Photo: Alex Washburn / Wired

Like every year, I get very excited to see what Google came up with and what we Canadians will be able to use already! Here are my 2013 highlights:

For the geeks (and the entrepreneur)

Android Studio

App developers should be very excited about this new IDE! Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools for development and debugging. I was highly impressed by the testing tools part of the Studio including a simulator of all the types of phones and tablets available on the market to make sure your new app looks and works perfectly. Get it here.

Google Play Developer Console

The Google Play Developer Console is a new dashboard coming to the the Google Play admin center for developers. There are a lot of exciting new features to track, analyze and improve your app once it has been released on the market. Optimization Tips will share any quick wins that you can get in your app, I consider it like the Google Website Optimizer for Android apps. The App Translation Service will help you find professional translation services and complete an order without having to leave your Google Play admin center. Another awesome new feature will be the Beta Testing & Staged Rollouts! It will be the perfect way to QA your new features by creating a beta group in your Google+ circles. The staged rollouts are even more exciting with the release of your new tested features to only a small percentage of your users at first and by increasing it as you become more confident about the changes.

For the user

Google Play Music All Access

Google will release its own music subscription service Google Play Music All Access or the “radio without rules”. For $9.99/month (in the US for now), get access to unlimited music between all your Google connected gadgets. Playlists will be created automatically based on songs that you choose or by your interests and you will be given full control on the playlist playing including reordering or removing songs. Before starting paying, you will receive a 30-day free trial and if you register by June 30th, your monthly fee will be lowered to $7.99/month.

Google+

The social platform received 41 new features. The most important ones are Stream, Hangouts and Photos. Stream is all about revamping the home layout with a new design and depth. The new look follows the Pinterest board style that we have grown used to seeing all over the web and that we love. The new theme is responsive and features hashtags that will automatically be added to go deeper in the information shared. Hangouts is Google’s new stand-alone app to chat. It’s all about mixing messages, photos and video chats in a conversation with one or multiple people. Considering it’s only meant for Google users, I wonder how popular it will be. Finally there’s the new Photos section Google+. The 3 keywords to describe Photos were Highlight, Enhance and Awesome. Highlight for automatically picking the best photos in your new album so you don’t have to spend time finding them yourself. Enhance for auto enhancing your photos, whether it’s about removing red eyes or making the clouds stand out, it’s quite fantastic! Awesome creates a lot of cool things from your photos, whether it’s an auto animation (animated gif), a panorama, a collage or merging multiple takes of a group photos to get the more smiles together!

Google Search

Google Search is getting a revamp with 3 clear missions. Answer will start bringing the cards we love in Google Now in our search results. Google Search will also complete your query by adding additional data based on what they think you would want to know next. Converse is just cool. It’s also what we’ve started using with Google Now in the past  but its being made available to all platforms: you will now start speaking to your computer, phone, tablet or tv and be able to load a search session by saying OK GOOGLE. Anticipate will let you set reminders by telling Google about any task to do in the future.

Google Maps

A lot of exciting features have been released to Google Maps this week including Zagat ratings and Offers based on your keyword searches. The directions and navigation feature will now include live coverage of incidents and traffic with dynamic rerouting. Finally, you’ll be able to enable the Explore option to see what’s around your current location and find any type of service or venue easily.

There’s actually a lot more coming to Google Maps in the near future and you can subscribe to receive an invite to try them on a desktop version! Click here to get yours now.

For the community

Google Play for Education

More than 2000 schools in the United States only are equipped with Chromebooks and this is why Google found it important to create an education section in Google Play to find apps for education. Those Android apps will be filtered by grades and class subjects. It will be really easy to buy and install them automatically on all the computers related to a school or class group. It will be interesting to see how this section grows in the future.

Bonus! Google Fiber

Of course, Google is working on the future of the Internet speed and I can’t wait to try it! The awesome service started in Kansas City around 2012 and will now roll out to Provo and Austin. We were told that the program will be expected to arrive in new cities in a much faster pace in the future.

