What Does FB “Social Deals” Mean for SMBs?

Deals and social media are a potentially potent combination. You may have seen that tonight Facebook is launching a second deals program: Social Deals. What’s different about Social Deals vs. other daily deal programs?

Here’s the “quick and dirty” version (my SEL post has more):

Consumers:

  • Deals are intended to be deeply integrated with Facebook and more “social” than conventional daily deals. Events, for example, will be a featured category
  • There are many ways to expose, discuss and share deals on Facebook without buying them, or before buying
  • Deals will come via email and the newsfeed, as well as Facebook Ads potentially
  • Deal vouchers can be bought using credit cards or Facebook Credits

Businesses:

  • Merchants will be allowed to impose caps
  • Deals won’t require deep discounting; there may be deals completely without discounts (e.g., special events)
  • Facebook Pages will be required of participating SMBs, giving them a way to capture deal customers and potentially convert them into repeat customers

In addition, 11 partner sites will help supply deals to Facebook as well as gain broad distribution for their own deal sales.

How is this new product likely to affect SMBs and social media marketing?

This is one of the subjects we’ll be discussing at 1 pm Eastern Tuesday (tomorrow) during the free webinar The Rise of the Social SMB. It features me, VendAsta and Hearst’s LocalEdge.

If you haven’t yet signed up, register now.

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2 Responses to “What Does FB “Social Deals” Mean for SMBs?”

  1. Malcolm Lewis says at

    Interesting. What do you mean by “internal sales force” in your SEL post? Telesales or FB-owned-and-operated field sales? 

  2. Greg says at

    I didn’t have an opportunity to fully explore that with them in the time I had. I assume telephone. 

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