However, my article is not really as much about Yelp as it is about defending online advertising, which the article in question attacks with a vengeance. In essence, the article paints a picture of online advertising where all ads should be sold for 60 cent CPMs regardless of whether they are geo and industry targeted or provide branding with prominent placement. Don’t charge too much or you might be accused of being a “rip off”!

Additionally, the article attacks the very core of online advertising by stating, “”For online advertising, I strongly recommend against commitments and impression-based advertising.” In short, the article advocates that all advertising be priced like Google Adwords and Facebook ads or similar. As marketers know, online advertising is more than just clicks. It’s about reaching your potential customers and pay per click (PPC) advertising isn’t the only way to go about that.

>>> Do you feel that Yelp is a rip off? Do you believe that all online advertising should be cost per click (CPC)? What is your experience with online advertising, good or bad? Comment Here…

Let’s give this article a proper dissection:

1. The article states, “At a time when much online advertising is being sold for 60 cents per thousand impressions (CPMs), Yelp is charging some local advertisers $600 per 1,000 impressions. That’s not a typo. Yelp is charging small businesses 1,000-times the standard online CPM rates for local ads that appear on Yelp.”.

This simply doesn’t make sense to anyone who has experience in online advertising. Sixty cent CPM’s are NOT the standard online rates for local ads. That is a rock bottom rate that large ad sellers charge for non-targeted inventory. To get placement on a premium site that is geo targeted with a very specific industry niche, advertisers will pay substantially more, even a $600 CPM. Sometimes much less, but certainly not a measly 60 cents!

2. The article states, “Now consider the types of local Yelp ads that small businesses buy: In this scenario, the ad goes to the advertiser’s Yelp review page. That’s a page where users are free to leave any kind of review for the business, including ones that trash it. That ad runs about a $600 CPM.”

What about TripAdvisor or Urbanspoon? The concept of reviewing restaurants or other businesses does not make paying for a premium placement a bad decision. Obviously, a business should make sure they are providing a great service and excellent product before advertising. However, it is pretty naive to believe that it’s somehow stupid to pay top dollar for a highly targeted ad spot on Yelp simply out of fear that someone could “trash” your business. As businesses in the service industry know, review sites and apps like Yelp can drive significant new business for free and it seems to me that paying for that top placement might even drive more business.

3. The article states, “It’s common for more targeted inventory, such as the type that Yelp provides, to command higher CPMs. But triple-digit CPMs are extremely unusual.”

At least the article finally acknowledges that targeted ads are worth more than untargeted ads. However, the assumption that it is “extremely unusual” to charge over $100 CPM’s and therefore makes Yelp a rip off is inaccurate. Ad spots are priced based on demand for those spots by advertisers and obviously Yelp has more demand than they can deliver for many of those top spots on review pages. There is good reason for this – businesses want to be the dominant brand in their service category in their locality. To many businesses, that is worth paying a premium and they don’t consider themselves “ripped off”. If you own Rory Lake’s Karaoke Dreams in Chicago, you want to be the featured listing for “Nightlife in Chicago”. Rory is not making that decision because of a high or low CPM, he is spending cash with Yelp because he wants to be the dominant brand in the nightlife category. He wants everybody that uses Yelp to at least consider stopping by Rory Lake’s Karaoke Dreams. All advertising isn’t about the cost, sometimes it’s simply about the exposure, despite the price.

4. The article states, “At the high end, it’s a $600 CPM. At the low end, that’s a still eye-popping $367 CPM — more than 10-times the rate of a Super Bowl ad.”

Is the writer suggesting that no ad should cost more on a CPM basis than Super Bowl ads? Super Bowl ads are by their very nature only loosely targeted, skewing somewhat more male and youthful, but not much more targeted than that. After all, Super Bowl 2012 set a record as the most-watched television show in U.S. history because almost everybody from young kids to Grandma watched it. Again, targeting increases the value for advertisers and thus increases the cost. Yelp is not only targeting by business type, it is also targeting by geo location. This adds significant value over a Super Bowl ad on a CPM basis. Not to mention that with a Super Bowl ad, a business that spends $3.5 million for a 30 second spot deserves a little CPM discount.