Take a look at the plans offered so far:

Plan	Gigabit + TV	Gigabit	Free Internet
Price	$120/month ($300 construction fee waived)	$70/month ($300 construction fee waived)	$0/month + $300 construction fee
Internet bandwidth (download)	1 Gbit/s	1 Gbit/s	5 Mbit/s
Internet bandwidth (upload)	1 Gbit/s	1 Gbit/s	1 Mbit/s
TV service included	Yes	No	No
Storage included	2 TB DVR Storage (8 simultaneous recordings possible) 1 TB Google Drive	1 TB Google Drive	None
Hardware included	Nexus 7 tablet TV box Network box Storage box (DVR) $250 Chromebook optional	Network box $250 Chromebook optional	Network box $250 Chromebook optional

Even if it wasn’t discussed at Google I/O, this is definitely one of the most exciting services I have seen coming up and I really hope they chose Montreal first when they start in Canada.

In Conclusion

It was great to hear Larry Page speak at the end of  the keynote and get the vibe of where things are going from Google’s CEO. This year wasn’t a year of new gadgets but more of refining the services for all those great creations. I think Google is moving forward with its best ideas and being more mature with its services. We are definitely heading in a great direction!

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Here’s an excerpt from the Government of Canada website:

On December 15, 2010, the Government of Canada passed the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam bill,Bill C-28. In doing so, the government delivered on a key commitment made by Prime Minister Harper to Canadians and Canadian businesses in September 2008.

The intent of the legislation is to deter the most damaging and deceptive forms of spam, such as identity theft, phishing and spyware, from occurring in Canada and to help to drive out spammers.

This law addresses the legislative recommendations of the Task Force on Spam, which brought together industry, consumers and academic experts to design a comprehensive package of measures to combat threats to the digital economy. As well the government studied successful legislative models in other countries and, based on their experiences, has developed a focused plan to address spam and related online threats.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ecic-ceac.nsf/eng/h_gv00567.html

The Bill C-28 passed in 2010 but it will finally be enforced this spring. The official date has not been released yet but it is safe to say that the new rules should be taken seriously on your website as soon as possible.

A reported violation will cost $10 millions to a company and $1 million to an individual.

Here are the most urgent rules to implement:

• You may not add a group email to your mailing list such as admin@nameofcompany.com, support@nameofcompany.com or sales@nameofcompany.com. Sending an email promotion or newsletter to a group email will be considered as spam.
• You must always include your postal address and phone number in your email send-out. Most of the time, it is found towards the end of the message, close to the unsubscribe link. Of course, the unsubscribe link should always be part of your send-out unless it is a transactional email.
• When a subscriber requests to be removed from your list, you have 10 business days to get it done. So if your system does not handle list removal automatically, make sure to add this task in your to-do list.
• A subscriber should be able to unsubscribe from your list without having to login to any site. This one is very important and most companies still make that mistake. Make sure that your developer makes that form available publicly, just like the subscription form is.
• If the newsletter subscription is merged with the registration form to your site, the check box or radio button for the newsletter option should never be pre checked. Once again, this is a mistake seen on most websites and should be updated as soon as possible.
• If you rent a list for a promotional send-out, the FROM email will have to be the email of the owner of the list and not yours. The subscribers should only receive emails from addresses they have cleared.
• If you do SMS promotions, you must always include an unsubscribe option with the word STOP.

Overall, these requests all make sense and shouldn’t be too complicated to integrate on your website.

It is important to make sure that the visitor on your site really wants to subscribe and that is why he should be the only one checking the box to do so. If you want to offer the best experience possible, add a double opt-in process.

It does not require much more work and by forcing the new subscriber to confirm his interest twice and testing the said email, it will bulletproof you against unnecessary bounces! Once that process is completed, there is little chance that subscriber will report you as spam, which is the second worst thing that can happen to you after paying a violation.

Getting reported as spam can be the end of your brand as getting just a small amount of complaints through Gmail or Yahoo! can push them to block all emails sent from you.

So get to it people and your hard work will pay off with subscribers that trust you.

