For those of you who have not yet fully understood the power of the Internet and social media as a marketing tool, let me give you one quick example. A friend of mine owns a petting zoo in San Juan Capistrano called Zoomars. Business there is OK, but the owners are always looking for ways to get more kids and their parents in the door.

Here’s where social media and marketing takes over. A relatively new company in the Internet marketing field, LivingSocial sends out discount offers from businesses via e-mail to local residents who have signed up for these offers. Zoomars signed up with LivingSocial to offer a deeply discounted admission for six. The offer went out to LivingSocial’s Orange County subscribers and guess what? Within 24 hours, 1,686 discounted admission packages were sold and paid for at $18 each. That’s $30,348 in sales in 24 hours. Of course, LivingSocial keeps a share of those sales, but what’s left over is not pocket change.

Is any business owner not interested in this type of deal? If you could generate $30,000 in sales in 24 hours, would you? Why wouldn’t you? This is just another example of the marketing revolution brought to you by the Internet and social media.

There’s another site that does almost the same thing: Groupon. The name is a combination of Group and Coupon. Its goal is to act as a discount coupon that’s combined with the buying power of a group. To give you an idea of how powerful this concept is, the company is barely 2 years old and it recently turned down a $6 billion offer from Google.

If you have a product or service that you can offer at a significant discount, you should consider offering it through LivingSocial, Groupon or another coupon site. Although you’ll be paying a significant commission to the marketing vehicle and you’ll be offering a large discount, you’ll get exposure for your business that you could not otherwise buy.

Do I have your attention? Do you want to learn more about how social media is changing the way we do business? Stay tuned and read this column on social media on Noozhawk.

— Marc Hyman is a 20-year Santa Barbara resident. A lawyer by training, he has worked with more than 300 small companies and startups over the years. The Internet revolution has brought new opportunities and new challenges for businesses and his company, Back-To-Basics Marketing, helps clients navigate the new world of marketing and social media. He can be reached at 805.288.2269.