Making Deals One Friend at a Time

Smaller companies who want to test out the daily deal space but are wary of signing up with giants like Groupon and LivingSocial now have another avenue to try.

Journalist Donna Fenn, who is also the author of the book Upstarts, about Gen Y entrepreneurs, explains in an article for BNet that Facebook Deals not only gives the smaller daily deal companies it partners with a new venue in which to offer their discounts, but that it also opens up more opportunities for small, local companies to test-drive daily deals. That should all lead to more revenues, and hopefully repeat clients, for retailers and service providers that offer the social-oriented deals that Facebook is promoting, such as concerts or whitewater rafting lessons.

Among the beneficiaries that fall into the partner category is ReachDeals, which is one of about a dozen deal companies that has joined Facebook in launching the Facebook Deals pilot program, which debuted Tuesday in five markets: San Francisco, San Diego, Atlanta, Dallas, and Austin.

“With Facebook, deals are totally integrated into the genotype of the types of consumers that would be best paired up to merchants,” Rich Razgaitis, general manager of ReachDeals, says. “It’s a tighter nucleus of consumers, and the monetary benefit that small business gets as a result of that is significant.”

Small-business owners who want to try Facebook Deals will have to, naturally, create their own Facebook page, since each deal links to a fan page that is also e-commerce enabled. And, as is the case for all daily deal companies, Facebook and its partners will take a cut of every daily deal.

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