For more information about the Bill C-28 and what you can do, visit the Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation website.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Prior to his career in digital marketing, Simon Rouillier was the manager of a successful College Pro Painters franchise. Building on his entrepreneurship experience, Rouillier teamed, in 2004, with Guillaume Bouchard, a pioneer in marketing for search engines. Together, they founded nvi, which has now become one of the largest agencies specialized in digital marketing in Canada. The agency has indeed grown significantly over the years; going from a few workers in a small office, to a team of fifty employees serving national clients in a prestigious loft, all within 7 years. It is with audacity and ambition that nvi has overcome challenges that occurred with each new client to become the leader it is today.

“I am proud that nvi’s business excellence is being recognized. This competition highlights not only my personal success, but more importantly, the growth of nvi. I take this award as an encouragement to move forward with our expansion. Those are very exciting times for nvi and several major projects await us.” says Simon Rouillier.

The FuEL Awards, organized by PROFIT Magazine and KPMG Enterprise, is a contest open to all Canadian business owners under 30 years old. The event aims to promote entrepreneurship in Canada and illustrating the many benefits of venturing out on one’s own.

Simon Rouillier

For more information and/or interview requests, contact:

Benoit Chiasson
nvi Vice President of Marketing
514-524-7149 # 241
bchiasson@nvisolutions.com

Lire ce texte en français

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

nvi has been working with the latest technologies to achieve performance objectives for digital customers since its founding. However, access to technology and equipment is not available for everyone. Therefore, nvi has reached out to Sun Youth to offer them ten fully refurbished laptops. Donated just before back to school, these computers are, among others things, available to children enrolled in the homework program (see photo). “We are very happy and grateful to be able to have a positive impact on our community and contribute in our own way, to support motivation in academic achievement while being environmentally and socially responsible,” says Guillaume Bouchard, President at nvi.

Children are enjoying the laptops

“Your donation will allow us to have better technological resources, which ultimately, allow us to provide better services to people we help. Your gift could not come at a better time,” says Johanne Saltarelli assistant to the executive director and director of the Sun Youth camp.

About SunYouth (Jeunesse au Soleil)
A local non-profit social organization in Montreal, Sun Youth helps the community by providing aid to individuals in need. The organization mission is to serve low income families, people with special needs as well as citizens of all ages, ethnic origins and religious beliefs, without discrimination.

About nvi
nvi is a full service digital marketing agency with offices in Montreal and Toronto. nvi leverages internal tools, broad experience and a diversified staff of experts to serve their customers.  All services are rendered in a perfectly bilingual environment. Known for its resourcefulness, nvi has the ability to execute strategic plans that are performance-centric. nvi relies on the ingenuity of its digital marketing strategies and the collective energy of its employees to offer the best return on investment to its customers.

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For more info, contact
Benoit Chiasson
VP marketing and sales
4200 St-Laurent blvd, suite 701
Montreal, Qc. H2W 2R2
514-524-7149 # 241
bchiasson@nvisolutions.com

www.nvisolutions.com

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Last night, Thursday September 20, nvi welcomed clients and key contributors into their brand new office space located at 4200 St Laurent, with a special guest speaker from Google.

Montreal - September 21, 2012 - nvi, Canada’s leading digital performance agency invited clients and key contributors to come celebrate 7 years of success during their new office launch party. Held on the 7th floor of 4200 St Laurent, it was the perfect occasion to discover the creative space where the nvi team has been working away for the last few weeks. During the Happy Hour event, guests had the chance to attend a joint conference presented by nvi’s CEO, Guillaume Bouchard, and the Managing Director of Google Québec, Nicolas Darveau-Garneau. The conference covered current challenges in digital performance with insights into what’s ahead for the digital industry.

