Online coupons come in three main flavors. The first consists of the online consumer grocery coupon sites. These are printable coupons that usually require bar codes and stiff security. The security usually includes a consumer being required to register to download or print the coupons. Almost all the press and research done about couponing focuses on this area. An examle of a site like this is Coolsavings.com.
The second category of coupons is digital discounts that drive consumers to e-commerce sites. The advertisers in this line are essentially national advertisers in that, they have little to no local presence in your town. An example of a site like RetailMeNot.com this is which might have discounts for use at Amazon.com.
The final category of online coupons is the focus of this blog, small business local online coupons. We’re talking about restaurants, car washes, lawn service, everything but consumer packages goods. These are the advertisers in your local Valpak coupon envelope, door hangers, coupon booklets and postcard coupon pack. Website that offer coupons for these local businesses usually have no security barrier for consumers to jump through to see and print the offers. These coupons rarely have barcodes, because small businesses usually don’t have barcode readers for collecting redemption information. When traditional media sales forces begin to offer an online coupon advertising product to these local businesses, they create a rich content area on their site that offers consumers exactly what they are looking for. It also creates great content for search engines to find and index, thus generating “organic” traffic from consumers using the likes of Google and Yahoo! to look for local savings. An example of a site like this is Valpak.com.
