Back in the early 1970s, Volvo’s agency, Scali McCabe & Sloves (SMS) of New York, was tasked with developing a campaign that would elevate what until then had been a quirky Swedish car company that became the poster child for the “boxy” (unsexy) sedan.

SMS talked to scores of drivers who swore by their Volvos, and in the end, one piece of insight stuck out. Rabid Volvo fans tended to be better educated, more liberal and tended to make decisions less on emotion and more on cold hard facts (at least that’s what they reported). If Mercedes was the brand for the Wall Streeter, and BMW for the aspirational mid-level exec, then Volvo was for the college professor.

Volvo ad from Scali, McCabe Sloves, circa 1974

The agency then created a campaign (mainly in magazines and newspapers) around the “facts” that seemed important to Volvo’s buyers. The campaign was built around the tagline “The car for people who think.”

For more than fifteen years, Volvo held to this position, and over time, became known for its uncompromising commitment to safety, as exemplified by such things as crash-resistant passenger cages and rear windshield wipers. For time, they actually used crash test dummies as the brand’s “spokespeople.” Volvo was seen (and actually was) as the carmaker who was on the cutting edge of safety technology.

Volvo’s ads unapologetically featured long copy, and were designed to “look like” the vehicles themselves, eschewing fancy lifestyle or performance photos and stylish, contemporary fonts. With a fraction of the budget that most European automakers boasted, Volvo not only carved out a meaningful niche for itself, but also saw sales rise impressively, topping out around 140,000 vehicles. Drivers who bought Volvos did so because they thought of themselves (and wanted to be seen) as thoughtful people who weren’t swayed by “less significant” things like styling and performance. Volvos became huge with the Chai Tea-drinking, NPR-listening, pipe-smoking, Utne Reader-reading, “Twin Peaks”-watching “leather elbow patch crowd.”

Then, starting in the 1990s, Volvo inexplicably made a dramatic turn. Management made the decision to compete head-on with the fast-growing German marques. They started turning out more “stylish” models. Added turbo-powered performance. And basically, chose to compete with the Germans on their turf, instead of forcing them to play defense on the whole “safety” position.

Volvo definitely paid the price for trying to be like everyone else. Their sales have fallen by half since 2004. The company has gone through a couple of ownership changes, first sold to Ford Motor Co., then recently to Geeley Automotive of China in 2010.

Besides losing their safety positioning, Volvo also lost their safety edge. None of their models have showed up in the top ten of the National Highway Safety Board crash tests for many years. Younger drivers likely have no feeling about the brand, if they are aware of it at all.

But perhaps, Volvo died for you. It stands as an example of what happens when you have a strong position that is meaningful to a decent percentage of the category’s buyers, and then fail to invest in it, both through an operational and marketing standpoint.

Given the tough comeptitive landscape of the auto industry, it’s hard to see Volvo making any kind of dramatic comeback in the near future, at least here in the states. There are a quarter of a billion drivers in China, though, and that may prove to be Volvo’s next hunting ground.

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Some are in their “infancy” and have seemed to come from nowhere to capture market share and show no signs of slowing down. Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, for example, didn’t exist ten years ago but are worth more than many century-old consumer favorites.

A much larger number are what we could consider “mature brands” that have been around for a long while, but still experience steady growth and still attract new customers in a consistent if not spectacular way. Many consumer packaged goods manufacturers, automakers and durable products (i.e., appliances) would fit in here.

Others are finding their trajectory on the decline and show no signs of recovery. These brands and companies seem to be running out the clock, careening towards the inevitable buy-out, bankruptcy reorganization or liquidation. A few of these (at least, according to Business Insider) could be J.C.Penney, Martha Stewart Living, Volvo and the WNBA.

So what is it that triggers a mature brand’s decline into soon-to-be-irrelevance? Why are some brands successful at continually “remaking” themselves in the eyes of consumers, while others can’t seem to get any traction? Are there steps mature brands can take to stave off “old age”?