Click here to see pictures of the event on Facebook.

nvi’s offices have been a reflection of where nvi is as a company. As clients, staff and services portfolios have grown, so have the physical surroundings. In 2004, Guillaume Bouchard and Simon Rouillier started the company as part of a final year project for school. nvi’s first “office” was a crammed apartment on Marie-Anne street. Next came a slightly bigger semi-basement apartment on Pie IX Boulevard. Just before the most recent move, nvi was located in a loft on 55 Mont-Royal West. Today, nvi has made a staggering step up to 10,000 square feet of state of the art open space. Now residing on the Main, the new office is designed to promote the collaborative, collective energy of the team. Without compromising the bold and passionate spirit that nvi was founded on, nvi has evolved with every move, taking on bigger, more complex challenges and serving a growing portfolio of tier-1 clients.

“The leaders of the company chose to invest in new premises in order to bolster our talents’ creativity; to allow them to work in a modern and inspiring physical space that makes them excited to go above and beyond for our customers,” says Guillaume Bouchard, co-founder and CEO of nvi. In addition, nvi was recently ranked third among Quebec’s fast growing companies (38th in Canada) by L’Actualité and Profit 200.

4200 St-Laurent new offices

4200 St Laurent, suite 701 Conference rooms are all named after nvi addresses through time nvi’s mission is centered on the ingenuity of its web marketing strategies and the collective energy of its employees to offer the best return on investment to its clients. nvi helps clients define goals and measure their actions. By doing so, nvi aims to find the optimal solutions for exceeding its clients’ performance expectations in a relationship that is founded on each other’s success. nvi builds a culture of performance based on a desire to excel and execute strategies in an intelligent way.

About nvi

nvi is a full service digital marketing agency with offices in Montreal and Toronto. nvi leverages internal tools, broad experience and a diversified staff of experts to serve their customers. All services are rendered in a perfectly bilingual environment. Known for its resourcefulness, nvi has the ability to execute strategic plans that are performance-centric. nvi relies on the ingenuity of its digital marketing strategies and the collective energy of its employees to offer the best return on investment to its customers.

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For more information and/or interview requests, contact:

Benoit Chiasson
nvi Vice President of Marketing
514-524-7149 # 241
bchiasson@nvisolutions.com

www.nvisolutions.com

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Tons of great new ideas, applications and concepts are demonstrated at Google I/O and if you’re a developer or simply love tech, it would be a shame not to take advantage of one of the 2 days left of the event that kicked off yesterday. For those who can’t attend the event in-person, Google I/O Extended allows you to livestream parts of Google I/O events from all over the world. Otherwise, you can always wait until the talks become available for free on YouTube, which should be in no time.

Google I/O Extended events are official  “viewing parties” that sometimes have their own extra talks before the viewing of the Google I/O keynote. For example, at the Montreal Google I/O Extended, there were 3 additional talks about Chrome development:

• Chromium : Développement (French)
  Guidelines on how to add your own code to Chrome.
• Outils de développement de Chrome (French)
  This talk demonstrated how after using Firebug for years, the default developer tool for Chrome surpassed it with its many features. If you ask me, this is the best web debugging system.
• Chrome Extensions Best Practices
  At this talk, I learned best practices for maximum security when developing a Chrome add-on.

After those 3 sessions and a quick meal, it was time for the main event, the Google I/O 2012 Event. They unveiled so many great things, some of the highlights including:

Android 4.1 - Jelly Bean

• Built to have the best speed performance
• Add offline voice commands (don’t worry, it’s far from old “dumb phone” voice recongnition)
• Better notification or, like they say, active notification with type specific functionalities.
• Google Now is a new application that will, with time, learn to anticipate your needs. Say you’re a soccer fan (since we all have World Cup fever) and you’re always checking the scores for your favourite team, Google Now will learn your patterns and instantly give you score updates but also tell you when your team is playing next and even where to buy tickets to the game.

Google Q

Google Q’s hardware reminds me of some kind of mix between the Apple Air Port Express and Apple TV machine. With integrated speakers, and operating on a fully Cloud based system (buy a song or a movie with your computer or TV and it’s available anywhere), this seems to be a great contender to Apple TV and Air Port systems.

Nexus 7

Like the Nexus One or Nexus S, the Nexus 7 is the next official Google hardware machine. Besides being one hell of an amazing piece of hardware, it’s also only $199 ($209 Candian). A perfect size for reading a book, playing games, managing your life … you name it! And all for such a a small fee

Are you going to buy one? I will for sure!! They’ll be available in Canada in a little less than a month.

