life back into your relationship with them. Often, the reason for no action is a lack of trust and understanding, but the right email campaign can help you overcome those objections.

Your confidence will soar once you start prospecting. Self-confidence is the by-product of productivity!

Let’s Look At The Numbers

Using this method, I was able to secure 8 new clients the first month that were paying me on average $900 per month. Here is the thing I want you to really understand and why this is so powerful. Groupon advertisers have a lot of money to spend. They just want results. They are not cheap clients. The minimum spend is, but I would imagine like a cheap Groupon client’s is $3,000 a month. So, you are offering them a great deal.

Here are my numbers for the month of testing:

80 businesses contacted
45 businesses contacted me back
20 appointments were set
8 new clients were brought on board

Of the 8 new clients brought on board there were 6 that I am doing lead generation for and the average fee is $850 per month. 2 of the new clients were website redesign. One for $499 and the other $199 for an additional page on their site.

In addition, 3 of the clients wanted LinkedIn page design and I charged all my clients $147 and I outsourced it for $15 per LinkedIn page.

Services To Offer Your Clients

I think my favorite thing about approaching businesses that are using Groupon for advertising is that there are so many ways to monetize these clients. Some are going to feel they can’t step off of the Groupon Hamster Wheel yet. You can help those clients in other ways other than lead generation.

Some of the clients that contact you are going to be fairly new businesses. Two of my clients the first month were web design clients. You will be amazed at some of the horrible websites these companies have.

The services you will sell are:

Facebook or Social Media Management
MOZ Management
Mobile Website Management
Website Design
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Reputation Management
Lead Generation
And many more that I haven’t mentioned. Really anything that has to do with online or offline marketing.

Be creative with your services. I consult with several men’s clinics around the country and I work with them on their operations, sales conversions as well as their marketing online and offline.

Facebook and Social Media Management

A large portion of small businesses already have one or more social media accounts, but you’ll find many of them are either are poorly run, no pictures or completely un-managed. You are essentially becoming the administrator for their pages, removing offending posts, and ensuring these pages keep the basic standards of a quality user experience for their customers.

In other words, you make sure the social media page is usable for visitors and has current information on it. So, if they don’t already have one, create a new business page, add a description, business hours, and cover graphic.

Do not add lots of content!!! You will sell content later for higher fees.

If you are managing the page. Adding content photos etc.

This is a great up sell. I will offer 3 packages, and most will take the second option.

1. Create a new page or update with pictures, address of the business. Make a complete profile $47/month

2. Add posts. Engage customers. Add pictures and updates. $97/month

3. The initial fee will range from $97 to $147. Your monthly fee for only updating posts and pictures should be $57 and up to $97. You can outsource if you would like.

Website Design

When you are looking for business that advertise on Groupon, you are going to find several businesses that need your help. Website design on fiverr will generally cost $99 and you can charge your clients.

$497 initial and $197 for a one-page design and $597 for multiple pages.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

You are going to find a large amount of businesses that need your help with SEO. I do not recommend doing it yourself. You will find simple fixed that you can outsource and charge $497 to $997 and an additional $97 per month.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization can be a very lucrative up sell. But it needs to be done right and I would recommend the majority to be outsourced. While you want to sell SEO and I highly recommend it. It can be very time consuming. Outsourcing makes it a very easy up sell, and it frees your time to go get more clients. See the outsourcers guide in the back of the course.

Steps for Client SEO

On page SEO

Citations

Outsource SEO

The Top On Page SEO Techniques

Front Load Title Tags

Google puts more weight on words found in the beginning of your title tag.

You can see this in action by searching for competitive keywords in Google:

Use Important Social Sharing Buttons

The easier you make it for people to share your article, the more likely they are to share it. I actually make it, so my share buttons follow you down the page. Links out to the Facebook Page, Twitter Account, Pinterest, and GMB page is important.

Use Outbound Links

Google wants to see you as an active member of the web. If you rarely link out to other resources – or no follow all of your outbound links—it looks like you’re hoarding PageRank for yourself.

PRO TIP: Include at least 2 outbound links to related authority sites (popular blogs, news sites and .edu and .gov resources) in every piece of content that you publish.

