Archive for the ‘Small Businesses’ Category
Local Online Ad Spending
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Local Search, SMBs, Search Marketing, Small Businesses, marketing, web 2.0
Local is good, and it is a significant part of the entire advertising market. Some estimates say that up to 54% of all adverterising is local, or locally based. In our increasingly localized and connected world, the power of local search, local content, and locally based interaction are unquestionably becoming key components of the advertising arena. Agencies and Local SMB’s are both very increasingly using local based targeting, or local search as an element of their campaigns. According to a new eMarketer Report, In 2008 Internet Yellow Page advertising is expected to reach $1.2 Billion in ad spending. Measurable to say the least.
Local content is largely becoming focused on user generated content; topix.com, outside.in, and others are focusing on creating a platform for people to share their reactions and feelings on locally relevant issues. The number of review sites (the likes of Yelp, BooRah, etc) seem to be doubling by the minute. While it is no question that people are extremely interestedin sharing their content locally, again how are these companies going to monetize this revenue?
Today, I saved $800 on a minor bumper repair to my car because I was researching some competition, checked out Topix, and found a video ad for a bumper repair place promising to save me hundreds. Well they did, and I had a long conversation with the owner of the business. He has totally abondoned anything in print, he created the video himself, and is advertising locally online to spread the word. Only purchasing a few text ads pointing to his website, he has designed his own viral campaign. Here’s the video:
This is how local advertising is going to be monetized. Simply, I was looking for something local, I found it and completely unintentionally I found something that I needed. Video can become a power tool in one’s local arsenal, and is quickly becoming sought after. I am now endeared to topix (they do have a ton of comments from nearly any city you visit), and I literally saved over 800 bucks to fix my rediculously expensive bumper. Local at its finest.
So listen up advertisers, agencies, publishers: here is the lesson - keep it local, keep it relevant and make the relationship meaningful. While there is no question in my mind (and many others’) that print YP’s and newspapers are no longer a useful advertising outlet and that online local search is the place to be, if you can make the ad meaningful, important, relevant - you can make money. This is nothing new, it seems rather simple, but to truly monetize a local site you can’t rely on CPM’s from exchanges or Honda, Verizon and others (a recent Borrell report estimates the relative CPMs for IYP is $3.65 vs. $9.29 for print YP) . It’s gotta be local, because that way I (the user) can convert that page view into a handshake. And isn’t that what local is really all about?
I think so, and I can’t imagine why any business out there will over look the power of a handshake and a friendly smile.
Mobile Opportunities - 2D Barcodes
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, Mobile, Mobile Web, Small Businesses, advertising, marketing, web 2.0
Ok, so the iPhone phrenzy has calmed down slightly and every major news outlet or blog has covered their view of the device. Now lets examine how the opportunities in mobile have evolved with this fancy new device.
The GPS capabilities have been upgraded so my iPhone friends will be able to easily figure out, not just who, but also where they are. This brings a variety of Location Based Services to the iPhone that are more readily available now. Local coupons, location aware information and a slew of soon to be spammy SMS services are sure to be around the corner.
I’d like to focus on an interesting new technology that is very popular in Japan, and I’ve mentioned before - 2D Barcodes. Google made these next generation bar codes available in their print ads. Heres an excerpt from their explanation:
Recently, you may have seen newspaper ads for ServiceMagic placed through the Google Print Ads platform. These particular ads include a Google Consumer Response Tag (CRT) with multiple response mechanisms: URL, search terms, phone number, coupon code, SMS code, and 2D barcode. This test is part of our efforts to make print advertising more useful for readers and more measurable for advertisers. 2D barcodes are an especially exciting part of this because they allow readers to “click” on interesting print ads with their cellphones and seamlessly connect to relevant online content.
Whats really exciting about these “Quick Response” codes, is that many features of these 2D bar codes will soon be reaching consumers and connecting them instantly with businesses. With their application to convert local search online to the real world (and vice versa) these QR codes could be extremely valuable to marketers and small businesses.
