Over the last couple of years, I have personally worked with numerous folks, including software developers, marketers, legal experts and tech consultants. My goal/intent is to create something of value that will benefit my target audiences which are Small Business Owners and Consumers who search for them. The market always has inefficiencies. When you see how things are done and see how more could be done, it should inspire you to want to create a solution that, at the end of the day, solves a problem for your customers. That is what I have done in creating Dealium.
As mentioned at the end of every blog I publish, “Dealium is a cloud-based SaaS Digital Referral Marketing & Customer Engagement platform that integrates referral code sharing technology, SMS, Email & popular social media platforms. Dealium helps create brand awareness, brand exposure & new customer acquisition opportunities for our small business subscribers.” This is my mantra or my reason for being. I grew up watching my parent be Small Business Owners and even have an advanced degree in Entrepreneurship. Ninety-nine (99%) percent of Small businesses in the US are classified as Small Businesses. Ninety-two percent (92%) of those businesses rely on customer referrals for new business, yet only eleven percent (11%) actually have a formal customer referral program to monitor their referral activities. Why is that? There are many referral software companies that offer software to add to your existing business website but most companies don’t have the time, resources or expertise to install and run such program. This is the problem that Dealium recognizes and addresses. It is all about creating a marketplace for Consumers to find Small Businesses that offer great customer experiences and are willing to give you a discount to give them a try.
In building a marketplace, there are obviously two sides. A Demand side and a Supply Side. Consumers make up the demand side and Businesses makeup the supply side of a marketplace. The mission of Dealium is to creating business growth opportunities and lower customer acquisition costs for our Small Business subscriber community through our proprietary algorithm-based referral marketing technology. Our mission is also to help consumers save time, money and effort searching for local small businesses that offer great customer experiences and offer referral reward discounts. Dealium’s goal is to offer categories for Consumers to browse that show referral reward offers from Small Businesses in those industries.
So as we prepare to launch, we have a “Chicken & the Egg” problem. How do you get Small Businesses to join a marketplace where Customers aren’t yet signed up to view their offerings and how do you get Consumers to join a marketplace where there are no businesses to view referral reward offers? Our approach will be to recruit Small Business Owners first and allow them to use the service for free until we achieve what is called the “Network Effect”. The network effect refers to the concept that the value of a product or service increases when the number of people who use that product or service increases. Once we have recruited a certain number of small businesses in a specific geography, we will rely on advertising in local markets and social media to create the awareness of the Dealium marketplace. This is where the meeting of Small Business Owners and Consumers will take place. Both the Supply and Demand side of a marketplace have to see the value in belonging in order for the network/marketplace to virally grow.
This process will most likely be a slow one but growing a marketplace takes time and patience. In the meantime, both the Demand and Supply side of the marketplace have to hear the Dealium message over and over to understand the benefit to solving their problem. For Small Business Owners it is addressing and helping them solve their customer acquisition problem, which is the #2 ranked problem for Small Business Owners in the US. For Consumers, it is connecting them with great Small Businesses in their Community that offer great customer experiences and offer a way for them to increase their purchasing power by offering referral reward discounts to them and their referrals. Dealium will be the marketplace network that allows the Demand and Supply sides to meet and ultimately transact.
So as we begin to put the brand and marketing strategies into action and start to establish an eventual national marketplace for Small Business Owners to have a referral marketing tool that is affordable, frictionless and value-added, we will work hard everyday to solve our customers customer acquisition problem.
Please be sure to checkout the parent company website: Virely.co and Dealium.io the SaaS Referral Marketing and Customer Engagement Technology that provides Small Business Owners a solution to have a formal customer referral marketing program without the headache of adding software, spending lots of money and having the expertise to run. We do all the work for you and can have your first social media integrated customer referral program up and running in less than 2 minutes!
Stay tuned as we prepare to officially launch in Atlanta, GA!
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