Use LSI Keywords

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are words that are commonly found alongside your target keyword. For example, if you had a page for a roofing business owner about “roof repair company”, then you’d probably mention words like “roofing company”, “roofer”, “roofing shingles” etc. Those are LSI keywords. When Google sees those words around your target keyword, it gives them confidence that you’re writing quality stuff. Fortunately, it’s easy to find LSI keywords for any keyword. Just search for that keyword in Google and scroll to the bottom of the page where it says “searches related to…”

Geo Tagging and Naming Images

This to me is very under rated. This isn’t absolutely necessary but optimizing your images for popular keywords can land you traffic from Google Image Search. Which helps with your search engine placement.

I geo tag all of my GMB photos. When you name an image for an attorney it needs to be “Best Kansas City Personal Injury Attorney” not “Bill James-1” for an example.

Citation Services

Citations have become very important for local search or maps listing as most people know. The local citations are the most important as far as ranking in the 3-pack and SEO. First I will explain what a citation is and then I will explain local citations

A citation is an online reference to your business’s Name, Address and

Phone number (NAP). Like links to your website, Google uses them when evaluating the online authority of your business. Unlike links though, citations don’t need to be linked to your business’s website for you to be credited for them. So, having your NAP listed in plain text is fine.

A partial citation is one which includes only part of your NAP

– maybe your name and phone number or name and address. A full citation is one which includes your business’s complete NAP. It doesn’t matter how that information is visibly listed (horizontally or vertically), so long as it’s all there. This is an example of a full citation:

Alex’s Auto Repair, 1234 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64102 (816)432-1111

For a citation to help with your local SEO strategy, it’s important that it exactly matches the NAP on your website and on your Google My Business page. What format you choose for your citations isn’t important but picking one format and sticking with it is. You need to be 100% consistent in the name, address, and phone number used when building citations.

Why are citations important?

Along with links and reviews, citations are a primary factor that Google uses when deciding on which order to rank businesses in their local search results. To them, it’s logical that a business that’s mentioned a lot online deserves a higher ranking than one that’s hardly mentioned at all, especially if those mentions are on websites that are relevant in terms of location and/or topic.

Google uses citations to verify the accuracy of the contact details in their local business listings too, as listing addresses or phone numbers which are out of date, incorrect or falsified, looks bad on them and causes people to question the reliability of their search results. If the same NAP is listed on 50+ different websites then it’s highly likely to be correct information, and Google can be more confident in showing that NAP to searchers.

Another reason citations are important is that, as well as helping to improve your business’s rankings in local search results. The more places that your business’s NAP is listed, the higher the likelihood of people seeing it, and the more people who see it, the greater the number of people who will contact you.

One other key element. Have your pictures you will put in your citations named your search term. By that I mean don’t name an outside building picture “Alex’s Garage” name is “Best Auto Repair in Kansas City” Alex’s picture might be titled “Brake Repair Kansas City. The Google algorithm will pick that up and help with searches.

Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms in Google and Bing. Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.

Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (i.e., Superpages.com) help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business’s contact information and categorization. To paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals’ coach Dennis Green, citations help search engines confirm that businesses “are who we thought they were!”

I use Bright Local to see what citations are the most important and ranking for the competition. The key is then to add the citations that the competition is using and incorporate press releases for additional citations. You can charge $97 easy for citation services and almost 100% is profit.

If you have enough clients that need better citation services, you can make this part of your local search marketing. Add $97 to $147 to your services. Bright local is $25 per month, but if you are doing a lot of client work it is not an issue at all.

Reputation Management

Businesses with 2-star ratings and worse will come out in the audits. Fixing a reputation is easily worth $497 up front and $297 per month for the service.

An easy and amazing way to remove bad review sites from Google for your clients is this way. There is a law that was signed by President Clinton called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

When you let a webmaster know that they are using content illegally and I want you to take it down and there’s been news articles lately about how many people have been posting D.M.C.A. requests and how Google will remove these or web hosts.

Legally Google doesn’t have to remove this because of a general DMCA complaint. But like I said earlier it is much easier to take it down than go through the legal battle.

Another great way and is very easy to get results off the first page for you client to send an email and a certified letter to the webmaster of the website that has posted the negative review.

You will send a letter and an email from the site or your client.

[email protected] and you will send a cease and desist order.

This works very well also. A costly legal battle can put a website, a webmaster or a company out of business.

For an added touch of authenticity, I have created an email address for myself [email protected] which makes the email look more official and should demand a little extra attention from the website admins.

What we’re going to be doing at this point is contacting the website administrator (or whoever handles the day to day functions of the website) and firmly demanding that the post / url be removed.

Now, this isn’t to be taken as official legal advice or documentation to copy and paste… You should do your own research on this and make sure you’re abiding by all local laws and customizing it to best suite your purpose

Send them a formal ‘CEASE AND DESIST’ message, identifying the URL of the post, the nature of how it’s affecting my client’s professional and personal brand, and the argument that it is libel/slander that I’d really just rather not escalate into a civil claim.

It will take some time for the request to be addressed, investigated and removed… Be patient.

For the website, it’s just not worth it for them to combat these types of issues. 9 out of 10 times they will promptly remove the URL because. simply put. It’s not worth it to them to risk a potential lawsuit.

Once the URL or offending post is removed… It won’t be visible to Google anymore… And when Google crawls the offending website again… It won’t find that valid link… Thus, removing it from the search results and restoring your clients’ clean reputation.

It’s a crude and direct method that works very well-, but it doesn’t always work. That’s why it’s important to consider secondary methods for negative keyword SEO as a failsafe.

Resolving Bad Reviews For Your Clients

Rule #1 above all is they should always respond to reviews whether they are good or bad.

Contact the person if possible to try and resolve the reason for the bad review
Respond to the review and give a way for the person to contact you to resolve the issue
Get more good reviews

If the problem was resolved, ask the person to remove the bad review. If that will not work use the following method.

There are snippets for reviews and how they show up on Google.

Use a review listing service to make a 5-star review for you using the exact wording as the bad review.

PRO TIP: You are going to make the review with a positive spin. For example if the review said. “Horrible service, I will not return.” A review could be: “When I go to a restaurant I want great service. The last place had horrible service, I will not return. This place was great.”

So, you see the bad review said, “Horrible service, I will not return.” The good review uses the exact same words in a sentence.

What happens is in a few weeks as Google updates the pages and indexes the reviews it will fall off of the reviews. I recommend adding more 5-star reviews other than one.

Lead Generation and 3-pack Rankings

Lead generation should be your primary focus for these clients. Groupon advertising is based around getting new clients or customers in the door.

Lead generation can be done via video or 3-pack rankings. I recommend you incorporate both into your lead generation. Video ranking will happen much faster than the 3-pack ranking. You can generally rank videos in multiple cities for multiple keywords in a very short time.

You can price your leads on a per lead basis or a flat fee basis. The great thing is that you are going to be paid very well. But in the long run you will be saving your client a lot of money and getting them higher value customers. It is a win-win for both you and your client.

Start with the foundation for the Google My Business

Get a GMB (Google My Business) and fill it out completely.
Add Geo-tagged photos
Order Google Stack – it will have a Google Site that can be used.
Order Cloud Stack – also will have a Google Site.
Order Local Citations if not the same or not ordered. Use Bright Local to find the key citations that need to be ordered.
Press release stacking for more citations.

One of the quickest way to generate leads is with video marketing. The reason that we are going to use video for lead generation and the done for you service is because nothing ranks faster than video. You can be ranking in multiple cities for the maximum coverage and search results.

Set up your PhoneWagon number and then begin to get the leads coming in.

You have the opportunity to use our done for you video ranking service. Pricing will be flexible it will not be a one-size-fits-all. However, if you have a paying client and can show results it will be well worth it for you and your clients to do the done for you service.

Understand that the pricing is flexible and that does not mean cheap or inexpensive. You will make a profit from what you are charging your client. You need to figure in that most businesses run on a 25% profit rate. However you should figure that a good rule of thumb is that if you are charging $1500 per month for lead generation your cost is going to be roughly $500.

With the 25 videos that will be ranked you will have over 3,000 searches each month. This will generate a TON of leads and calls. This will make sure that you have a happy client that is paying you month after month.

Here are the requirements for the done for you service.

PhoneWagon, CallFire, or Twilio number. Any phone number that can be used for call tracking.
An mp4 version of your video. Mark will be adding your video to his channel for proper keyword, spinning and accuracy.
One city and 10 surrounding towns.
1 video – 1-3 mins in length. The video will be modified slightly and spun so that it can be uploaded to YouTube.
1 article – 3800-4200 characters in length. Microsoft Word shows the number of characters. (Use fiverr gig in Resource Section)
10 search terms to rank in. For example…

Best Fitness Center + City and State Yoga Fitness Near me + City and State Health Clubs + City and State

Boot Camp Workout + City and State

Cross Fit Training + City and State

Workout gyms + City and State

7. No changes can be made to the video after it is uploaded.

To set up the service, email Mark Goodman at [email protected]

Servicing Clients and Taking Payment

Accepting Payment

One of the easiest and well-known methods for getting paid is PayPal. Asides from being a household brand, and thus trusted, PayPal affords us some helpful features for billing and taking payment. The most important features are creating Buy Buttons and subscription Payment Links.