5. The article states, “To make matters worse, Yelp requires a 12-month commitment for these rates. Even if Yelp doesn’t deliver your business a single customer, you’re on the hook for $3,600.”

Paying $3,600 to be the top position on a popular site and app like Yelp for your business category and in your locality is a deal if your business needs branding. It’s about being in the right spot at the right time in order to attract customers. As with all advertising, the hope is for all new customers to become regular customers, thus paying for the cost of your Yelp ad. If you’re a donut shop, would you want your competitor’s shop to be at the top of Yelp or would you consider paying to make sure you are? Additionally, advertisers on Yelp are reaching potential customers that have only one reason to use yelp; to purchase a product from them or their competitor. With that in mind, a $3,600 fee to reach real potential customers rather than just Facebook clickers can be a great deal.

6. The article states, “For comparison, Facebook only requires that you set your budget to $1 a day and does not have a commitment. A business could try it for a week, see if it performs and then decide.”

It is very misleading to say Facebook only requires $1 a day, since if that’s your budget you will not even get one single impression of your ad run on Facebook. To be fair, Facebook is a cheaper alternative for advertisers. However, to be fair to Yelp, it is not even remotely comparative. Facebook clicks range from around 50 cents to $3, but the targeting and volume of clicks would not match Yelp’s in my experience. Facebook allows targeting by location and interest. However, the interest is based on people’s selection in their profile or what they have “liked.” It’s not all that scientific because if I “liked” a restaurant on Facebook, it does not mean I would click a different restaurant’s ad in the future. That’s why Facebook ads are not great for micro targeting and Yelp ads most certainly are!

7. The article states, “I cannot think of any scenarios where I would advise businesses to advertise on Yelp at these rates.”

I can think of a very good reason … branding. As a business owner I want my business to be the most noticed in my category and location. I don’t want my competitors to be. I understand as a business owner that many businesses also want to be at the top of Yelp categories, so I am willing to pay a premium for my business to be there instead of theirs.

8. The article states, “For online advertising, I strongly recommend against commitments and impression-based advertising.”

Actually, many businesses desire to effectively reach their targeted potential customers and that Facebook and Google are not always the best way to do this. Really, should all online advertising be cost per click? Advertisers, such as WebProNews or Yelp value their audiences and have limited space in which to allow businesses to also reach their valued audiences. Those targeted audiences are worth way more than 60 cents per thousand impressions or a few cents a click. For a sponsor to lock up ad space for them to reach their potential customers and potentially keep their competitors out of that space requires a “commitment” with the publisher and is worth paying a premium CPM. Just ask the advertisers on Yelp, WebProNews or even VentureBeat.

The article mentioned Super Bowl advertising earlier… exactly how many people clicked those CPM ads?

>> Discuss the article with Rich Ord and other commentors in the comments section….

However, even though Pinterest is just now starting to become popular with teens, women and average people, most marketers have not yet embraced it as noted in this tweet:

>>> How do you or people you know use Pinterest? Let us know.

In what could be a potential hiccup with Pinterest is the large potential for copyright violations by its users. Richard Rosenblatt, the CEO of Demand Media tweeted about this problem this afternoon:

So what is Pinterest? Who is on it? How can businesses use it? Why should they?

1) What is Pinterest?

Let’s get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

“Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.”

A “virtual pinboard”, is the answer you get in most places. Imagine a large bulletin or “cork board”. You can put pictures up there for any reason. They could be wedding dress ideas, pictures on recipe cards, vacation destination possibilities, redecorating ideas, etc. Now, you do that in Pinterest. The ability to share those images and even collaborate with someone anywhere in the world on building that board is tremendous.

But, it’s not just one board. You can make as many “boards” as you like. Give them different themes. Share them with different people. One for clothes you’d like to have. One for mixed drink recipes you want to try. One for birthday party ideas, including recipes, cake themes, decorations, gifts, locations, etc. One for games for your kids. Anything you can find online, you can “pin” to a board and organize it however you like.

2) Who is on Pinterest?