While there are probably as many reasons for a brand’s decline as there are flailing brands, the main causes seem to fall disproportionately in the following camps: falling behind in efficiency, innovation or financing; being victim to changing market conditions, technology or consumer megatrends; losing touch with core customers (moving away from why they became customers in the first place); and (this is the most preventable) walking away from a solid market position into standing for “nothing special” (I’m talking to you, Volvo).

While it would be naive to think any brand will prove to be immortal (at least in the incarnation it is currently in), there are a few things brands can do to ensure they live to a ripe old age:

Find new applications for your brand’s offerings.
The classic example here would have to be Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. While the use of baking products has been on a steep decline since the Women’s Movement of the 1970s, Arm & Hammer discovered its baking soda was remarkably effective at absorbing unwanted odors. Check your refrigerator, litter box or laundry, and chances are you’ll find the Arm & Hammer name there somewhere.

Find a new audience for your core offerings.
I once worked on behalf of a software company that spent tens of millions of dollars developing a sophisticated system for hospitals that would coordinate all patient records, automatically update them and make them available for any authorized specialist to access. Pretty cool stuff. The problem was, the red tape, the bureaucracy and Federal privacy requirements of the hospital industry made it unlikely the company would turn a profit in the foreseeable future, no matter how amazing it was. Once the firm’s management team came to terms with this, they asked how their software technology could be applied to other industries. Today, the company is one of the leading providers of “close-ended” networks for organizations that need to manage and coordinate multiple sub-contractors (aerospace, defense technology, etc.).

Narrow focus to a growth niche.
It wasn’t that long ago that Nokia owned the mobile phone market. At one point, the Finnish company boasted a market share in excess of 50%. Then they got taken down. Emerging companies such as Apple and Samsung understood that “mobile data” was about to change everything. Apple never made a “flip phone” back when they were all the rage. They focused on a narrow niche (one that Nokia didn’t even see as relevant). Which brings us to the next point…

Continually be asking “what’s next?”
Change, as the saying goes, is a constant. New technologies arrive at a mind-numbing pace. Today’s fad passes faster than it arrived. Consumers are on a never-ending quest for convenience and value..

This is why it is important (especially for market leaders) to employ a Flanking Strategy. This is a commitment to make sure the next wave lifts you up and doesn’t drown you. Dedicate a meaningful budget (say, 10% of your net profits) to figuring out where your industry could possibly be going when it comes to technology and consumer trends. Had Nokia done this, it might actually be a relevant company these days.

Keep the baby, but throw out the bathwater (radical repositioning).

Old Spice. Domino’s Pizza. UPS. These are brands that any logical reasoning says should be headed for the scrap heap. But look at what they were able to do, just by “radical repositioning.” Old Spice is now a favorite of teen boys. Domino’s sales were up nearly 40% over two years. And UPS has emerged as the “favorite” courier of American business.

Radical repositioning isn’t easy, it isn’t cheap and it won’t work for every brand. But when the planets are in alignment, it can prove to be the Brand Fountain of Youth.

My advice to all brands is to accept that things aren’t always going to be the way they are now. Consumers will change. Technology isn’t going to slow down. And new competitors will continually come out of the woodwork. (Don’t believe me? Just enter your most-used search terms into Google, and see who shows up.)

By accepting that things will inevitably change (then taking the steps to react to them), the odds of your brand staying relevant well into its “golden years” will go up substantially.

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He may as well been referring to measuring the results of a typical marketer’s online spending.

While marketers are quick to acknowledge the impact and potential of digital and social media, a large majority are not so sure about the effectiveness of their own efforts. For example, in a new survey of 3,000 marketers conducted by Social Media Examiner, only 22% said they think their Facebook advertising is“effective.” Similar numbers have been reported regarding online display advertising.

Yet, the marketing dollars keep flowing.

