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The world of marketing is anything but boring and there’s always someone out there who thinks up new ideas to get people to buy products. Take Groupon, a deal-of-the-day website that started out in Chicago just several years ago and has exploded into an international $1.3 billion operation.

What’s Groupon? Well, take the old coupons in newspapers and magazines, multiply those with thousands of the same kind offering outrageously cheap deals and once a certain number of people agree to buy into those deals, get those coupons cashed in. Groupons are “group coupons” which can be validated when a predetermined number of people sign up for the offer. If that number is not met, the deal is off, so nobody loses any money. Groupon gets paid for every validated coupon – sweet deal. With Groupon promotion on Facebook and Twitter and special Groupon apps for Android, iPhone, and Blackberry, it can’t go wrong – or so it seems.

As with all sweet deals, there are snakes roaming in the grass. Groupon only works if the company that offers the deal is set up to actually deliver it. You see, Groupon puts no specific caps on the number of people who can respond to a deal. There is a minimum required amount for the deal to go through, but there is no maximum. So you get the (actual) example of a coffee shop which was stampeded by over 1000 customers on the first day of their offer. They couldn’t deal with that amount of business and after long waiting times, hundreds of customers left, disgruntled.

I know of at least two dentists who put out a new patient cleaning, x-ray, and exam offer with Groupon. One of those dentists had more than 900 responses and had no way of treating that amount of new patients with their existing staff without having them wait for months. The other dentist had less response – still well over 100 – but literally all of them already had a dentist and just came in for the free cleaning and exam. None of them wanted further treatment.

Groupon bases its philosophy on the fact that if you flood a company with new customers, some of them will stay, and it’s up to the company itself to make this happen. In many cases it does – certainly when the new customers are happy with the service or product. But in the case of the two dentists I know, this didn’t happen, and for the most part the Groupon deal meant a lot of extra work with very little revenue.

Yet, there are ways Groupon can work for dental practices.

First off, I would make very sure, before entering a Groupon offer, that the practice is set up to deliver to the hundreds of people that will come for the offer.

Next, Groupon only accepts cleaning and bleaching offers from dental practices. This may present problems for new patients who have periodontal problems (likely the case with most of them) which needs to be treated before bleaching or cleaning can occur. In such cases, the doctor or hygienist will have to explain why cleaning can’t be done and that can result in upsets, since it was part of the offer. So the dentist and staff will have to work out how they are going to solve such situations and give the new patient an acceptable alternative.

Lastly, and most importantly, I would work out beforehand what to do with the “deal hunters” that only come for the offer or already have a dentist, or are not interested in further treatment. This is a matter of good salesmanship and real care to motivate this person to want the treatment he or she needs. The consults, exams and x-rays may reveal dental situations that need to be addressed, no matter if the person is interested or not, or whether he or she already has a dentist.

At the MGE Communication & Sales Seminars, delivered by MGE Management Experts in Florida, dentists and their staff learn to deal with patient objections and fears, so they are motivated to want the treatment they need. Having learned and practiced these techniques, those dentists can comfortably get new patients to come back and receive their full treatment plan.

With any marketing campaigns and endeavors, no matter how brilliant they are, it really comes down to the company or practice to turn responses from those campaigns into real conversions – i.e., buying customers. It’s part of the marketing process to figure those things out before launching into a campaign.

And that’s how you can make things like Groupon work for you.