Simply put, women. 80% of Pinterest users are women. Men are finding that there is plenty to be excited about on Pinterest, and certainly there is no reason whatsoever that it be a “girl’s thing”. But, the initial promotion of Pinterest was female-focused. Notice that description, above, again.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.

However, there are lots of male-centric things being shared on Pinterest. Even some of the stock categories on Pinterest trend “male”:

But, of course, any of the standard categories could be chock full of men’s materials, including:

3) How can businesses use Pinterest?

Obviously, it depends on what kind of business you have. But, the sheer numbers that Pinterest is posting should be quite the convincer that it is worth looking into. As social sites go, it is different from the usual suspects like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. There is no real messaging element built into Pinterest. No statuses. No fast-moving commenting. There are comments, sure. But, not like the conversation-focused layouts of Facebook and Twitter.

One important thing to remember about Pinterest is that it is image-driven. I cannot emphasize this enough. Your “pin” will be posted on a long page of many others. Your graphic has to be the thing that catches the eye of the browsing user. It has to translate to the pin sizes Pinterest uses on that front page (max width 222 pixels, lengths can vary greatly). Text is a possibility, but only as a graphic.

Thus, some of the most obvious benefactors from Pinterest right out of the box are businesses that already deal in graphics as their stock-in-trade: photographers, designers, architects, retailers that already use catalogs or web images.

I dug into an example of how a photographer might use Pinterest in this article.

But really, any business that can express itself in a graphical manner can benefit from the notice they get on Pinterest. How that notice is converted to sales depends on the business. Is there a direct purchase possibility on your website? Or does the potential customer have to pick up a phone or some other contact method? Typical marketing rules begin to apply here. The main idea is to get traffic to you. What you do with it from there is up to you. And, Pinterest is amassing a great record for getting them to your door/site.

AMC Theaters is currently running a sponsored ad on Twitter promoting a contest that uses Pinterest to promote the AMC Best Picture Showcase. Now that’s an interesting way for a business to promote itself via Pinterest:

The New York Daily News used Pinterest to pay tribute to Whitney Houston following her death yesterday afternoon:

The National Guard even used Pinterest to welcome home infantry from Afganistan:

Other types of businesses that are using Pinterest include journalists, news agencies, schools, health and beauty product sales, gadget companies, and many more.

Another key thing about Pinterest is that it has already established itself as not having ads, sponsored links (per se) and other “you’re being sold to” materials. Even a recent dust-up over affiliate links was a minor scandal. Keep that in mind. No one comes here to shop. They come here to find things they like. Respectfully converting that sale is key.

Like other social media sites it is important that you participate in the Pinterest community. Shortly after creating a “Board” and uploading some “Pins” and creating some categories of your images, click the “Invite Friends” button. It will open up a window allowing you to email some of your friends who are likely not yet on Pinterest. These friends will follow you back to get you started on gaining followers.

The second task you should do is to mouse over your name and picture and click the “Find Friends” link. You will need to “connect” to Facebook inside of Pinterest and a list will appear with all of your Facebook friends that are on Pinterest. I recommend clicking the “Follow All” link. Like Twitter and other social media sites, following others will gain you followers back. This is the best way to get your community of Pinterest friends going!

Add Pins everyday, add new categories regularly, follow others and their pins on an ongoing basis and before you know it you will see Pinterest traffic flowing to your website.

Does your business already use Pinterest? Tell us about it.

4) Why should businesses use Pinterest?

Frankly, because it is the hottest thing coming. A few quick facts.

The best thing you can do is head over to Pinterest and get signed up. You almost certainly have a friend who is already on Pinterest, probably a female. Ask for an invite from her. It will get you in much faster than waiting for Pinterest to send you one. Then poke around a bit. Make a few boards, pin some items, follow some people. Nothing will blow up on you. When you first land on the front page, you will think you walked into a wedding planner’s boutique. Explore the categories and soon you will realize that there is much more to the site than that.

There’s probably someone already on there in your line of business. Go have a look.

>>> What features would you like to see Pinterest offer? Is Pinterest the next big thing in social media? Tell us.