Why are marketers continuing to up their online budgets at a time when they’re unsure about how that spending affects the bottom line? It could be that on some level, they “sense” it’s working, even though (as in the obscenity case above), they can’t tell you how.

The main problem to measuring results of online media is that many of us tend to view each element of online spending (social media, paid search, SEO, display, mobile, email) as a separate silo. We’d like to see accountability for every dollar we spend.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. The customer’s “path to purchase” has changed from a predictable funnel to an “Influence Loop” with many new possible touch points and opportunities for information and influence, from social conversations, authority and customer review sites and long-tail search terms to the “old school” media of TV, print, outdoor and radio.

So is there any way to measure your program’s effectiveness? A popular approach some progressive marketers are taking is a metric called Effective Cost Per Action (eCPA). Rather than focus on outmoded measurements such as clicks or “likes,” eCPA is built around a “multi-attribution model.” In short, it doesn’t give “credit” for a sale or conversion to any individual click or action, but acknowledges that the overall “mix” of elements may have contributed along the sales path.

Under an eCPA model, you first need to define what counts as an “action” (examples: a sale, an inquiry, a download, a video view, a completed survey, an opt-in, a review, or any combination). Then you would divide your advertising-plus-online spend by the number of defined “actions,” regardless of where your analytics say they came from (yes, even those actions from repeat customers, who at some point are “influenced” to purchase again). This will give you a “cost per action” figure that can be used as a benchmark, either by looking back at past years or quarters, or for reference in coming years.

But how do you know if your Facebook ads, for example, are pulling their weight? You can always take a look at the traditional engagement statistics, but with an understanding that such actions do not necessarily indicate a desire to buy. Trying to attribute incremental sales to a single touchpoint (“Last Click Attribution” for example) totally ignores how today’s mix of mass, social, digital and mobile “mesh together” to create a much fuller experience for the consumer.

Perhaps eCPA is not as comforting as a spreadsheet populated with “click-throughs” but it certainly addresses the reality of the New Customer Path.

If you’d like to learn more about eCPA or are interesting in trying it out, feel free to drop me a line. Either leave a comment or email me at mickey @quisenberry.net

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Over the years, the slide rule got simpler, more colorful, slimmer and even more specialized. In the 1930s, for example, the revolutionary E6B model was released–a circular slide rule created specifically for airline pilots. In 1952, the Swiss watch company Breitling took the E6B a leap further by embedding a circular slide rule into a pilot’s wrist watch.

The Texas Instruments TI-30, circa 1976

More than 100 years of iterations, based on the same basic technology.

Then the ceiling caved in. In 1976, Texas Instruments released the TI-30–a $25 scientific calculator that rendered 100 years of slide rule technology obsolete.

Okay, so enough with the slide rule history lesson already. What this story really demonstrates is how most “innovation” comes in the form of incremental improvements. And to the outside observer, those incremental improvements were just what was called for. The world didn’t need (and wasn’t looking for) a new technology to replace the slide rule for calculating trig equations or logarithms. But when the pocket calculator came along (which was more or less a “repurposing” of off-the-shelf technologies that made the transistor radio possible), well, 100 years of ”new and improved” slide rules weren’t worth the wood they were made of.

Such is the dynamic of “disruptive technologies.” They seemingly come out of nowhere, but are mostly just a reimagining of existing technologies, harnessed for a specific new purpose.

Disruptive technologies have been with us for a long time. Flushing toilets, electric lighting, frozen entrees, the iPod. These are a few not-so-distant examples. Of late, it seems every time your pick up the paper (though today it’s most likely a tablet), you’ll read about yet another long-standing technology that’s been banished to the history books. Be it record stores, travel agencies, film cameras or “snail mail.”

The photo to the right gives us a snapshot of how personal technologies have evolved in just the last two decades.