Google + Events

Google+ is a nice platform for social sharing, but to be honest, I don’t use it that much. It’s not to say that it’s bad, but I’m so used to Facebook for all my social needs that I don’t see the point in using Google+. That changed today!!

Google+ Events is the perfect tool for creating and managing events. It takes care of the before, during and after the event. Creating an event is a breeze. It groups all the pictures of the event together and puts them into one easy accessible place that you can go back to once the event is done. Don’t take my word for it, check out this video :

Google Glass

What is Google Glass? It’s the new cool gadget in town. Still in it’s infancy stages, it acts as a sixth sense and provides extra information to the user about the world around them through a wearable Glass. For more info, check out this video:

Like the famous “one more thing” Apple does at almost every keynote, Google Glass was showcased in its fully functional format and ended the event with a Bang!! We witnessed guys flying down from a plane, biking on a rooftop and then deepelling down the side of a building! Crazy stuff -watch below:

That was it for me for Google I/O 2012 in Montréal! Can’t wait to watch all of the talks and I hope you’ll do the same.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

“We are very excited to be nominated for a second consecutive year and to be first among digital agencies,” says Guillaume Bouchard, CEO of NVI. “We attribute our growth and success to our values of performance, ingenuity and collective energy and to a team that’s bright and talented.” Indeed, in just over 5 years, NVI has evolved from a start-up web design company to one of the major digital marketing agencies in Canada.

NVI’s mission is centered on the ingenuity of its web marketing strategies and the collective energy of its employees to offer the best return on investment to its clients. NVI helps clients define goals and measure their actions. By doing so, NVI aims to find the optimal solutions for exceeding its clients’ performance expectations in a relationship that is founded on each other’s success. NVI builds a culture of performance based on a desire to excel and execute strategies in an intelligent way.

PROFIT 200 Ranking

Ranking Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies by five-year revenue growth, the PROFIT 200 profiles the country’s most successful growth companies. Published in the Summer issue of PROFIT and online at PROFITguide.com, the PROFIT 200 is Canada’s largest annual celebration of entrepreneurial achievement.

“The PROFIT 200 companies are an inspiration to Canadian entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs,” says Ian Portsmouth, Editor-in-Chief of PROFIT Magazine. “PROFIT is proud to celebrate the success of these businesspeople, who, despite a challenging economy, have achieved outstanding success in a wide variety of fields.”

About PROFIT Magazine

PROFIT: Your Guide to Business Success is Canada’s preeminent publication dedicated to the management issues and opportunities facing small and mid-sized businesses. For 30 years, Canadian entrepreneurs and senior managers across a vast array of economic sectors have remained loyal to PROFIT because it’s a timely and reliable source of actionable information that helps them achieve business success and get the recognition they deserve for generating positive economic and social change. Visit PROFIT online at PROFITguide.com.

About NVI

NVI is a full service digital marketing agency with offices in Montreal and Toronto. NVI leverages internal tools, broad experience and diversified staff of experts to serve their customers. Known for its resourcefulness, NVI has the ability to execute strategic plans that are performance-centric. NVI relies on the ingenuity of its web marketing strategies and the collective energy of its employees to offer the best return on investment to its customers.

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Contact

Benoit Chiasson,
VP marketing and sales
4200 boul. St-Laurent, suite 701
Montréal, Qc. H2W 2R2
514-524-7149 # 241
bchiasson@nvisolutions.com

www.nvisolutions.com

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

A game created to add “freshness” to generic holiday print and e-cards, the NVI Xmas Rankerizer tests your web marketing skills through fast action plays, requiring quick reflexes,  precise hand/eye coordination and attention to detail. In true Social spirit, the Xmas Rankerizer is the perfect way heat up and unwind before the holidays begin.

Inspired by the classic county fair game, “whac-a-mole”, the NVI Xmas Rankerizer is an updated virtual game where the most trending search and social media icons, such as the Facebook Like, the Twitter bird, YouTube, Google’s +1, LinkedIn and the Google Panda, replace traditional media, err… moles.

