How to spend $5k/mo to market a new social buying site?

[JMorton6]

Well folks, I've decided to take the plunge: I'm launching a social buying site (for the uninitiated, that's like Groupon or LivingSocial) and dumping every penny of my savings and income into it.

Call me crazy, but I have a gut feeling it's gonna work, and my gut feelings tend to be right on the money. I'm aware of the ups and downs of the business so please don't try to dissuade me: it's a done deal so just please wish me luck.

So how would you spend $5k/mo to market a new social buying site? That's the rough starting budget I've decided on, and I have 2 goals for it: 1) build a huge email list, and 2) sell a lot of deals / coupons.

Please take a few minutes out of your busy day to look over my list below and help out with any answers or advice you might know. Your help literally means the world to me and my family. Thank you in advance.

Here is the list, in no particular order. What % of my budget should I allocate to each item? Items marked free are those I plan on doing myself or getting a friend, family member or someone who owes me money to do free of charge.

UPDATED - 6/4/2011
TENTATIVELY ALLOCATED - $660/mo (13%)
REMAINING - $4,340/mo (87%)

1. SEO ($300/mo?). A small but reputable European SEO firm agreed to do 750 article links + 100 social bookmark links + 250 press releases + 750 blog links + 400 pligg links for $300/mo, which seems like a good deal. Unless someone feels this list is missing something?

2. AdWords ($?/mo). An obvious choice - I'm going to max out my bids and pray for as much traffic as I can get. I have no idea as of now if it'll be $200/mo or $2000/mo worth. Any advice here - can I estimate this more accurately?

3. SOCIAL MEDIA ADS ($?/mo). Same as above - I think that Facebook and Twitter ads are probably a must, right? Same as AdWords, I have no idea how much traffic they're capable of sending.

4. WEBSITE ADS ($?/mo). So far, I've decided to try buying adspace on deal aggregator sites (like YipIt) and deal forums. I'm going to ask them for quotes this weekend, so once again - no idea what the cost is yet, or what % of my budget to allocate to this?

5. EMAIL SOLO ADS ($360/mo?). I'm very seriously considering using the $180 service from optinlistmarketing.com to email 2 million of their opt-in users. Plus they have a special on now that gets you 2 emails for that price. So for $360/mo ($180 x 2) I can send 4 emails (say 1/wk) to 2 million people. Is this the best plan as far as email marketing goes?

6. AFFILIATE PROGRAM ($?/mo). I know this will be a key part of our success, but am only now learning about setting up a program by reading through clickbank.com. We will have software built into our site from day 1 to track affiliates. Can someone please give me some tips on attracting a ton of affiliates? And how many % should I allocate here?

7. FORUMS ($0/mo). I have a family member with lots of spare time who can do this for hours every day until hell freezes over. The idea is to flood every local and every deal-oriented forum with non-intrusive, constructive and helpful posts. Any more advice here?

8. NEWS MEDIA ($0/mo). The same bored family member will spend the other half of their day researching every reporter from every news outlet under the sun, coming up with ideas to interest each in our company, and proceeding to contact them. Any special wisdom here that I need to know about?

9. BUYING TRAFFIC ($?/mo). Haven't looked into this at all yet - is it a good idea and if so, how do I do it properly and how many % do I allocate?

10. BUYING FACEBOOK / TWITTER FOLLOWERS ($?/mo). I'm going to hire some people from these and other forums to do this. I don't know how if I'll get good ROI on this, but the last thing I want is a Facebook page with 150 fans - there's no faster way to scare off potential clients. I want to get into the tens of thousands ASAP so that we look popular. Any idea how many % to spend here?

11. YOUTUBE / TWITTER CELEBS ($?/mo). I think it'd be worth giving this a shot: basically paying YouTube celebs to plug our site. Maybe give em affiliate accounts and let them earn commission? What do you guys think?

12. GIVEAWAYS ($?/mo). How about attracting people with giveaways, like a free iPhone4 every month to a random subscriber or something? Is that worth the money, and how much should I spend on it?

That's all for now folks, these are all the ideas, in various stages of development, that I have right now. Please help a fellow underdog and pitch in with some useful advice, and suggest more ways of making the site popular if you know of some! Thanks very much in advance guys!

