Facebook: The Best Platform for Daily Deals?

Daily Deal websites have become a popular Internet marketing trend over the last few years. Many online sellers use ‘interest-based ‘ specialisation as a means of utilising the deal-a-day model, but it is mainly used to stimulate local commerce. Services like Groupon and Living Social are popular with marketers because they stimulate large amounts of business through significantly reduced prices, which are manageable losses because of the limited availability of the offers. Depending on the success of the venture, a quick burst of interest and sales can add to the already targeted PPC and SEO efforts of online marketers. Mobile versions of the services also offer the ability for both customers and sellers to capitalise on the exact location of the user.

Google and Facebook have both initiated their early forms of daily deal services, both wishing to capitalise on the revenue brought in by opportunistic sellers. Buyers are also opportunistic, and this could potentially work in Facebook’s favour specifically. With 750 active users spending prolonged periods on Facebook, a lot of people will be aware of the service once it gets going, especially if the ‘deals’ option is integrated into the homepage. Local deals will effectively be falling into users’ laps.

Facebook’s established social capacity greatly simplifies the sharing side of these deals. Services could offer group discounts, with the knowledge that if someone is considering a deal, a decision could be made amongst friends there and then without leaving the website. There could also be a potential benefit to Facebook’s PPC ads. Although its targeting capabilities are already high, marketers wishing to target based on location would be able to assume that users on the Facebook ‘deals’ page are open to the idea of being coerced into a purchase.

Facebook already has a payment system in place for their social games network, Facebook ‘credits’. There could be an opportunity to introduce a payment system for deals as well, one that might tie in with non-deal-based e-commerce services. Unlike the limited scope of single-brand e-commerce, daily deal offers are wide in type as well as significantly opportunity-based, which may make Facebook the ideal platform for the model.