Web marketers, bloggers and all you social media buffs out there… get ready to rev your game ranking engines! The player with the most points wins!

Don’t forget to publish your results on your social networks so that the competition gets fierce! Nothing like a little showboating right?

The game is compatible with mobile and iPad as well. Visit the NVI Xmas Rankerizer for more information and loads of fun!

Happy Holidays to all!

The NVI team

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

The theme of the seminar was to present key LinkedIn marketing solutions to help businesses get the most out of LinkedIn. Up until recently, LinkedIn has been a service used by business professionals to put up their CVs, recruit people, and network.

Over the last year, it has expanded its services to organizations as well. LinkedIn is (finally) harnessing the power of its high-profile network to become a key B2B marketing tool that offers companies a valuable way to advertise, manage their professional identity, build strong business relationships and ultimately, get leads, revenue and conversions.

Why LinkedIn Makes Sense
1. #1 resource for career-minded professionals
2. Over 120 million members
3. Precise targeting by seniority, industry, job function and geography

If you’re kind of new to the concept of LinkedIn as a marketing tool let’s delve right into the 4 things you should do to maximize your LinkedIn marketing efforts.

1. Optimize your Company Page: utilize all of LinkedIn’s new Company page features to strengthen your presence on LinkedIn and online.
2. Get Recommendations: build a highly targeted network of followers and increase number of brand evangelists
3. Amplify your message: through “paid media” (LinkedIn Recommendation Ads for example) you can scale your message to boost your social capabilities
4. Analyze and Refine: Track progress and message strength using LinkedIn Analytics Tool

1. Optimize Your Company Page

Your Company Page is where LinkedIn members can discover more about your company and engage with your brand. From new job postings, products and services, new hires, recent Tweets, new blog posts, to user recommendations, this is where members can learn who you are, what you’re up to and “Recommend” you to others in their network. Recommendations are akin to “authority” Likes that can help drive traffic to your LinkedIn page, your website and increase engagement and buzz surrounding your brand, from highly targeted prospects in the LinkedIn network.

Products & Services Tab

The products and service tab gives you the opportunity to highlight all of your best products and services. You can add comprehensive descriptions for each p/s with relevant links back to product pages on your website. As LinkedIn already gets top rankings on the SERP it can be a great way to pass on page rank to your site.

Display Banners

You can create up to 3 different display banners for your products and services page with links in them. Since you are targeting business networks specifically, it’s an opportunity to get creative with your banner ads. For example, providing stats on the company’s performance, incentives to “Become a fan on Facebook” or
better yet, “Follow Us on LinkedIn”.

Video

Video can do a lot to enhance user experience on your products and services homepage. You can embed videos from YouTube, advertise services, show video tutorials, host contests, announce special offers (LinkedIn highly recommends providing special offers to members) and more.

Get Recommendations

LinkedIn’s recommendation engine is probably the most valuable new feature of its service update. Once you’ve set up your services page, LinkedIn sends you the coding to add a LinkedIn “Recommend” button on your business website.

Many companies have been seeing significant results by using the Recommendation Ads paid service. Recommendation ads help gain a critical mass of recommendations more quickly. You can define your target audiences and customize your message so it displays relevant content for up to 5 different audience segments.

LinkedIn says you should actively seek recommendations as part of all your customer communications.Through LinkedIn’s “request Recommendations” module, you can invite members to recommend products and services straight from your products and services tab.

Since recommendations are the most trusted form of marketing, getting recommendations from trusted peers is an active way of strengthening your brands reputation, and increasing your brand and products’ potential to spread virally throughout LinkedIn’s broad network of company pages and professionals ones.

Members will see what someone in their network said about you, and these badges of approval then appear on your LinkedIn company page, helping empower your brand’s authority and presence on the most widely-used business network.

