Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

hi,

you have a fantastic and great product. i would love to use this type of service from my mobile.

anyway, great response from Laura, and i agree with her that you need to use all types of activities to get the restaurant owners/managers to bring on board.

adding to that, i suggest the following....

1. For increasing Merchants:

A. you actually combine all the 3 methods u mentioned. you develop a sales brochure, call the prospective client/merchant, fix an appointment and then visit him, make call and hand over the brochure.

B. while doing point A, you do a demo in front of the restaurant owner/manager on how it is actually working. you should have a very high speed pda sort of thing and make the client a member of MyCoupon. then send him a coupon as if he gets it. so he will understand how it works, and nothing works better than a demo.

C. Have you already got any merchant, then use some of his coupon to attract new clients and make necessary price discounts of the merchant whose coupons you are using as selling tool.

D. I suggest you also put some testimonials of some the consumers and merchants who are registered user and who have used your MyCoupon service in the brochure

E. on top your current pricing, add some duration discount, and volume discount to the merchants to attract them. like, if they pay $135 they are in the system for 1month, but if they pay only $200 they are in for 3 months. again, if they give 50 coupons, each coupon is priced at $0.50, but if they give 100 coupons the price is $0.30

F. In order to attract merchants, you can offer to develop websites for restaurants who dont have and website make-over offer to those who have. in both cases you will have your logo and site linked. also the restaunrant websites should have enough coverage of this service and a link to your sites registration page.

G. Use some sort of Merchandising, free of cost, for the restaurants to be visible for consumers to know that they can get discount coupons thru' sms, once they pass a restaurant in the street. you can develop small-size Shop Sign or Door Stickers on the restaurant front etc. that will make this service and restaurant prominent to the consumers.

H. Initiate a referral program for merchants and consumers under which anybody referring a new merchant and/or consumer will get certain benefit on top of the usual coupon offers.


2. Now whether the restaurants will be merchants or not depends on....

A. how do you solve the problem of theft/overusage of a coupon. since this is not a hardcopy coupon, rather its in a sms, how will the merchants be sure that a person is using a coupon more that 1 time?? this is a very serious security issue for the prospective merchants.

B. How do a consumer come to know in the first place that a particular restaurant is giving some discount coupon thru' your sms service? since there will be so many merchants in the database how will a merchant be out of that clutter/jungle to reach the consumer. its not possible for a consumer to know if any new restaurant has been added to your merchant list or not? consumers dont know actually how many new restaurants are coming into being etc. unless consumer is communicated then you cant expect merchants to have good business, not every consumer is net-savvy.

C. How much MORE sales will this generate? to the restaurants this is a promotional expense to be a merchant. in that case they would like to know how much more revenue will come against this expense?

D. what is the projected download of an offer coupon in a month, and what is the conversion of the coupon receiving to redemption of coupon at the restaurant. this is something the restaurants will want to see/know before committing.

E. How much is the perceived benefit competitor, who is a merchant, of a particular restaurant is receiving by using this service over that non-merchant restaurant.

hope this helps. do let us know what you think.

cheers!!