The weather in the last few weeks has been a meteorological nightmare.  On the bus this morning a gentlemen stepped on to the bus with an umbrella that…looked more like a tent.  You might be wondering right about now, “Michael, you’re a marketing guy, who works for a company that provides applications to measure the impact and ROI of Social Media, what in the world does this have to do with umbrellas!?”

In a metaphorical way, that other guy’s umbrella was a group buying site like GroupOn or Living Social – over engineered and difficult.  My umbrella is like Social Offer from Crowd Factory – small and functional. The moral of the story is that it is critical in life and business to have the right tools for the right time.   If you give me just a few paragraphs I can explain.  First, let’s look at this from view of a the retailer using a localized group buying service:

Now let’s look at how Crowd Factory does Group Deals

The group buying industry has gone into the billions category and unless the moon falls out of alignment it will continue to grow.  Crowd Factory has already been providing the ability to let companies setup contests and group buying within a matter of minutes.  Our customers spoke and we listened.  Now, remember when I asked you to give me a few paragraphs, here is what will blow your socks off.

One of our customers is launching a group buying offer to a fan base of nearly 35 million.  The campaign was setup in our dashboard within 2 minutes (it would have been faster but apparently someone in Marketing couldn’t agree on a font).  To get this deal on their home page it was going to take 12 emails, 4 phone calls, 6 meetings, one project plan, 9 signatures and someone to promise to wear a clown suit to the company picnic (one of those conditions is not true).

Social Offer from Crowd Factory now allows you to do the following in real-time:

Within the following amount of time you can:

=> 60 seconds: Create a group deal.

=> 90 seconds: Deploy your deal on one of Crowd Factory’s hosted microsites.

=> And within 3 minutes: Update your Corporate Facebook fan page with the deal.

Let that sink in for a second, because when this was presented to me, the wheels in my head started going at full speed.  Do any of the following apply to you?

• You are a marketing professional in anything from a startup to a Fortune 500 company and responsible for the growth & sales of your company.
• You do not have a lot of influence over your IT group or maybe your IT resources are very limited.  So getting a new web page could take weeks!
• Starting June 1st you have the coolest campaign of the year starting and you looked at a group buying companies, but it wasn’t the right fit as your needs go beyond one city and/or do not want to manage multiple offers.
• The people that work in your customer service department feel they would be more than happy to handle any issues with their group purchase as opposed to letting a 3rd party deal with billing and upsetting the consumer (I have heard about these nightmare stories more than I care to remember).
• The corporate website is nice, but this specific deal may got lost in the fold and as it turns out YOU manage a Facebook fan page of 45,000 fans.

Now…keep all of this mind and look at the following image:

Click here to the full size, it's worth it!

Did I blow your mind?  This will work with almost any industry:

• Travel, Airlines, Hotels – all hospitality
• Banking
• Healthcare & Medicine
• Retail &Clothes
• Restaurants, Food & Groceries
• Mobile Communications
• Cars
• Personal Services

This is the going to be the first in a series of my commentary and thoughts on group buying, if you have any comments or questions or rants – send it on down!  Welcome to the Group Buying Revolution.