Lead Nurturing Via Daily Deal Model

This week I attended the Deals 3D conference at the relatively new Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF in San Francisco. I listened to a wide variety of people present on what is happening in the quickly-growing daily deals marketplace. Most of the presentations were focused on retail/merchant daily deals. There is a tremendous growth and interest in the daily deals marketspace:

• In the United States there are more 581 daily deals sites.
• Localized social mobile companies like Foursquare and Yelp are now vigorously developing their daily deals offerings.
• 43% of merchants who run a daily deal have done one before.

But what about B2B?

I think the growth and technical infrastructure of the daily deal is paving the way for a more exciting approach to content marketing.

Yes, there are B2B daily deal sites, like MarketSharing. But MarketSharing is still product and service-focused. I’m thinking about something totally different. I’m thinking about using the infrastructure to support B2B content marketing efforts.

The premiss is this: If you agree that lead nurturing and content marketing are effective online marketing tactics, you realize that high value B2B customers can be positively influenced with high value content (i.e., high quality infographics, how-to guides, studies, and even conferences).

Content marketers could use the highly developed platforms and advertising channels to advertise their premium content to targeted prospects in the form of  a”daily deal” that incorporates some of the classic elements:

• Limited time offer.
• Limited inventory (e.g., conference with limited number of attendees).
• Exclusive access to tools and guides specific to an industry segment.

I think it’s an ideal match for B2B marketers. B2B marketers can begin to build more excitement and perceived value around their freemium offerings. And instead of offering an indiscriminate and unlimited supply of freemium content, B2B marketers could use the daily deals engines.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Local Online Coupons
2. The Groupon Effect