To the right is an example of a 2D Barcode from the website semapedia.org. Semapedia.org lets you take a link from wikipedia, wikimedia and several other wikis, create a 2D Barcode to link back to specific articles, then print it and place it where ever you wish. Their goal is to “connect the virtual and physical world by bringing the right information from the internet to the relevant place in physical space.” Now picture this applied to your favorite restaurant, or take out place.
You’re walking down the street, right around the corner and you see an ad for the deli. You whip out your phone and snap a picture of the code and bang, you just got a free beverage if you come into the deli and order a sandwich in the next 10 minutes. Just bring your phone.
This technology has applications across many mediums, business types and ad types. Use it to get more information on cars at the bus stop, movies on the subway, hotel rooms at rest areas or just about anything - on demand, on location, while the consumer is in purchase mode. Talk about ROI, send the coupon to a tracking URL and see how many coupons are redeemed from your coupon.
No Nigerian Spammers, no number harvesting, just on demand information. Brilliantly simple.
I see an opportunity in a tinyurl style “QR” generator. Although there are a couple companies doing it in Europe and Japan (Kaywa seems to be the most friendly). They currently offer personal QR codes free as well as enterprise and API use for a fee. Unfortunately there is little traction in the market here in America, as usual we are behind the mobile curve.
Here is an example of mobile marketing from Sweden: Crossmedia Avenue ran a MMS campaign for a pension insurance company that invited users to send in a picture of themselves and see their face transformed 70 years in the future. With over 262k photos sent via MMS in one month! That is a powerful response in a country of 9 million people. I can’t imagine that we are more than 9-12 months away from these sort of campaigns coming to the US.
With over 14 million BlackBerry’s sold last year in the US, iPhone sales expected to reach 10 million world wide by the end of this 2008 and analysts expecting the pie to keep growing, the proliferation of smartphones into our lives is close to reaching a critical mass.
Now if only I could grow a second set of thumbs…
Another Busy Week
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Local Search, Mobile, Small Businesses, Start Ups, marketing, web 2.0
We are working on developing an entirely new pricing structure, from the sales materials to the training to the handling of new and recent prospects to the web architecture that facilitates it. Whole new focus, which I’m very excited about. So far this month its taken on very well.
What I’m curious about is how other companies my size are handling the current economic climate. From a general downturn, to the burgeoning online economy. I’ve been hearing alot about some other startups in our field and laugh and wonder about some of their statements.
There’s alot going on in the local search market, and its only going to get more packed. Its a very exciting time to be involved in local, and we are getting after it.
Time will tell who will make it to the “next level”
The Last 4 Months
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Small Businesses, Start Ups
The last four months might as well have been the first 3 years of my post-collegiate life. The company came from the brink of disaster to pretty much where it was in October. Several complete disasters happened in between and I can say that I am much better off for it all (maybe not financially…). On December 1st, the day we launched our newest website, our server was overloaded, it crashed and we lost about 80% of the data on it. A week later a partner (and our lead outside salesperson) left with his own self determined severance package. Three weeks after Christmas, just as I was getting over the last two disasters, a fire destroyed the apartment of our most faithful employee, along with our entire office which had been relocated to a 2nd bedroom there. A terrible tragedy for her, and a major setback for the company. Not only did we lose literally all of our information from the past 2 years, but we lost our last employee for 6 weeks. Did I mention that this all happened leading up to the worst part of the year for us (which was probably a blessing in retrospect) but it didn’t bode well for the future.
In the final week of February I was certain we were going out of business. Our accounts receivable had gotten out of control in turn so was accounts payable. I had no where to turn, my credit was maxed out, but I knew if we could get to May it would all be ok. I was back on my own, running a company operating in 4 cities across the northeast and now expected to handle 300 clients who all demanded face to face service. Good thing I had just gotten a new car (which I could no longer afford at this point).
