The huge success and pending IPO of Groupon has me researching this daily deal/coupon trend. Google just launched their service in Portland last week and now Amazon is in the game, not to mention hundreds of others ranging from Facebook to local television stations.

But what about B2B? There are a handful of daily deal services specific to B2B: Bizy deal (www.bizydeal.com), OfficeArrow (www.officearrow.com) RapidBuyr (www.rapidbuyr.com) and MarketSharing (www.marketsharing.com), to name a few. I believe there is a place for this type of service in B2B, especially for offers that are used by most businesses - shipping, videoconferencing, office furniture, etc. A review of some of the B2B daily deal sites last week revealed deals such as:

• Accounting software
• Online event marketing services
• Inkjet printers
• Conference room space
• Sales tracking software
• Telemarketing services

For a large majority of the B2B marketplace, those businesses that target precise vertical audiences, this type of service is not going to work as it is currently offered. For a company that sells a highly engineered complex widget, used in the manufacturing process of a niche product, a discounted one time deal doesn’t seem appropriate or viable.

Here are a few scenarios where daily deals are not the right fit for most B2B companies:

• Narrow target market
• Longer, more complex buying cycle
• Brand positioning not aligned with couponing or discounts
• Technical, highly differentiated non-commodity products and services
• Distributor/sales force territory issues

If your company does not have any of the above stumbling blocks, here are some advantages to using a daily deal opportunity:

• The opportunity to reach unknown customers and start building a relationship
• It is a fast growing segment in consumer, and just like twitter and other social media, it is spreading to B2B
• The possibility of introducing your product into a fringe or secondary market
• A quick way to move old inventory
• Everyone likes to get a deal (this blog post is 50% off for the next week!) 

Have you used a B2B daily deal site? What was your experience?