>>> What is your opinion of Pinterest? Add your comments here…

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/marketing-with-pinterest-2012-02/feed 25 http://www.webpronews.com/google-business-street-view-2012-01 http://www.webpronews.com/google-business-street-view-2012-01#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:03:03 +0000 Drew Bowling http://www.webpronews.com/?p=92899 If you’re a small business owner looking for a creative way to attract potential customers inside your store, Google wants you to think outside of the box: let them visit your store without even traveling to your store.

It sounds a bit far-fetched, but through the use of Google’s Maps technology, you can now create a virtual tour for your customers that will basically create a Street View experience for people look. In a post on their LatLong blog yesterday, Google announced that they were making their Business Photos pilot program available to all small businesses who want to participate. To get a glimpse of what it can make your business look like, check out the example provided by Google of Spice Market, a business located in New York City:

As you see, it’s literally the 360-degree virtual experience you get when you apply Street View to any Google Maps.

Getting your small business the Street View treatment isn’t really all that hard, either. Google has created a website called Trusted Photographers that are basically proxy photographers small business owners can contract to come take photos of their business on behalf of Google. The photographer will then upload the photos to Google, who will then render the 360-degree panoramic interior of your business on Google.com, Google Maps, and on your Google Places listing. Google provided a testimonial video from a small business in Austin, Texas, that took advantage of Business Photos:

As of right now, Google has proxy photographers in 14 U.S. cities and photographers located in the U.K., France, Australia, and New Zealand. Additionally, Google encourages business owners to make suggestions of cities that would benefit from having Google’s Trusted Photographers.

I wonder if there was any focus on convincing the Commission that Google is not anticompetitive.

Google communications manager Al Verney recaps:

“I think of the third industrial revolution – information technologies are at its heart,” the Commissioner is quoted as saying. Instead of “destroying” jobs, he insisted that it powers employment, saying that for each position displaced, the Internet creates another 2.6 new positions. Companies with websites grow twice as fast as companies that stay offline, he added. “Our goal is to double the amount of commerce online by 2015,” Tajani said. “We need exponential growth” to get Europe out of its present economic crisis.

The focus of the event then turned to the platforms (generally large companies) that support online commerce. Martin Tidell, Telenor’s Head of Business Management for SMEs, joined by Google+ hangout from Stockholm and said that the Internet is not just for high tech businesses. “I cannot think of one business that wouldn’t benefit by going online,” he said.

A handful of small businesses shared experiences about growing online and selling.

Based on Verney’s recap, the main takeaway appears to have been that there is a lot of opportunity for businesses on the Internet, and that opportunity is growing.

Third-party sellers experienced record holiday growth, the company says, with the number of sellers who exceeded $5,000 in sales during the holiday season increasing 44% year-over-year.

That’s pretty significant considering the small business-related controversy Amazon has been the subject of in recent months due to the Internet tax and its Price Check mobile app.

For the year, businesses on Amazon sold hundreds of millions of units worth billions of dollars worldwide, Amazon says.

The company points to Scharf Industries, as a leading example. This is an office supply/electronics vendor, which increased its sales on Amazon by over 500% during the holiday season compared to last year.

“We greatly value the cooperation that we have developed with Amazon,” said Andrew D. Scharf, CMO of Scharf Industries. “They have provided us with the tools necessary to grow our business in a rapid and efficient manner.”

Again, it’s worth noting that this is the example that Amazon chose to share in its announcement. I’m sure not all businesses selling on Amazon are so happy with their results, but you can’t ignore that 44% increase.

Amazon says its third-party sellers sold enough cameras for every fan at the next 10 Super Bowls, ,enough toys in 2011 to give a toy to every resident of Chicago, and as many Lalaloopsy Dolls alone as there are lights on the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City.

Of course Amazon has been selling its own stuff pretty well too.

Here’s a look at Amazon’s top selling products across numerous categories.

According to Dorsey, only 8 million merchants in the U.S. even accept credit cards. That’s some pretty good progress on Square’s part.

Dorsey tweeted out:

Square is only available in the U.S. so far, so that million merchant milestone is pretty significant. On the company’s website, it says:

We are beginning to look into other markets, though at the time we can’t officially support banks, cards or merchants outside of the 50 United States and DC. There is no specific timeline for international availability, but rest assured that you’ll be among the first to know when it does happen. This includes US territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam.

Square can process non-U.S. cards as long as they come with a Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover logo. There are, however, some caveats. Merchants who process international cards can’t do so through the manual entry feature. Processing the cards is subject to issuer approval, and cardholders may be charged for currency conversion.

Square does not support payment processing outside of the United States.

Are you running Cyber Monday deals this year? Let us know in the comments.

comScore put out a report looking at why Cyber Monday is becoming more important to holiday season e-commerce.

“Since its inception, we have witnessed an extremely strong growth in Cyber Monday spending with sales more than doubling from 2005-2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 16% during that timeframe. 2010 was an especially important year in the history of Cyber Monday as online spending reached $1.028 billion, the first time on record that a single day had eclipsed the $1 billion spending threshold,” says comScore’s Andrew Lipsman. “ It also achieved another landmark by finishing as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the first time in history!”

“We at comScore have spent a lot of time in past holiday seasons dispelling the notion that Cyber Monday was the heaviest online spending day of the year, and just when it seemed that message finally began to sink in, Cyber Monday has a banner year and jumps to the top of the ranking,” says Lipsman. “Interestingly, from 2005-2007 Cyber Monday wasn’t even close to the top of the ranking, going from the 8th heaviest spending day to 12th to 9th. But in 2008, Cyber Monday’s overall importance in the context of the holiday shopping season began to change as it surged up the ranking to #3. The following year it ranked as the second heaviest spending day, and finally culminated in 2010 assuming the top position for the year.”

BIA/Kelsey and ConStat put out a report about how local businesses are expected to use digital tools gto lure shoppers on Cyber Monday (in addition to Black Friday and Small Business Saturday). According to that, SMBs have allocated 37% of their total ad and promotional budget to digital/online media in the last 12 months. On average, they intend to increase their digital/online spending in the next 12 months to 40 percent of their total ad budget.

“The data indicate SMBs are getting smarter in their use of digital and online media,” said Steve Marshall, director of research, BIA/Kelsey. “They’re focused on strengthening and enhancing their digital presence, engaging customers with social media and empirically measuring the performance of their online advertising initiatives.”

Of SMBs with an online presence (website, landing page, Facebook page, Google Places page, etc.):

• 69 percent report they update their online presence at least once a month
• 27 percent pay for regular assistance in updating their online presence
• 25 percent report using an Internet service or program to help monitor or manage customer ratings, reviews or comments about their businesses

Tips

Lisa Barone provides some Cyber Monday tips at Small Business Trends. While she elaborates on each one, they essentially boil down to: promote site wide sales, reward fans, throw a Twitter party, and go viral with email marketing.

Heather Clancy in ZDNet’s Small Business Matters column suggests: planning for traffic to double year-over-year, testing throughput and considering hosting static content elsewhere for the peak traffic period, keeping tabs on visitor stats, keeping mobile in mind, and finding a flexible cloud infrastructure provider.

Sounds like good advice to me.

Is your site prepared for Cyber Monday? Let us know in the comments.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook has teamed up with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business to launch a program that includes giving away $10 million in advertising credits to small businesses. The publication reports:

The new program will officially kick off next month with a cross-country road show in coordination with state and local chambers of commerce and regional NFIB offices. At locations still to be determined, Facebook officials and members of the two business groups will meet with local businesses to discuss best practices for marketing to customers through Facebook.

Then in January, Facebook will begin giving away $50 per business in free advertising credits to as many as 200,000 small businesses. Such companies will be able to redeem the discount on a first-come, first-served basis when purchasing ads on the social-networking site, which can be targeted to specific users as a business sees fit.

Sheryl Sandberg recently did this video interview with USA Today talking about how Facebook creates jobs and how great Facebook is for small businesses.

“When you look at small businesses, there are probably fourteen to fifteen million active small businesses in the country, and we think over nine million of those are using Facebook to connect directly to consumers,” she said.