I’ve learned more about life in the past 6 months than I had in the 23 years prior. I learned that your faith in yourself should never be out matched by your faith in other people. I learned the power of a positive attitude, and I learned who my true friends were. I discovered how open most people are to helping you if you’re honest and that as flaky as some people may be, others will always be there with good intentions.
But perhaps most importantly I learned a lot about myself. I won’t go into that, but through this capitalistic battle, I learned that what I am doing really kicks ass. In a down economy, with all odds against my little company of 5 people shrunk back to one, we persevered and our clients and prospects saw opportunities for themselves, drove demand and helped us get through. Ultimately it was the market that told me not to quit. I’m persistent, but I know the invisible hand of the market can’t be forced.
I love playing the underdog. Slower technology, lesser equipment, no big names behind us and certainly a smaller team, The Life is moving forward as fast as it ever was. Bring it on funded companies, lets have at it IAC. I’m focusing on building a solid product and developing my business model to complete this sustainable business - and its working. No, we don’t have the latest web technology, or the newest laptops (I’m writing this on an Inspiron 600m I bought 5 years ago), or the most experienced Sales Team (right now its me training two people who have a combined zero years experience doing anything) and with the exception of a few casual conversations, I haven’t really gone after capital and I doubt anyone is going to come out of left field to put big money behind us (although I know for a fact we’re more profitable than a lot of funded startups).
I’m reminded of my 5th grade english teacher, who told me I would never get into college with my work ethic. I wonder if she knows anything about 100 hour work weeks.
Google Maps - Local Results
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, Small Businesses
A Local Search Marketing firm “Big Local” has been taking advantage of a relatively new Google Maps feature, listing local businesses and their website addresses next to a pinned map of the area.
Going back to January, here is a post from Search Engine Land about Google Local Maps, and their use of review sites to furnish the top 10, A-J listings. I wonder how Big Local did this?
Early Adopters and You/Me
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Mobile, Small Businesses, advertising, marketing, revenue models, social media, web 2.0
Today’s Fast Company Big Idea is:
“Anyone who says early adopters don’t matter needs to go back to business school. Facebook and Twitter are beginning to impact business just as much as advertising ”
I follow these daily thought provokers from Fast Company because they are usually fairly interesting. I think this one is excellent. I don’t consider myself to be an innovator, but a late moving early adopter, I am becoming more early in the adoption cycle, but still I’m typically a little behind (particularly in the larger technology space, which I am still new to).
But the importance of early adopters has never left my thoughts. The early adopters are the business owners we seek out first when entering a new market, and they are precisely not the end users that we seek to reach on our website. They are the people who determine whether new technologies fail or succeed and build momentum for those that do. So I wait for the early adopters to try things out see if they fail. Early adopters are the front line in end user technology, and they need to be taken seriously.
A few days ago, I mentioned Lewis Black (ok, I’ve been a little harsh on Lewis, but I’m actually a huge fan) and his mocking of internet addicts - essentially early adopters. Again, a prime example of the lack of understanding most people have of how new technologies can help us do things better and faster, or sometimes just have more fun doing them. MySpace, turned into Facebook, then Twitter became the next hot thing.
Many of my clients are now “working” on a Facebook page, and already have a MySpace page. Do these pages help them at all? Not measurably, but the point is that even these late adopters and slow moving businesses now see that they “really should” be on Facebook. Do a quick google of “Facebook Marketing” (an auto suggestion in firefox!) and you can see that people are making entire businesses out of advertising consulting for Facebook.
But now, the innovators are moving elsewhere, which means the early adopters will be soon to follow. Where will they go, and what will be that next cool technology that will be affecting the way people to business? I would say mobile, but the iPhone already happened and the flurry of 3G phones coming out this summer will blow that away. Its not a new social network, because I believe people are getting fatigued. Semantic Web 3 dot 0, fancy buzz words? I think we are a year or two away from anything drastic coming across the radar.
