Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

With an exciting World Series drawing to a close and the NFL season in full swing, it’s the perfect time to introduce Joe Valenti of Valenti Sports in Rochester, NY as this week’s Featured Merchant.

After not spending a dime on advertising for Valenti Sports for more than 10 years, Joe was uncertain about running a Groupon deal to say the least. Click through to read Joe’s full story.

Writes Joe: 

Valenti Sports is family-owned and operated by my father, John, my brother, Phil, and myself since 1993. Shortly after we opened our business, we began spending countless dollars on local advertising, but had no way of knowing if the ads were bringing in new customers or if they were a waste of money. So after about five years we stopped advertising all together and decided to focus our efforts and money on our existing customers. We then steadily grew our business by word-of-mouth for the next 10+ years. 

That all changed when I got a call from Groupon. My sales rep explained how Groupon could not only help us attract new customers, but see exactly where our marketing dollars were going when these customers would come in with the Groupon printed out or on their smartphones. I definitely wanted to give it a try.

Before our first deal, which ran in early December 2010, we were told to be ready for a big rush of new customers. If it hadn’t been for the preparation videos, advice and tools that I received from Groupon, I could have been quickly overwhelmed. I prepared my employees for a busy first month and when the deal ran, we were ready. 

We found that nearly 75% of the people that bought the first deal were new customers and many didn’t even know we existed! We had been in business for 18 years and got to show new, local customers our store for the very first time. Being able to talk to these new customers gave us the opportunity to suggest other products that they were interested in. We also were able to sign up entire teams to buy their equipment and uniforms from us. Simply put, no other marketing tool has ever done a fraction of what Groupon has provided, and all for no money up front!

We were so impressed with our first Groupon deal that we decided to run another in June of this year. We had just moved to a larger location and we couldn’t think of a better way to let people know we had moved than to run a Groupon deal. It worked out perfectly. We were able to show new customers our new store and give existing customers a great reason to come check it out. Plus, our website traffic received a huge spike, which also let people know about the new location.

Our customers love our new store and many like buying from a local, family run business instead of big box stores. Without Groupon, we wouldn’t have been able to tell our story.

Overall, working with Groupon has been a tremendous success. Even my father, who was skeptical of Internet marketing, sees what a tremendously powerful tool Groupon has become for our business. The bottom line is that we have a lot of new customers, our sales numbers are up after deals with Groupon and we’re looking forward to the next 18 years of being a local, family-owned company.

Questions or comments for Joe?  Leave them below and we’ll make sure he receives them.

Tags: Featured Merchant