“One thing that makes Facebook easier for small businesses to use, is we’re not asking them to use a new product,” she added. “Most people who are attached to the web actually have a Facebook profile, and if you look at a page, which is what they tend to use to market their small business, it works pretty much the same way. So if you’re on Facebook and you’re posting something to your friends….they might post, ‘hey, we’re having a sale today.’”

Google, on the other hand, is asking people to use a new product. Recent estimates indicate that Google+ is up to around 43.4 million users so far. Last week, they announced a bunch of new features and opened it up to the public (as opposed to invite-only).

Google+ has a long, long way to go to achieve Facebook-like user numbers, but the fact that it’s tied (and will be tied even more) to other Google products businesses are already using is a key factor.

That research, from computer scientists John W. Byers and Georgios Zervas of Boston University and Michael Mitzenmacher of Harvard, finds that ratings scores on Yelp for businesses running daily deals are 10% lower on average.

Is it worth it to your business to run a Groupon? Let us know.

It’s certainly worth noting that the researchers studied both Groupon and Living Social, which are the two biggest players in the deals space, with Groupon still in the lead (though the gap seems to be narrowing).

“A key selling point of a daily deals site is the promise of beneficial long-term effects for merchants participating in a deal offering,” the report says. “Since discounted deals typically result in a net short-term loss to the merchant as customers redeem the coupons, a merchant is pitched on the expectation that some new customers, initially attracted by the deal, will become repeat customers, providing a long-term gain. Participating merchants should determine that these gains outweigh the costs, which include providing discounts to their existing customer base.”

“We find that the average percentage increase in reviews across all merchants who had received at least one review in the 3 months prior to the Groupon offer is 44%,” it says. “Meanwhile, the average month-over-month growth in number of reviews for deals prior to their Groupon offers is about 5%. Similarly, the average percentage increase in reviews the month after the Groupon offer is 84%. Roughly 20% of merchants in our dataset (461 out of 2,332) had received zero reviews in the 3 months prior to the Groupon offer. Of these, 270 received at least one review within two months after the Groupon offer.”

The researchers also conclude that “Yelp star ratings decline after a Groupon deal.”

“The average drop in ratings is 0.12. This could affect any sorted order produced according to Yelp rankings significantly,” the report says. “Also, Yelp scores are reported and displayed according to discretized half-star increments. Thus, an average drop of 0.12 suggests a significant number of merchants may lose a half-star due to rounding. This could have a potentially important effect on a business; a recent study reports that for independent restaurants a one-star increase in Yelp ratings leads to a 9% increase in revenue. However, the transitory nature of Groupon-driven reviews, in addition to complexities of modeling hidden factors like weighted moving averages, cloud our ability to pinpoint the repetitional ramifications precisely.”

That study by Michael Luca says that its findings suggest that “online consumer reviews substitute for more traditional forms of reputation,” that “consumers do not use all available information and are more responsive to quality changes that are more visible and consumers respond more strongly when a rating contains more information.”

The new study also looked at text, and found that reviews mentioning either “Groupon” or “Coupon” are associated with star ratings that are 10% lower on average than reviews that don’t use these words. The few reviews that used both words were actually 20% lower on average, according to the report.

One of the other findings from the study was that Groupon and deals sites in general are greatly helped by word of mouth (like Facebook “likes”). Kind of a no-brainer, but they have data to back it up. There is much more data to back all of these findings up. Detailed methodology can be found throughout the report, which you can read in its entirety here.

While the findings may turn some businesses off of the Groupon strategy, the news isn’t all bad for Groupon these days. Another report released by Yipit finds that Groupon’s revenue increased by 13% in August, while it gained 2% market share.

Key findings from Yipit’s report include:

• Groupon’s revenue increased 13% from July to $121 million, a $1.5 billion annual run rate.
• LivingSocial’s revenue declined 3% to $45 million, a $540 million annual run rate. August was the second consecutive month that LivingSocial experienced declining revenue in North America.
• The North American Daily Deal industry resumed growth in August. Industry revenue and number of deals offered increased 9% from July.
• Groupon gained market share at the expense of LivingSocial for the second consecutive month. Prior to July, LivingSocial had been gaining market share on Groupon for several months.
• In its first full month, Groupon Getaways outperformed LivingSocial Escapes in the travel deals segment. Groupon Getaways generated 42% more revenue than LivingSocial Escapes and averaged 78% higher revenue per deal.

