Are you using any deals sites? If so, Forbes magazine offers Interesting data suggesting those are Groupon’s customers, not yours. In assessing the data, the author, Chunka Mui, asks:

“Are merchants in sectors where Groupon develops critical mass essentially yielding their customer relationships to Groupon?”

I’d expand that to include all the deals sites. In my experience, deal seekers rarely exhibit brand loyalty. Instead, their loyalty is solely to their bottom line. Kevin Hillstrom covered this topic some time ago, noting, “Remember… they sell access to a list.”

Their list. Not yours.

Customers join these deals sites, whether it’s Groupon, Gilt Groupe, Google, etc., solely for the advertised benefit: to find great deals. If your brand offers the best deal that day, you’re in. If not, then they’ll keep looking.

A few years ago, a brand I knew offered a a huge discount through multiple channels as a promotion. It was incredibly successful at driving sales. At least, it was in the short term. Longer term, they found that almost none of the first-time customers who bought at the discounted price came back and bought at regular prices. Really. Almost none. After that, they began offering their best deals only to their best customers, increasing repeat sales. Not only that, but the brand succeeded in getting those customers to talk about the brand with their friends, driving new customer acquisition.

Now, that’s not to suggest that the lists these deals sites sell may not have value to your business. But don’t assume deals sites make for a great customer acquisition strategy—unless you make them one.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

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One of the biggest stories bouncing around the web the last week or so were comments made by Rupert Murdoch and Tom Curley – the heads of News Corp. and The Associated Press, respectively – where they discussed how much they hate “content kleptomaniacs”. Given how digital distribution of content and content aggregation has impacted traditional media and publishing businesses, it’s tough to blame Murdoch and Curley for being upset.

But some critics are doing just that. Jeff Jarvis – serious new media thinker and author of “What Would Google Do?” – labels these media titans “fools.” Jarvis promotes the notion of “the link economy” and the value search engines create by helping customers discover your content – as opposed to simply stealing it as claimed by Murdoch and Curley.

Who’s right? And does this brouhaha matter to your business?

The answers to these two questions are:

1. It depends; and…
2. Hell, yes!

While I’ve never been a big fan of equivocation, there is no one true answer to “who’s right?” News Corp and the Associated Press own their content. They’re free to charge for it if they see fit. The real question is whether their customers (and by extension, yours):

1. Care enough about what they’re (you’re) publishing to find it in the first place; and,
2. Care enough about what they’re (you’re) publishing to pay for it.

Getting people to find your content – whether you’re a blogger in Boise or The Wall Street Journal – is no small task. As you can see in the second graph of this post by Rand Fishkin, distributing your content offers enormous value in growing both your traffic and your business. And Jarvis is absolutely right when he talks about the value links provide. But where I differ with Jarvis is in this: if the Wall Street Journal – or you, for that matter – can get distributors to pay you for that content, good for you. Amazingly, there is at least one newspaper besides the Wall Street Journal who has succeeded in charging consumers for their content.

Does this mean you should charge for your content? Again, that depends. No one deposits links. We deposit profits. But there’s more than one way to get those profits. For example, Fred Wilson once listed a couple dozen business models for web media used by successful companies. So, if charging Google for distribution or consumers for reading works for The Journal, bully for them. It proves that you shouldn’t rule it out. But also, even if it works for the Journal, don’t assume it’s the only way to go.

Want more? Read our review of Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do?” Also, see our review of Chris Anderson’s “Free”, which looks at many other ways to make money on “free” content.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Image credit: subcircle via Flickr using Attribution 2.0 Generic.

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Free, free, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Google, google, internet business, jeff jarvis, strategy, the long tail, what would google do, Rupert Murdoch, WSJ, Wall Street Journal

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I think not.

Robert Young at NewTeeVee has an interesting post discussing why the News Corp./NBC joint venture is going to put GooTube on the ropes. Robert is not, alas, the late star of Marcus Welby and Father Knows Best, but the irony of a Robert Young writing about the future of TV is too rich to ignore. And while he makes some interesting points – notably hinting at the lack of a clear technology winner today in video search – Robert’s basic premise doesn’t ring true for me or for others. Among the better critiques comes from AlexC, who points out a logical flaw related to Robert’s view of copyright issues. Alex’s own argument also contains a flaw as I see it, in that he assumes reposting others’ material always comprises fair use. While I’m no lawyer, plenty of case law and injunctions seem to indicate the opposite. Still, his initial point regarding equal copyright protection for text and video makes a fair bit of sense to me.

An even larger flaw exists in Robert’s piece. He assumes that NewsBC – or whatever they plan to call it – will offer its users similar utility to that of YouTube. I’m not convinced. Big Media has struggled with digital distribution since the concept started. Their models, designed to monetize every play and enforce scarcity of their intellectual property, don’t favor consumers.

By contrast, YouTube succeeds for at least two reasons. First, as Fred Wilson points out, Big Media continually appears to limit the social/viral aspects of online video so integral to YouTube’s popularity. Second, folks use YouTube because it provides a simpler alternative (i.e., less expensive), than its competitors. BitTorrent, GigaTribe and their P2P, um, peers also provide a way for individuals to share files that they think would appeal to their friends. They’re just too complicated given the current alternatives. The minute Murdoch and Co. – along with legal challenges to YouTube – make it sufficiently hard for consumers to access to the media they care about is the minute P2P comes back with a vengeance. If Robert’s arguments held water, right now Apple would have lost its market leadership for downloadable music to any one of iTunes’ industry-backed competitors. That’s not to say Big Media can’t learn from its mistakes. But history isn’t on its side.

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I just finished watching the Super Bowl pre-game show. I have always enjoyed:

1. Cirque du Soleil – I’ve seen them perform in Vegas a couple times
2. Football in general and Super Bowl Sunday in particular

This year it feels a bit archaic to me. In the new media, place and time shifted present, is the term “television event” no longer valid? It might be television. But it doesn’t feel like much of an event yet.

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Good article on the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram today about satellite radio and its broader implications for radio in general. They do a pretty solid job of explaining the rules of engagement here as media struggles with consumers’ increasing variety of choice in how they consume content. One notable absence in the article is its avoidance of print media’s struggles with the Internet as a source of information, which fundamentally is the same issue described with regard to satellite/cable vs. broadcast media. The most interesting comment came from NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton, who “…points out that ‘localism’ — giving listeners news, weather and sports that relates to their community — remains the province of broadcast radio. ‘That’s our franchise and ours alone,’ he says.” I know of some bloggers who might disagree. As they say on radio… stay tuned.

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According to Digg, “Tomorrow, Friday Jan 6, Google Inc. will announce that it will let consumers buy video over the Internet from CBS, the NBA and other providers, becoming the latest company to explore the new method of distributing TV content.” What no one seems to get is that we’ve already had the first hit television program on the ‘net. The problem is that no one thinks to identify it as a tv show. Remember JibJab? The big question is when we’ll have the first hit online series.

read more | digg story

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