Any thoughts…
IAC earnings, Todays Online Economy
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Small Businesses, advertising, analytics, marketing, measurement, revenue models, web 2.0
IAC reported its first quarter earnings today, with revenue up 22% and income up 15%, you could say that they had a very good quarter considering the gloomy shadow over the economy in that period. Most of this is due to their Media & Advertising division which saw a 192% increase in income. The Media & Advertising division consists of ask.com, CitySearch and Evite along with their other online properties (exluding Match.com). This substantial growth can be contributed to a few things, but most notably I would point out this shows that the online advertising space is positioned to grow very nicely, particularly in the current economic climate.
The fiasco resulting from comScore’s under reporting of Google’s clicks was a good representation of how the internet is still new to many big players. ComScore, regarded as the primo player in online measurement published a report that tanked Google stock, sent online agencies and publishers into a panic and threw a shroud of false gloom over the entire industry.
While our company has seen a cutback in spending from some of our advertisers, and hesitancy from new clients to invest their marketing in a new space, for the most part we have seen healthy earnings growth, an expanding customer base and a large increase in traffic. A good friend of mine running a leading e-tailer of health products and services saw revenues up 38% yr/yr in Q1 of ‘08. Our company doubled revenues over first quarter 2007. Online is up and its good.
Today the US economy reported a modest .6% growth. “NOT TECHNICALLY A RECESSION”, “THE US ECONOMY SLUMPS THROUGH 1ST QUARTER”, “INVESTORS SEE RECESSION, WALL STREET DEPRESSION” - those were the various headlines across the internet. I did a quick search and found that every major news outlet had some sort of dreary publishing of this not so bad news. The Dow is up .9%, the NASDAQ is up .4% but everyone is running around declaring the bad news.
People are smarter than this (some people anyway) but its hard to ignore the warnings. I see people making smart decisions with their marketing money, which is basically me saying “I see people spending their marketing money online.” The yellow pages are dead, and even the YPs are building their online presence. Google’s huge numbers are back in peoples mind and small businesses want to be a part of that success. Money is being spent, and thus money is being made - online. Thats where the people are going and thats where the budgets are beginning to gravitate.
I saw a segment from Lewis Black last night where he was mocking the younger generations for spending hours online each day. I like Lewis Black, but he went on a rant that just was not funny to me. He sounded like someone from the Prohibition era talking about how young people spend all their time in bars, drinking. Well Lewis, its not just young people, and we aren’t just making fake friends on MySpace. We (meaning people who use the internet) are finding information, researching purchasing decisions, exploring entertainment (music, video, even TV) and building our network of contacts. I find it ironic that you can watch Lewis Black on YouTube, talking about how people waste their time on YouTube. Hey Lewis, how would you feel if I told you that 30% of the people who watch you speak, are watching you online??
Lewis Black has nothing to do with what I’m talking about, but everything. The online economy is heating up, profits are up, more people are online and more transactions are being made and researched online then ever before. The majority of these companies are seeing great profits and surging business opportunities. The old market is not what it used to be - The World is Flat and we can’t just keep measuring things they way we used to, otherwise everything will look all messed up.
Kind of like when the economy shows a better than expected growth rate, and thats a bad thing… what if we excluded all these online and new media companies from that number - how bad would it be then?
Defragmentation of Local
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, Small Businesses, advertising, marketing
Local search is entirely too fragmented.
Searching for a restaurant can be time consuming, boring, and down right frustrating. Local guide sites are just not up to speed with the pace of the internet, and many are way behind. I want to find menus, dress codes, price ranges, and interior shots of potential restaurants.
I am planning a trip with my girlfriend to visit my grandmother in Wilmington, NC. Now I wasn’t expecting much of a restaurant guide, but even so I was disappointed. There is no concise guide, there is no focused listing page. Different sites had different listings for the same restaurants - it was a disaster. Of course Wilmington is not the social capital of North Carolina, but it is home to about 65,000 people. What do these people do? There wasn’t anything resembling a thought out online guide to things happening in the area.
Of course this is what I do for a living so I can be picky.