Create a PayPal Payment Link

Unlike buy buttons, payment links are direct web addresses that send people to a checkout page on PayPal’s site. The buyer can then use a PayPal account or a credit card to make a payment.

If you don’t already have one, create a PayPal account by visiting www.PayPal.com.

It is best to get a business PayPal account, but it is not required. You will need some official documentation if you want to create a business account. Consult with PayPal’s documentation and a tax professional for the proper amount of advice here.

Make sure to link a bank account to your PayPal account because this is how you’ll transfer your PayPal balance into your business or personal bank account.

Create PayPal Email Buy Link

Create a PayPal Account and log in at www.paypal.com
You may need a PayPal business account to create a buy link***
Up at the top of the page, select to Tools
Then select PayPal Buttons
On the right, select “Create New Button”
On the next page, choose “Button Type: Buy Now”
Name the item: (Example) “Video Lead Generation”
(Example) “Video Leads Chicago”
Choose an optional item ID – I usually use the offer initials, and a number to help me track which products are selling.

(Example) – “VideoIL01”

Fill in your price amount $XXX
You won’t need to customize anything else, so click Create

Button

On the next page, choose the EMAIL tab
Copy the email pay link and record it to your notes.

The PayPal link looks like this:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=s-click&hosted_button_id=##########/

Make sure you include the trailing slash at the end of the link if the PayPal buy link contains one.

Now you can send this link to clients and have them purchase your services.

For subscription links, such as those for monthly payments:

Choose Subscription in Step 6 and set the monthly price.

Using Stripe to Accept Payment

Stripe is a useful alternative to PayPal, but it is not preferred because it is a bit more difficult to use (in my opinion) and has a much lower tolerance with sellers.

Should you have an abundance of problems with a buyer, Stripe tends to side more with the buyer than the seller.

And unless you’re using a merchant with Stripe integration, deploying a payment system with them can be somewhat involved, and sometimes best left to a developer.

Nevertheless, you can use Stripe to accept one-time and subscription payments.

Check out this article on setting up subscription payments:

https://stripe.com/docs/subscriptions/tutorial

Collecting A Check

You can collect checks from your local clients, and even have non-local clients mail you one each month you service them.

Some businesses will prefer this method over all digital payment options.

If a client asks if they can pay by check, say “sure,” but try to steer them into paying via PayPal, preferably via a subscription so you never must bug them to pay you.

Note: If you don’t have a business checking account and a registered corporation, you’ll have to accept a check to your personal account. There could be some personal tax implications, so check with your accountant or tax professional for the best advice.

Accepting Cash

There’s a saying – Cash is King – and you know it is!

Who doesn’t like cash? The problem is that cash requires you to ask for it each time a payment is required.

For one-off sales, cash is fine, but for monthly contracts or long-term campaigns, cash is not ideal unless the business owner pays you for the entire campaign upfront.

This is for your protection, since if they only partially pay you in cash and you do the work, there is no recourse for you to get the balance from them.

Conclusion

As you begin taking your first steps in your new venture, remember to treat your business as a real means of earning a great living and putting real money in your pocket. Start with massive action. Don’t over-analyze things. Write your goals down and get started today.

This entire course is what I do on a daily basis working with my clients. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Take the information in the course. Apply it, and you will be successful.

I wish you nothing but the best of success and to have more success than I have.

Remember: Reading this book will not make you any money, only going out there and contacting clients who need their marketing problems solved.

Set yourself an easy goal at first. Find 100 prospects just like I’ve outlined. Follow up with those leads. The more calls you get, the more leads you’ll have, and more sales and money in your back pocket.

I know it is easier said than done a lot of times. You might have a full-time job that you are trying to get out from under. You might be struggling to make it in this offline world.

The key is organizing your time and writing down your schedule. Whether it is on your phone, the old school way of a calendar. A white board…it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you have a plan of action.