 

[HamburgerBoy]

7. FORUMS ($0/mo). I have a family member with lots of spare time who can do this for hours every day until hell freezes over. The idea is to flood every local and every deal-oriented forum with non-intrusive, constructive and helpful posts. Any more advice here?

Tell your grandmother that free iPods always get people interested.

 

[sjwaste]

Does this list assume you have developed a product and have a budget to continue to develop it? I know nothing about Internet marketing, but the thing I will suggest to you (as a former consultant in an unrelated industry) is that you primarily commit to developing a product, do not launch until you have a good product, and do not cut back on development once you start seeing a little bit of money.

 

[SKORPI0]

Isn't one thread enough for this?

Please help newbie get traffic for new Groupon clone

 

[Wonderful Pork]

Why should I pick your site over Groupon or LivingSocial (both household names)? Will you offer better deals?

Groupon is hemorrhaging money like crazy, and this is after receiving a billion dollars in investment. Short logic (Groupon IPO: Pass on this deal)

I'd save my $5k/month until I had a business plan better that Groupon's.

 

[Q]

Make sure that 'reputable' SEO firm doesn't spam stuff (which it sounds like they are doing). Black hat SEO is where it looks like it's going.

And sometimes just getting a really damn good deal is enough to make your website noticed. From what I remember, nobody had heard of LivingSocial until they got that Amazon giftcard deal and it exploded on Slickdeals. (Now that also might have been it's launch as well....)

 

[xanis]

If you're seriously considering dumping everything you have into this, it might be worth your while to hire a marketing consultant or firm, don't you think?

 

[MaxFusion16]

focus on the product, don't worry about marketing right now.
make sure you have a solid offering, good deals will get passed around.

think woot.com, I don't think they advertised at all, the whole thing started with a gimmick, or a "bag of crap" as they elegantly put it.

 

[sjwaste]

You do have a proper business plan written, right? If not, go back and write one.

 

[anyusername]

You are spending every penny you have on this but you are asking an internet tech forum how to market it?

 

[goog40]

Make sure that 'reputable' SEO firm doesn't spam stuff (which it sounds like they are doing). Black hat SEO is where it looks like it's going.

And sometimes just getting a really damn good deal is enough to make your website noticed. From what I remember, nobody had heard of LivingSocial until they got that Amazon giftcard deal and it exploded on Slickdeals. (Now that also might have been it's launch as well....)

Lol, and that one deal alone probably cost them tens of millions of dollars.

 

[purbeast0]

You are spending every penny you have on this but you are asking an internet tech forum how to market it?

i always wonder about this mentality ... seen it a few times here on ATOT.

 

[xanis]

i always wonder about this mentality ... seen it a few times here on ATOT.

He has to be slightly retarded. I would think that if you're dumping your ENTIRE LIFE'S SAVINGS into something, you'd at least hire some professionals to make sure that it's mostly being done right.

 

[God Mode]

Hang out at harvard and suck pensu for some scraps.

 

[roguerower]

Can I have your stuff when this venture goes under?

Nothing says stellar business plan like asking ATOT for advice.

 

[slayer202]

this is a terrible, terrible idea...

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

You'd be better off spending the money on coke & whores. It would still be going to waste just the same.

 

[yllus]

Serious answer - do Craigslist spamming and follow in the footsteps of now-giants.

 

[Fritzo]

Market is saturated, idea is not working for those in the game, I'd save your money.

 

[Q]

Lol, and that one deal alone probably cost them tens of millions of dollars.

Well it helps when Amazon is your primary investor.

 

[Crono]

You may have answered this before, but how are you going to negotiate and secure these deals?

It would seem to be hard even for a well-staffed and funded company to get good group deals. Good luck to you, though.

 

[JS80]

100% adwords

 

[JMorton6]

Does this list assume you have developed a product and have a budget to continue to develop it? I know nothing about Internet marketing, but the thing I will suggest to you (as a former consultant in an unrelated industry) is that you primarily commit to developing a product, do not launch until you have a good product, and do not cut back on development once you start seeing a little bit of money.