Our next stop on our road trip, my birthplace, Hilton Head Island, SC. There was a glimpse of hope here as we found one site - hhidining.com. Upon closer inspection this was merely a half baked attempt by a local magazine to transition online. It succeeded about as well as anything done half heartedly usually does.
Here lies the fundamental problem, how do we aggregate all of the local information that is scattered across different mediums, in a variety of locations on and off the web, all across the country. Local is so fragmented and there is only so much you can do using a nationally built database of local businesses (see any form of online yellowpages) and there are several companies that focus completely on syndicating their local information.
Second to the fundamental question (how do we aggregate), how do you monetize this information effectively. Do you use a local salesforce, in the streets calling on these businesses? Or do you attempt to build traffic organically and use advertising and lead generation/affiliate programs to produce revenue? Well we’ve seen several companies (read: any version of the yellowpages) try to use the latter method (search for local restaurants and you will more often than not find Chili’s and other franchise ads). They serve large, intrusive ads all over the page, and generally do an ok job of listing local restaurants. Out of date listings often find their way into these pages.
There are very few businesses focusing on local search in mid-size markets. But is this because the markets are not ready for local online? Possibly, however I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe it is the issue of local businesses (existing media entities - mostly print) not understanding the value of local search. How do local papers leverage the value of their online properties? Most often, simply not well.
The point to this ramble is a basic question: What is holding people back from expanding into all of these untapped markets? There is surely value here, and eyeballs from these captured searchers have inherent value of there own. Small businesses are now craving concise online guides to their small cities, more and more businesses are transitioning their ad budgets online, and there are more internet users than ever before. But who is to create these guides and profit from their value…
What Do Small Businesses Need?
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, SMBs, Sales Channels, Small Businesses, advertising, marketing
The latest question I’ve posed to myself and my company, What Do SMBs - Our Customers need? There are many answers, but there are only a few that we can provide to them. What to SMBs need from the internet might be a better question to ask me, so we’ll go from there.
Small Businesses need a cost-effective, results oriented marketing plan to transition their budgets online. The number of options is growing rapidly, but the value they need remains the same. The question is now how should they best approach their solution? Large market players (CitySearch, YellowPages.com, Yelp, etc) are beginning to diversify into smaller markets, but their models are designed around an easy to reach critical mass (read Large Market). But where do local businesses outside of major metro areas turn? Companies like mine.
Our company provides a mix of Lead Generation and Brand Advertising. We offer traditional Lead Generation forms on each business’s profile, multiple branding opportunities across each category, and click-throughs. We provide a short-term ROI and many great value-adds to increase the effectiveness and return for our clients.
Small Businesses need something that works for them, the first time, with a short learning curve. Make it easy, make it quick, make it work. Thats what we are trying to do better everyday. Make our website work better and faster for our customers. We do this by measuring our site, adjusting the layout, increasing our Search Engine Placement and building our traffic.
Our traffic is up, see the chart below (see my previous post Analytics, Where did you get these?, for my thoughts on the actual numbers), our customers are happy and we are feeling pretty good about what we are doing. But its not good enough. Its not easy enough, and its not fast enough.
Local businesses need help doing everything. They spend enough time dealing with employees, and payroll, and taxes, and banking, and and and. They shouldn’t have to spend hours dealing with their marketing. That IS after all, what they are supposed to be paying us to do for them. That is my job, and every marketer’s job that is trying to reach local businesses. Its our job to make their lives easier. If its not easy to sell, its because it isn’t easy enough, or fast enough, or simple enough for the small business to get. And that means we aren’t doing our jobs.
Small businesses need us to do our jobs better; to make their marketing decisions easier. We are the experts (or should be) and your product should have that level of trust built into it. This is coming from a Small Business owner, and a marketing provider. In our experience, it needs to be easy, it needs to be quick and it needs to work. If it does those things well, it will have the trust built in that you need to sell it and the SMB needs to make a decision.
Small businesses need to trust that their marketing (money) is working for them.
