Facebook Deals is history. Groupon is declining. Google Offers is not exactly going places. In short, the luster and explosive growth of the daily deals industry are finally waning; the industry may be approaching some form of maturity or stabilization.

As a daily deal website owner, you may be tempted to ask, “Is there still space left in the US$4 billion industry for me to survive and, heck, to grow?” The answer is probably yes, but a differentiating strategy is probably needed.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Position your website as a way to learn about new places to have fun. It is sometimes an unwarranted assumption that daily deal consumers are cheapskate bargain hunters who will only buy if the item in question is sufficiently cheap. The term “cheapskate consumers” is an oxymoron; real cheapskates would rather save the cash entirely. Go for rarity and uniqueness; everyone has had enough of spa and massage or dinner buffet deals.

2. Content marketing is your friend. Groupon is often praised for “killer” copy that accompanies its deals. Deals alone are boring, but that is how most daily deal websites operate. Weave a story to go along with your deals. Frame deal details as a narrative instead of yet another set of bullet points. Give your customers ideas. Start a blog that makes your customers like you and that provides your customers with something else to do other than simply buy your deals.

3. Focus on some sort of niche market. We all love to sell everything to everyone, but the truth is we are probably more well-posited to serve one or a few specific markets based on certain geographical areas, age groups, genders, occupations/hobbies, etc. The benefit of serving a niche market is that your niche market will see you as speaking to them directly, because you are. It is also easier to brand your website and curate specific deals for a well-defined market that has unique characteristics rather than for a mass market that theoretically likes everything.

4. Get sustainable deal flow. Lack of high-quality deals is probably the number one reason that daily deal websites eventually die, because that is supposed to be their core competency. The daily deal website is simply a tool. It is not the focus. The deals are the focus. And high-quality deals are deals that consumers want.

5. Ramp up on customer service. Finding companies where you can just directly talk to their employees – in real-time or otherwise – is difficult these days. Communicating often with customers (and being ridiculously accessible) is one of the best ways to build trust and closeness with your customers. It is, after all, always easier to buy from a company you trust. “But how do I start?” Easy: just be available and proactively engage with your brand enthusiasts via email, live chat, Skype, Facebook Page, Twitter, blog comments, Facebook comments, etc. Use them voraciously. They are all free, so there is no excuse not to use them.

The good thing about a crowded space is that 1) the market is super-validated, and 2) it is relatively easy to stand out among the hoards of mediocre businesses. The overarching principle to remember is that there is no one principle that works for all markets; talk to your customers, find out who they are, what they like, and please them. You will be surprised how much strategic planning becomes easier and more directed once you receive constant input from your customers.

We recently received an enquiry from a prospective customer, asking us the difference between our daily deal platform and a competitor’s. It seemed like a reasonable question for a buyer to ask, but it led us to ask ourselves the crucial soul-searching question, “What is our advantage compared to our competitors?” Why should our customers choose us and then stick with us for the long term?

Our answer centered on two points: quality of customer service and risk factor. Here is what we said about our customer service:

“The other difference is customer support. We answer emails quickly (basically with the promptness with which we answered this email), and all our developers also double as customer service officers as a matter of company policy. So the people you're talking to can actually go into the code and fix things or add features as you need them. Quickly. Sometimes in hours.”

On risk factor, we stressed the importance of a low-risk entry point into a relatively-young market and of a quick route-to-market. Large upfront costs consume vital capital that is most likely scarce, and – let us face it – any player just entering a new market, no matter how experienced in adjacent industries, will be experimenting in the early stages of the business. Experimentation should not involve large amounts of capital. We are learning as much as our customers are learning, given how new the market is.

We provide our customers a commercially-prudent solution to get started quickly and cheaply, and we roll out the important-yet-not-indispensable bells and whistles to customers who are already doing well in the later stages. This is also the reason that we do not always win in a feature-to-feature battle with our competitors; other daily deal platforms boast an assortment of powerful features. Yet few vendors realize that, for a customer with limited technical knowledge who is just getting started with selling online, a giant array of features is more overwhelming and discouraging than anything else.

At the end of the day, really, our company philosophy is that we care, and we care genuinely. Revenue and profit are just means for us to gather and deploy the resources necessary to serve them better. We know that the quality of the product is only half of the offering; the other part comprises service, which is why we invariably pride ourselves in treating and serving customers with respect, courtesy, expediency, and reliability.