ABOVE: 1993 Technology BELOW: Same Technology 2013

With “disruptive” technologies now coming at us faster and faster, what can industry do to make sure they’re not on the same track as the slide rule? A few things come to mind:

1. Develop a “flanking strategy.” Just because you own 90% of the market doesn’t mean you always will. No matter your market share, you are potentially one technological advance away from being out of business. So rather than stay “fat and happy” with your situation, invest 10% of your profits towards a flanking strategy. Call it your “what if” fund. Create a division whose only job is to look at new technologies in other categories and ask “what if we could harness them in our category.” Xerox did this in the 1960s, and ended up patenting many of the technologies that are now commonplace in our personal computers. Tech companies live-and-die by flanking strategies. They are under continual pressure to innovate or die. Borrow some of this imperative for your category.
2. Whatever you do, continually add value for your customers. Some breakthroughs are of the truly mundane variety. It’s just that no one had applied them to certain industries before. Southwest did it when they understood they were in the hospitality business as much as they were in the travel business. So they went all-in on recruiting the friendliest people, training them, and giving them the freedom to create great experiences for their customers. This at a time when most carriers saw themselves as “ways to get from point-A to point-B.”
3. Understand your customers’ pain points. Actually go out and “live in your customer’s shoes” to see what she sees, experience things the way she does. You’ll find out rather quickly that your offerings are a mere blip in her existence, and that there are things you may be able to do to make her life easier elsewhere. For example, understanding how important the commodity of “time” is to modern families, a “60 minute guarantee” or something similar in a category that might not seem time-sensitive could be worth testing.

One thing is for sure. Technology is going to be with us, and it’s going to change change things quickly. By staying as knowledgeable about your customers, and being as relevant as possible for them, you’ll keep yourself on the “calculator” track.

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She might see a commercial on TV. She might read a press article that mentions you. She might see your product on the shelf at retail. She might read a post in her Facebook news feed from a friend. She might run across your brand while conducting an unrelated web search, or on a third-party website (such as Amazon). She might receive an electronic coupon at the point-of-sale. She might even hear your name mentioned in a news story (let’s hope it’s not for the wrong reasons). Or, she might proactively seek out what previous customers have to say about you on Yelp. Or she could do her own Google search.

Wow, that’s a ton of touchpoints.

With so many ways for consumers to get “exposed” to you (and the 5,000 other marketers they’ll run across today), does that make it more likely she’ll purchase from you? Or is it just a bunch of clutter that confuses matters, and makes it harder to break through?

Tough question.

The best definition of a “brand” I have heard is “the sum of everything you know, hear, believe, feel and experience about a particular product or company.” If we accept this definition, then we can see how every way your brand “touches” your consumer or prospect contributes to your “brand” in their view.

So how do you make sure that the customer hears a consistent narrative across all these possible touchpoints?

While there is no controlling everything that’s said/written/shared/experienced about you, there is one powerful tool you have at your disposal:

Walking the talk.

Find out what your most devoted fans love about you. Why they’d never leave you. Why they feel you can’t be replaced. (This is your “talk”.) Then take that one thing, and amplify it every way you can throughout your value chain. And live by it, no matter what. (This is the “walk” part.)

If you conclude your competitive difference is that you offer the best service, see what you can do to kick it up a notch. For everyone, everytime, whether they are a customer or not. No phone trees. No “let me talk to my supervisor.” No “that’s not our policy.”

Southwest AIrlines found that fans flocked to them because they were the “low fare airline.” So they found dozens of ways to amplify and demonstrate that, from offering ridiculous “super saver” fares, to not charging for bags, to not offering food service, to having the industry’s simplest frequent flyer program, to keeping their planes in the air 20% more than competing airlines (cutting downtime).

By uncompromisingly walking the talk, you are creating consistent perceptions, experiences and stories that are passed forward. These are the “tidbits” that go into formulating your “brand” in consumers’ minds. The more consistent you are, the more consistent the stories will be, and the more consistent your brand narrative will be.