This comes after a recent report from Experian Hitwise indicating that Groupon’s traffic was down 50% over the summer while LivingSocial’s was up 27%.

Groupon is now testing e-commerce deals in the UK. This could provide a whole new set of opportunities for business. For brick and mortars, it could lead to more online sales. For strictly online businesses, it could simply let them into the club. Getting repeat business from a consumer might be easier to achieve online. If you’re a click away, as opposed to a drive away, a customer might be more inclined to come back, given the right customer experience. ”

It remains to be seen if the e-commerce deals will become a mainstream feature across Groupon’s markets, but it’s definitely something to watch for.

Do you think the benefits outweigh the negatives for businesses offering deals through Groupon or similar services? Tell us what you think.

Since its start in 1998, Google has been building and amassing an entire universe of web tools. From email and calendars to Google Docs, advertising, payment processing, site analytics, mobile, and third party apps for everything in between, the ‘Google Universe’ now offers a complete hub for its users.

The missing piece in this Google Universe has always been social…until now. Google+ has the capacity to bring all these tools together with people at the center of their new social hub.

What does Google+ mean for the small businesses?

Google Apps Marketplace and Google’s Chrome Web Store are extensive marketplaces for web applications that host everything from accounting to project management applications, CRM to full blow ERP applications. Google+ Circles provides the social glue for co-workers who are using Google’s business apps.

Google+ has the potential to become the feed or conversation manager for all the apps that are managing activity inside of a business. It offers an expansive, easy to manage to unite all business communications within a Google+’s feed.

Small businesses are migrating, over 3 million so far away from expensive on premise software solutions to Google Apps for their IT infrastructure in the cloud.  This presents Google+ with a unique advantage to penetrate the small business market.

Single platform or best-of-breed?

Another key question for users is whether the benefit of having a series of best-of-breed tools presents a clear enough advantage over a single source for all business interactions. With best-of-breed, users get top-notch functionality and feature sets, however, they’re left with a fragmented experience.

Purchasing managers, IT, and end users are left juggling a patchwork of vendors and individual tools that don’t always play well together. Microsoft for IT, Oracle for the backend infrastructure, Facebook for marketing and social, LinkedIn for work connections, PayPal for payments… integrations across all these tools can be complex and expensive.

When we look back over the history of computing, we see a recurring trend where users migrate from individual tools to a unified platform. It’s a similar pattern with every computing platform since the mainframe.

Traditionally, whenever a new computing platform emerges, a large number of software vendors flood the market and are purchased by business departments or individuals at a high unit cost. Then over time, a unified application emerges on the scene, setting off a wave of conversions away from point pieces to the single solution.

This same pattern is set to repeat with Google, particularly in the small business segment. It’s no secret that small businesses have already been looking to replace desktop software and move toward a web-only environment. Online tools offer an ease of use, accessibility, and low cost that typical enterprise software just can’t match. And even web-based apps can be cumbersome if users are required to jump back and forth between apps and vendors to access point solutions for each bit of functionality.

With the addition of Google+, small businesses now have a complete hub in Google that extends far beyond document sharing. Google offers a viable web-based alternative for all that’s needed to keep the wheels turning day in and day out. In short, it’s becoming possible to run an entire business based on the Google ecosystem alone.

For the small business, we know that simplicity is best. With Google, capital spending goes way down as users can access these tools on the web, and largely for free. Even more importantly, life is much easier for the small business as the full suite of tools is in one place, and integrated right out of the box.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is less about a place to hang out and connect with friends. Rather, it’s a way to tie all the pieces of the Google Universe together and give easy access to the full suite of Google tools through a single toolbar. History shows that the benefit of an integrated system will draw small businesses away from point, best-of-breed solutions.