Online ? Who's online ? Get outa there....

... and be where the customers are!

Context : was pleasantly surprised to see this along with our morning newspaper a few days ago. And there was another one this morning.

Now everyone's been talking about hyperlocal, but guys like CommonFloor and Open2Save seem to be actually doing it.

I've believed for a while now that

• Hyperlocal is big
• The internet is a tool - it may not be the final consumer connect but can enable a lot of it

So its good to see both these players trying to connect online with existing channels, though not everything has been tried or figured out yet. Purely as an advertising play (some coupons are little more than plain ads) this serves a market which cannot afford and does not need city level visibility, but did not necessarily want to go with what was being offered by the guys who print and ditribute flyers on cheap paper. Given the "aggregation" of deals etc, there's also a better chance of the user being interested in one or more of the deals, and retaining the coupon, unlike single-business flyers.

There's a bunch of other ideas that can be tried in the web-as-a-tool for hyperlocal businesses space. But I'm pleasantly surprised to see efforts to look beyond the web and work with existing behavioural patterns and business flows to provide a better mousetrap within those. The changes can then be effected once some traction happens.

Who says its all about web 2.0 ?

Before you go buy that …..

Check things out on Zook - O2S have added tons of great deals for your locality, your brand and service.

Great Beauty Services Offers in Bangalore

Best Digital Camera Prices in Mumbai

Best Samsung Deals Across Delhi!!

Check out Bangalore Laptop offers

Call up O2S at the given number, and they’ll help you out with more offers, and in fact find for you exactly what you’re looking for. Less headaches, better prices!

Special M-Coupons for Mumbaikars

[ X-post from The Zook blog yet again. Am getting lazy.... ]

Our coupons and deals partners, Open2Save, have gotten some special deals in Mumbai. These will not be available through search, but you can subscribe for the same for delivery every month through SMS.

How ? SMS “O2S mum” to 57575665

You’ll get a the current deals in your Inbox (and we’ll keep sending fresh ones once in a while) - if any specific one catches your fancy, just SMS the keyword for that deal to us, and we’ll send you the coupon you need to show the store/restaurant before you order/buy stuff.

Happy shopping!

[ Tip: for the readers of this blog - 984-551-9665 - thats 984-551-zook on your phone-keypad - will work as well for now. If we see more usage on the long code - we'll move to one for good. Its a Karnataka number so in other circles you'll need to prefix a +91 or 0 - +91-984-551-9665 ]

Deals on Zook

Cross linking from the Zook Blog:

Sweet Deals!

Open2Save, as we've discovered, is one of the biggest aggregators of deals and they're expanding rapidly. I guess a deal is a good find when you're looking for something and want to look around for better offers.