And yes, the more you’ll break through the morass of clutter out there.

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In a world that’s getting more complex, more complicated and more unpredictable, Fast, Simple and Consistent offers an oasis to the harried consumer. It removes anxiety, adds reassurance and becomes something he can “count on.”

Let’s face facts. Consumers today don’t have the time or temperment to learn one more set of instructions. Or spend any more minutes navigating a phone tree. Or learn the intracacies of a new version of software. Or figure out why, if something is “new and improved,” it doesn’t do some things as well as the version you just killed off. Yet often, all this becomes the price for innovation.

As much as consumers prefer fast-simple-consistent now, it will be even more important in the near future. The Millennial generation (born between 1982 and 2001) is poised to become the marketing “sweet spot” for a lot of marketers. They are projected to surpass Boomers as the dominant consumer market (64 million U.S. households by 2020). And guess what their number one driver is? If you said “fast-simple-consistent,” then make your way to the head of the class.

As marketers, it’s in our nature to approach problems with a mindset of “more.” More features, more colors, more sizes, more niche variations, more uses, more brand spin-offs, more capabilities. We think we’re doing it as a way to give the consumer what she’s been asking for and what will keep her satisfied. But in a lot of cases, what we’re really doing is making it harder for her to work with us.

We need to break free of the “more mentality” and filter new initiatives and decisions by asking “Is this making life easier for our customers?” We need to start equating “innovation” with “simplicity.” And most of all, we need to live life in our customers’ shoes so we can experience what she experiences, pain points and all.

In fact, if you defined your brand personality right now as “the company that’s easiest to work with,” you’d be on the path to success.

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According to a report released this month by Beverage Digest, consumers are swilling less soda, leading the category to decline for the eighth straight year. The amount of soda consumed worldwide in 2012 is down to 1996 levels. Here in the U.S., it has fallen to 1987 levels. In fact, the only brands that haven’t experienced a significant sales drop are Coke, Sprite and Diet Dr. Pepper (sales of these brands were flat–at least they didn’t lose ground).

The reasons for this category-wide dip are mainly over health concerns. With two-thirds of American adults now labeled as “overweight to obese,” the major soda companies have been held up as major culprits.

This seems to be one problem the category isn’t able to spend its way out of. Ad spending for major brands is at an all-time high, In fact, PepsiCo’s global ad spending for the first quarter of 2013 is up a staggering 11%. Yet the snack and beverage giant’s profits have fallen 5% for the same period.

So what are the soda companies to do? They have mountains of cash at their disposal. Their brand names are some of the most recognized in the world. And distribution? They’re about as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Both Pepsi and Coke are acknowledged leaders in both mobile and social media (Coke, in fact, has the most Facebook fans of any brand–more than 61 million).

For clues as to what might help them and what probably won’t, let’s look at what the category’s two biggest players are doing.

Pepsi has doubled down on tying the brand’s future to well-known celebrities. The takeaway from its advertising and promotion seems to be “if you like this celebrity, then you’ll like Pepsi.” This strategy worked like gangbusters in the 1980s. Celebs like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Michael J. Fox and others made Pepsi the “cool” soda choice. Today, however, their much-publicized “creative partnership” with Beyonce is proving to be a multi-million dollar dud. What’s more, the brand’s big-money forays into social media promotion have yet to cause a sales ripple (more on that in this post).

Coca Cola on the other hand is taking a different tact. They are associating the brand with the mantra of “happiness.” The brand’s advertising is “including” users, not talking (or performing) at them. Associating a brand with a positive emotion is going to be more effective every time.

Another interesting tact Coke is taking is its attempt to be more transparent, and actually address the obesity issue head on. The world’s most valuable brand has openly acknowledged obesity as “the issue of this generation.” It launched an ad campaign aimed at “reinforcing (its commitment) to finding meaningful solutions to the complex challenge of obesity.”