Amplify Your Message

Case study: Hewlett-Packard
HP was looking to expand its social capabilities and reach to get both commercial clients and customers engaging about HP products and endorsing the brand. Utilizing LinkedIn’s company page module and running a paid campaign through Recommendation Ads the company saw unprecedented results in only 2 weeks.

The ads encouraged LinkedIn members to visit the HP Company Page on LinkedIn, recommend HP products and services, and share those recommendations with their network.

Results:
• 2,000 product recommendations in two weeks
• 20,000 new followers on HP Company Page
• 500,000 viral updates about HP products and services.

Read full case study here: HP Case Study

Analyze and Refine

The LinkedIn Analytics tab is only viewable to admins and shows you who is visiting your company page, what pages they viewed most, and how you fare in comparison to others in your industry. You can also refine your analysis to learn which industries, functions and companies make up your group of followers.

By tracking analytics and progress, you have the ability to learn which products are most popular, which don’t get enough traction, who your followers are and how you can improve your message to target new communities.

It will be interesting to see the evolution of LinkedIn’s B2B marketing services as more companies jump on the bandwagon. Since there are little to no other competitors doing what Linkedin is doing right now,  the recommendations engine could prove to be a highly useful tool for raising brand awareness, reputation, trust and loyalty. Applying LinkedIn as part of an integrated campaign seems like it has the potential to yield some pretty outstanding results.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Fast-forward to today and Groupon is 44 million users strong, services 500 cities in 46 countries across the globe and is on pace to make their first billion dollars faster than any other company in history.

For those of you unfamiliar with Groupon and how it works here’s a quick rundown: Groupon offers one daily coupon to every market they serve. These coupons offer a deal by local business’ within each market. Every deal has a minimum purchase requirement for the deal to come into effect but once met, the deal becomes 100% valid and can be redeemed. Groupon sends out daily coupon deal emails to all 44 million of its users which brings the visibility to every deal.

Groupon’s system has a lot going for it. First, it’s free for everyone. There is no registration or membership fees for buyers and more importantly there are absolutely no fees for businesses who want to advertise their deals. Groupon makes 50% of the advertised deal price and the retailer walks away with a large quantity of new business. There’s no risk for Groupon, retailers or buyers. Everyone wins and this is a huge reason Groupon has grown the way it has over the last 3 years.

But as much as the Groupon deal-a-day concept has going for it, there are some limitations. “…we have to pass on seven out of eight merchants that contact us.” - Adam Mason on the amount of requests coming in. That’s really an amazing figure. That means a vast majority of businesses that want to get on the Groupon train get stuck at the station. With Groupon throwing away a majority of the business coming its way, it leaves a lot of business open for competitors to pick up. And there’s no end to the competitors lining up.

There are larger players like Living Social and Google Offers that have surfaced as head-to-head competitors but there are now thousands operating on more local levels showing up every day.

The Decline of Groupon

I’m expecting some flak from some of the opinions I’m going to express but there are some solid reasons for me to suspect Groupon will soon be in trouble.

I think just about everyone I know personally in the online marketing world either is running or thinking of running a deal-a-day website. Some of which are experiencing success but all have ideas to trump Groupon. This is a much bigger problem for Groupon than most are considering.

Smaller, more local and niche deal-a-day sites are the competition that Groupon has a real reason to be worried about.

Groupon is currently estimated to employ 7500 people across the world. The growth of the company has truly been amazing but this is the very reason it will soon find itself needing to scale back. In a company as large as this, quick on-the-fly adjustments are difficult and have far reaching impacts. This is where smaller deal-a-day sites will out-manoeuvre Groupon. Currently Groupon takes a 50% cut from retailers and this figure is pretty standard across the board on most deal-a-day websites. But there’s nothing stopping a strong local site to decide a 25% cut is good enough for them. Or less. This is already happening in the Montreal and surrounding areas where I’m regularly seeing smaller sites undercutting Groupon and its competitors.

Groupon has had a hard time entering the Montreal market with opponents like Tuango, MontrealontheCheap and RedFlag Deals all establishing a strong foothold in the market and there’s no reason to suspect the fierce competition won’t grow outwards.

Tom Langdale

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.