How to harness the power of a group buying platform

Online group buying is a revolutionary marketing platform and business model that has attracted a lot of hype - both positive and negative - in the marketing community. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement, but bear in mind that group buying is a powerful marketing tool, and as with any marketing tool, it comes with many benefits, needs to be utilised properly, and has risks. However, these can be easily reduced or mitigated with the proper know-how. 

I believe that group buying offers marketers the 'holy grail', granting long-term results in the form of new customers from your desired demographic, customers who come back and continue a long-term relationship with your brand. It is also capable of generating effective branding and revenue lift.

To incorporate group buying into your overall marketing plan strategically, here are eight basic guidelines for brands and retailers. 

1. Choose a good partner.  When choosing a group buying platform, it is important that marketers choose a company that has a good image and reputation in the market. The people that you choose to work with are crucially important, as creating the best overall group buying strategy – from deal creation, through marketing and platform communications, to technical specifications and after sales service – is what makes the deal most effective.
2. Package a 'real' deal. You have to cut a proper deal.  In many markets, and especially in Hong Kong, the shoppers are sophisticated.  They know a good deal when they see one, and they know when something is not a deal posing as a deal.  Your promotion needs to be packaged as a 'wow' deal, or your results will be mediocre at best.
3. Know your limits and set them. A good group buying partner will work with you to identify your constraints, taking into consideration factors such as capacity, operations, and flow.  This is crucial for the end-quality experience for your new customers, not to mention absolutely necessary to keep your retention rates increasing and to keep your customer service issues low.
4. It is not just about the price — emphase on value and experience.  The price is an important hook to get your potential new customers clicking on your deal, but the 'wow' deal is all about the value customers receive. Retaining them comes from the experience, from pre-sales, post-sales, and the actual experience of the deal itself.  Bonus points if your deal is packaged as an experience.
5. Allocate your resources.  You need to make sure your team, especially your front-line staff, are all ready to handle the influx of new customers.
6. Spread out your media portfolio. Group buying should be a marketing channel for you, but not the only one.  Do not abandon your existing campaigns or put all your eggs into one basket.  Optimise.
7. Use your social media resources.  Do you have a Facebook Page? Use it.  Twitter, Weibo? Use them.  Email list?  Have your new customers sign up when redeeming if they would like to have updates.  You need to continue the conversation you have with them to keep building this long-term relationship.
8. This is just the beginning. The job doesn't end with the launch of a group buying promotion. Together, the brand and group buying platform must keep in constant contact during the redemption period. Your platform should be advising your brand on how to make the experience more profitable by increasing the average spend per user and how to increase customer retention.  Group buying users are valuable new customers, as social media savvy influencers, they have the potential to become your brand advocates.

At BeeCrazy, we go the extra mile to ensure the best customer service for both brands and consumers. We like to think of our business relations as a partnership working towards the same goal – a fantastic deal for customers and a powerful marketing platform for brands.

If nothing else, remember the 3Qs—Quality, quality, quality.  This is the reason people buy your deal in the first place, redeem it, and come back as valued customers.

Group Buying is in its infancy and there are more developments yet to come as it continues to evolve from its present incarnation.  As such, we are all learning, and I would welcome your feedback, marketers/brands and community members alike.   Let’s keep this dialogue going!