Will this approach work? It definitely has proven to be somewhat controversial. Critics claim it’s no more than an attempt to distract from the real issue. My view is that it never hurts to acknowledge the truth (at least the truth most people accept). So long as there is a meaningful commitment to improve things.

We’ve yet to see how Coke intends to follow up its ad campaign. As a next step, I’d implore Coke to put its money where its mouth is, by creating and supporting events and promotions that reward people for lifestyle changes. Even if it means they drink a few less cans of Coke a week. Don’t simply treat this as a “health initiative.” Tie the health aspect into the whole “happiness” hook the brand has latched on to.

Even if effective, will such a program work to reverse the trend of faltering soda sales? Highly unlikely. However, even declining categories have their “good guys,” and Coke is primed to be that company.

Committing to help people address the “challenge of a generation” will, I believe, do more to promote the brand that a halftime concert at the Super Bowl.

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In anticipation of these cases going before the highest court, an LGBT lobbying group called Human Rights Campaign (HRC) turned to the Internet to drum up support in favor of overturning of both cases. They asked well known celebrities (such as Ellen DeGeneres, Lance Bass and George Takei) to change their social media “avatars” to the group’s pink-and-red-equal-sign logo for the two days of arguments. Almost immediately many other sympathetic people did likewise, and Facebook and Twitter were awash in HRC’s logo. This was a simple way ordinary people could show their support to the causes.

Then something interesting happened. Versions of the HRC logo started turning up on brand pages and in brand tweets. Major ad players like Bud Light, HBO and others adopted the HRC logo, if only for a day or so.

A few years ago, a major brand going out on a political limb like this would have been unthinkable. Communications were in a “corporate voice” and left little room for supporting anything other than “politically safe” causes, if any. Seemingly overnight, brands have started letting their “human side” show through. Brands have discovered that people crave authenticity, and seek out stories from organizations and companies that “sound” like they do. Brands are ditching the management-approved “corporate speak” of not so long ago, and are now talking to customers as if they were people (because, well, they are).

Customers and fans have embraced this switch. One need look no farther than the Facebook timelines of some amazingly large companies (Starbucks as an example) to see how this plays out. And brands? They’ve seen how “brand stories” go a long way towards stimulating new purchases and building customer loyalty.

Looked at in this light, it’s a no-brainer to see how brands could glom on to a real-time meme like this. Brands know a lot more about their customers now than they used to. Not just in regard to their products, but in regard to life. They’re getting in tune with their fans’ likes, dislikes, what’s important to them, what gets them excited, what turns them off, and yes, even their political preferences.

So when you see Bud Light or HBO’s “True Blood” “coming out”, so to speak, it’s not so much about taking a political stand as it is marching with their customers.

If you’d feel a little queasy about having your brand step out on this ledge, just know this is a trend that’s going to gain momentum. People like to do business with “people who are like them.” And sometimes your brand can demonstraate that it is that person.

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That’s right. The company that’s arguably the most “social” organization in the world (with a record 61.5 million Facebook Fans) says there’s no relationship between online generated buzz and sales. (Well, almost. The study did give buzz credit for 0.01% of increased sales.)

So what exactly does this mean? That social media, while entertaining, does not contribute to sales?

Not quite.

For starters, I think it’s important to draw a distinction between social media “participation” and social media “buzz.” Buzz is primarily generated by a single piece of content or single event (think Red Bull’s space jump, written about here). These things are created solely to get eyeballs, and rarely have anything to contribute on behalf of the sponsoring product or organization. Another example would be this Long-Distance Slip-and-Slide video produced by Microsoft:

No doubt about it, this is amazing content. People may like it.. They may even share it. But would you seriously believe a slip-and-slide video would persuade people to buy a Windows computer? Or that a stunt like the space jump, no matter how spectacular, would have people lining up outside convenience stores for a Red Bull?

