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Is there anyone that has experience with some groopon like applications (clones) and would like to share with me their experience?. I am just a programmer and I don't have much experience with marketing.

I decided to start my first own e-business with a clone. But I am very confused, and I think some advice would be interesting for me:

-Are there any recommendations I can get from you to improve my sales, find more customers, or other marketing tips?

-How many people approximatively are needed to run such business?

-How can I position myself in the head of the customer?

-Should I restrict certain items?

-Other...

I am really interested in your comments.

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2 Answers

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My core tip: Remember that the customers are the people who pay the bills. You company's customer are advertisers. You are providing business seeking a quality platform to advertise their business.

the product you are providing those businesses is a user base of people who have asked to see their offers. This is your product. To compete against the major players (see @Genadinik tip #1) you will need a platform that does something better (a) More product, (b) Better product demographic, (c) better support for the product. To me this means that your user base will need to be a niche that Groupon et all can't fill.

You are not a technology company-- you are a marketing company. But then again, I am a marketing guy so I might see everything in the context of the marketing challenge!

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Interesting.I will keep in mind your advice. One of the things i am more afraid of is how to design a promotional campaign. I don't have much knoledge on thit area and i am really interested in discover what are the best ways to tackle the marketplace from the marketing point of view. Maybe you know some book or some interesting literature i can read to give me some ideas. Thanks for sharing your point of view with me. – sfrj May 12 '11 at 10:09
up vote 1 down vote 
Tip #1 You will not win competing directly against the current players
Tip #2 You need to have something unique or original (not hyper-local) about your approach
Tip #3 Chances are you will only figure out an original approach by first copying the current successful companies in the space directly, and then modifying your approach based on the insight you gain 
Tip #4 If you start by asking for tips, you should probably not start it as a real business since you must know your target market extremely well.
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That is a good answer. Thanks – sfrj May 11 '11 at 21:22

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