Thanks, that's good advice. We'll focus on service 1st and everything else 2nd.

Why should I pick your site over Groupon or LivingSocial (both household names)? Will you offer better deals?

Groupon is hemorrhaging money like crazy, and this is after receiving a billion dollars in investment. Short logic (Groupon IPO: Pass on this deal)

I'd save my $5k/month until I had a business plan better that Groupon's.

There are a ton of complaints about their service online, so we will strive to take much better care of both coupon buyers and the businesses offering them. We will also offer some unique things they don't have, such as a rewards program that credits a % of your purchases back to your account. We're currently looking for more ways to differentiate ourselves, so please suggest some if you can. Also we're working on an iPhone app, which I know they both have, but the other 99% of the competition doesn't.

Make sure that 'reputable' SEO firm doesn't spam stuff (which it sounds like they are doing). Black hat SEO is where it looks like it's going.

And sometimes just getting a really damn good deal is enough to make your website noticed. From what I remember, nobody had heard of LivingSocial until they got that Amazon giftcard deal and it exploded on Slickdeals. (Now that also might have been it's launch as well....)

So how do I make sure they don't spam? Also, I thought posting links what SEO was all about - how do they "not spam" them when any links created for SEO are essentially spam?

You do have a proper business plan written, right? If not, go back and write one.

Got a decent one in my head but yea good point - I'll start working on a written one today. Thanks.

He has to be slightly retarded. I would think that if you're dumping your ENTIRE LIFE'S SAVINGS into something, you'd at least hire some professionals to make sure that it's mostly being done right.

Lol show me a successful business owner who isn't a little (or very) nuts! Marketing firms are well and good, but when your starting budget is 5k/mo and half of that would go to them, they're a waste of money. Now when my budget is 20k or higher after a few months and a marketing firm would cost 10% of that, sure!

Serious answer - do Craigslist spamming and follow in the footsteps of now-giants.

Thanks I'll check out the link in a bit.

Important question: how do I find the footsteps of the giants?

Market is saturated, idea is not working for those in the game, I'd save your money.

It's working man - the margins are huge and there's more buyers every day. If Groupon has 70 million subscribers, what about the other 930 million who've never heard of em? If they're burning through cash like crazy it's because they're trying to get to those 930 before Google and Facebook do.

You may have answered this before, but how are you going to negotiate and secure these deals?

It would seem to be hard even for a well-staffed and funded company to get good group deals. Good luck to you, though.

Not a clue - I guess we're just going to call up business owners, explain how we can help them, why we're better than the competition and hope for the best. I've been in sales all my life, and in my experience "Hi, I'm calling to offer you more business and more money" is always a welcome call at any business.

100% adwords

Serious?

 

[Q]

So how do I make sure they don't spam? Also, I thought posting links what SEO was all about - how do they "not spam" them when any links created for SEO are essentially spam?

A lot of SEO is related to how your website is coded / set up for search engines to easily crawl through and snag up your data. For example, if you ever see websites that have URLs like:
website.com/video-games/ps3/rpg/final-fantasy

They do it for a reason: SEO. Once again I don't know much about it ATM, but just some things to think about.

As for gaining links, yes that helps SEO and pagerank, but only when it's legit postings. For example, if TechCrunch sees your website and likes it, they'll post an article about it on their site, and have a link there. That's great SEO for you. But if you go posting your site in every forum you can find, comments section of random blogs, etc, that's going to actually negatively impact your rankings, and actually lower your spot on Google, for example. Google is really cracking down on this black hat SEO type stuff this year.
So I'd be very wary of that company you found...

Also

Might want to read this.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/03/why-daily-deals-raw-deal/

Note:

The deal companies don’t provide merchants any contact information for deal purchasers. It’s up to them to engage with each customer and find ways to get them to come back. There are definitely ways to do this, so if you run a deal, make sure you do. Encourage customers to sign up for your Twitter or Facebook feed. Get their email address. Hook them. But I rarely see local businesses do this.

 

[Xstatic1]

ur website up yet?

for now, focus on content, content, content. <---- having great content is what will separate u from the others