Social media participation, on the other hand, is not nearly as sexy. It’s not the atomic bomb, it’s winning the battle hill-by-hill. It’s never going to be a trending topic on Twitter. It’s never going to generate 20 million views. Instead, it’s an ongoing effort to engage fans and customers on a deeper level, where they hang out. It’s a way to listen to customers, try out ideas, provide “insider” content and provide one-to-one customer service. Basically a way to help your organization become more “human” for your customers.

What I hate about studies like this one from Coke (and the accompanying news coverage) is that things tend to get painted with a broad brush. Nuance is nowhere to be found. It’s either “this” or it’s “that.”

Successful marketing today requires a complete toolbox of owned, earned, shared and paid media. Attempting to break one of these out to determine its ROI is a fool’s errand.

It helps to think of social as a “trailing” tactic (nearly all people who become ‘Fans’ are already customers, and prefer you already). As such, social’s true value in the marketing funnel is to engage with converted customers on a deeper level, to give them more opportunities to interface with the brand, to shorten the buying cycle, to stem churn and learn more about your audience.

If you still question the value of social media to the marketing process, consider this: the more time your customers spend interfacing with your brand, the less opportunity (and inclination) they have to interface with your competitors.

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Here some three-plus years later, things aren’t looking so sanguine for them. So much so, that Groupon sacked its Founder and CEO due to its listless financials. (His legendary farewell letter to staff is worth reading, and can be found here.) And another pioneer of the Daily Deal, LivingSocial (the #2 player in the industry), is rumored to soon be sucked up by a larger company or get the plug pulled on it altogether as early as next year.

So how did the major Daily Dealers go from being the fair-haired child to the ugly stepsister in just a few years? A few factors conspired to hamper these firms:

1. The market became highly fragmented. Every locality in the country seemed to have sprouted its own Daily Deal services, and a lot of these focused on narrow niches. Plus a lot of offline providers jumped in as well (television stations and newspapers, as an example). The national players haven’t done enough to differentiate themselves from the local competition.
2. A lot of meat-and-potatoes businesses became disenchanted with participating. Groupon, et al, took a massive cut of the Daily Deals purchases. So often participants had to settle for a few crumbs from the paid voucher amount, sometimes not even covering their costs. While some participants had fantastic experiences with Daily Deals, many others didn’t. After a while, you could see which businesses would benefit, and which wouldn’t. But sadly, Groupon, LivingSocial and company treated business owners like pigeons, and took all takers instead of focusing on businesses their services could really help.
3. The Daily Deal offerings are all over the map. Here’s an example: my kids are teenagers. So why did I received offerings more applicable to young families (such as a diaper service)? A few of those, and you can’t blame consumers for questioning the services’ relevance.
4. The market turned out to not be as large as was originally projected. Annual growth has been around 3%, which in the digital realm is beyond stagnant.

So is there any saving the major Daily Deals players? Heck yeah. But there are a few adjustments they’ll need to make:

• Provide more relevant offers, and get involved in after-the-sale follow-up. Get to know customers’ interests better. Look at purchase patterns. Look at price points. If need be, send out surveys and questionnaires in return for “Groupon Bucks.” Learn from every purchase, and follow up with purchasers to have them evaluate their purchases.
• Focus especially on the highest value users. Twenty percent of the Daily Deal audience accounts for 80% of the sales. So do whatever it takes to cater to this group and build loyalty and evangelism among them. Create a rewards program that provides points for every purchase that can be redeemed for vouchers. Provide amazing exclusive deals that can only be “unlocked” by users once they reach a certain level. Create events specifically for this group of buyers.
• Mend fences with the local business communities. The feedback from the original model is pretty clear. Do more to partner with local businesses to make sure they succeed, give them tools to get the most out of their offerings, and don’t take a powder on them once their check are cashed.

Simply stated, the main problem with Groupon and LivingSocial is that they are more focused on being profitable than being relevant. For them to survive, that has to change.

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