Daily Deals for Small Business Owners

Foursquare has just announced a new small business marketing tool aimed at mobile customers, but how entrepreneurs use the phone and social media could all be changing rapidly.

After DailyDealMedia.com and 24/7 Wall St. listed Living Social as one of the major brands that may disappear by next year, and Facebook got out of the game, many got the impression that daily deals were dead.

Foursquare clearly believes it is a marketing channel that is only just about to mature and become truly profitable as more data on consumers is available. In a test roll out in New York, Foursquare has unveiled a new CPA (Cost-Per-Action) program that allows local businesses to serve up discount coupons and special deals for consumers checking in. The social network is charging in the region of 50 cents to $3 per customer that redeems their offer.

For small virtual businesses and online retailers that don’t have anywhere for consumers to ‘check-in’, Google Adwords for PPC advertising remains a top pick in the pay for performance marketing bracket for guaranteed traffic, fast.

However, whether purely an online company, small local business or independent entrepreneur, how phone calls and social are handled, and intercompany communication takes place, is all about to potentially change.

Revenues may be about to rocket for Foursquare, but for a number of other high profile tech, telecom and social firms, the outlook might not be as bright…unless they can guarantee privacy.

Looking ahead, savvy and security conscious small business owners will likely reject these unsecure VOIP phone services and will instead use custom toll free vanity numbers forwarded to mobile devices on other networks and phones with military grade encryption for voice, text and file transfer.