How Groupon and Facebook can help you launch your new business

As a former manager in the newspaper business, I know the struggles that the industry is currently facing with increased costs and decreased subscriptions and readership. Once upon a time the best way to promote your new business was to take out a series of advertisements in your local newspaper. They had the readership levels required to get people in the door and making it one of the best ways to market your business. While newspaper advertising still has value to their customers and those reading it, there are better options to launch your new business and build a loyal following amongst your new customers at little to no cost to yourself.

Take a bit of time and get to know Facebook and their services before your grand opening and you will be rewarded with followers and potential customers within your area. Creating a page for your business is very easy to do and with the help of your friends and family, you can get people liking your page and inquiring about your new business before you even open your doors to the public. Simply invite your friends to join, create an event for your grand opening and ask all your friends and family to both invite their connections as well as talk about it in their status.

Once you have a following, you can use your Facebook page to let people know about what events or special promotions you’re running at any given time. In the past you would have to fork out money for a regularly running newspaper ad and cross your fingers that potential clients spotted the ad and that the offer appealed to them. Now you can simply communicate this via Facebook to all of your regular customers.

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Group buy sites like Groupon also present an amazing opportunity to help plan a successful launch for your business. Simply contact the local sales representative and explain that you’re about ready to open and want to utilize their service. You will want to discuss the offer you’re willing to give group buyers, how many packages you’d like to offer and when your business will want to offer the promotion. In turn the group buying company will give the pitch to their existing customers and help assist you acquire new leads for you new business.

My next post will concentrate on helping you with your Facebook and some ideas on how you can promote your company to your fans as well as their social network.