A Reading (UK) cake baker potentially lost up to £25,500 from its profits this year because of a poorly conceived collaboration with a discount voucher website Groupon.

Need a Cake in Woodley is run by Rachel Brown and has made a loss on over 100,000 cupcakes they made to fulfil a Groupon voucher deal. The US based Groupon is a ‘crowd deal’ website offering vouchers to subscribers on anything from restaurant meals to spa treatments. The deals are only available if a minimum number of people sign up. And the minimum number did sign up to buy 12 custom cupcakes for only £6.50, a massive 75% discount on the normal price of £26. The problem was there was no upper limit on how many vouchers could be offered.

8,500 users signed up to buy the cupcakes which meant the bakery lost between £2.50 and £3 on every batch it sold.

The owner had to employ 25 agency staff at a cost of £12,500 to help the 8-stron team with demand and fund the extra distribution costs.

Steve Consalvez, partner and spokesperson for Need a Cake, said: “The business has been going for 25 years and following the Groupon discount offer, the company has realised it isn’t the way to go forward as it has wiped out profits for this year. However, it will be continuing to build on its successes in 2012.”

A stark lesson in the importance of good deal planning and also the power of internet marketing. Perhaps Need a Cake expected like so many to use the offer as a marketing tool and was prepared to sell a few boxes of cupcakes at break even or below cost but the demand was far more then they expected. Its a small business version of the infamous Hoover flights offer from the early ’90s and a warning to other business to look at the business merits of any offers conceived. 

For safer, more reliable business marketing advice talk to us at AsOne. With over 10 years experience and over 300 business going from strength to strength AsOne can guide you through the digital marketing minefield.

(Source: bakeryinfo.co.uk)

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You have seen the adverts, had the emails and will probably have been told that you can get cheaper websites online than going to a website design agency … well its all true, with one big BUT!

You will no doubt want to appear in the search results on Google? You probably want the best chance of a high position? Well if you go down the template route from the large suppliers your website will likely be penalised according to respected professionals in the SEO world who test and monitor Google’s search engine algorithms. In recent updates to it’s search algorithm, Google has devalued websites that duplicate content. Fair enough, who needs 27 websites all saying the same thing about the same company … but it now goes further.

Google now devalues websites that duplicate code as well. That’s essentially what a template site is, duplicated code. Nobody knows what percentage of code Google classes as duplicate content, its a well guarded secret.

So, if you want your new website to rank on search engines your first step is to avoid template, automatic or build your own websites. If you have your website built properly, from scratch and individually your foundation is solid. If you choose to use a template site you will be facing an uphill struggle to compete for position now and in the future … and who needs that?

Talk to AsOne on 0161 368 9100 before committing to a template project that you may later come to regret.

Did you know the computer company Dell announced it made £6.5 million US dollars in revenues from their involvement with Twitter.

Dell uses Twitter to “listen and learn” from their customers directly. The number of customers following Dell online has increased considerably, with “11,844” people following them on Twitter @DellOutLet.

Those “11,844” customers receive special discounted offers exclusively as a reward for following the company on Twitter. This is a clear indication that Twitter and other social media networking sites are a very powerful marketing tool. 

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Here at AsOne, we are social. You can find us on, 

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We tie all online and digital marketing together so it works, AsOne.

Make sure your company gets “social” today.

Give us a call for more information on 0161 368 9100 or email us at: here@asone.co.uk.