Groupon’s secret weapon: snappy writing

Groupon has become the fastest-growing company ever, Forbes has reported, through a business model that marries “a cents-off coupon … to a Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy.”

But Groupon uses a little-noted trick to get all those folks stampeding toward a deal: good writing.

Shooting off his mouth for The Hired Guns, Daryl Lang—a blog editor and senior copywriter at Shutterstock—takes note of Groupon’s snappy copy.

“Begin with a quick, snort-inducing joke,” he writes, “then tell somebody they can save a few bucks on something fun. Groupon took a simple idea—a daily, local, social-driven coupon—and turned it into a massive business on the strength of good writing.”

He says Groupon makes use of the AIDA method of marketing (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). He quotes this example: