Posts Tagged ‘Small Businesses’
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”
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.
