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Solving pain = opportunity…
By Chad Schott | February 6, 2008
A good friend of mine in Littleton, Colorado, Mike Huddleston, runs the best, local tennis shop in town, Tennis Plus. For the last couple years Mike has helped my wife, Leslie, and I put on a tennis-themed fundraiser called Play for a Heart to raise money to fight congenital heart disease (CHD). (My daughter was born with a heart defect called truncus arteriosis that will require numerous surgeries over her life.) Anyway, for a couple years Mike and I have worked together on selling sponsorships and putting together the format of the event, not to mention playing a fair amount of tennis together. Over that time we’ve had plenty of opportunities to discuss another thing that I’m passionate about – local online advertising – for Mike’s business.
Well, after many discussions, we finally set aside some time to sit down together and lay out a plan to leverage the reach of the Internet to support the growth of his business. Without sharing a complete plan, I’ll share that the first step that we set about working on was to maximize his exposure in organic (read “free”) search results. Before we go out and spend money on advertising, let’s put our best foot forward in terms of determining a baseline of online exposure. There were a handful of things that we called out that could be improved on his Website, but most of what I first set out to do was to pump a ton of enhanced data about the store (racquet brands, clothing and shoe brands, services, hours, accepted payments, etc.) into the basic listings of his site across the world of local search destinations to drive greater relevance in search results. I am a true believer that content is fuel that drives the local search engine (pun intended). More content helps drive increased relevance for the business, which in turn drives more opportunities to put that content in front of searching consumers, which in turn leads to more interaction with the content which ultimately leads to more business. Pretty simple stuff… but it ain’t nearly as easy as it is simple!
What Mike and I did over the next 90 minutes (and a couple of bottles of beer) was to go to a ½ dozen different local search sites, and proceed to use their respective free update tool to add the same information (racquet brands, clothing and shoe brands, services, hours, accepted payments, etc.) a ½ dozen times, creating a ½ dozen individual user names and passwords, and setting the stage to go back to a ½ dozen places to update his information to call out new services or brands, or to go back a ½ dozen times to add info about sales… You get the point…
My point is that this is what the small business owner presently faces to optimize how their business information appears across the Internet. It takes a ton of the one thing they don’t have enough of… time. And keep in mind that this is just the free stuff! We haven’t even begun true search engine marketing (SEM) for his business across Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft et al. In Mike’s case, as with most other business owners, they aren’t averse to spending money. They need a solution that serves their need for an efficient way to manage their business information online, let alone managing their actual advertising campaigns. They need online partners who can give them a certain level of personal service and who can represent their business across this vast world called the Internet, at a fair value of course.
Mike needs to be able to send his content once and know that it’ll find it’s way out to the relevant places. Whoever can offer small business owners this service will earn their trust… and their money. Playing a role in solving this and similar problems on behalf of local businesses is what drives me, as well as my company, and the channel partners we support. The opportunities are tremendous; we just need to address the clear pain points. Those entities who play a central role in the solution should enjoy growing, long term relationships with their fair share of local businesses.
Topics: Pay-For-Performance, Web site, Local SEO, Local Advertisers, Advertising, Local Search, Uncategorized |
February 11th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Hi Chad, great article. Look forward to catching up with you soon!
Regards,
-Lisa
Lisa Silverman
VP, Market Development
Localeze
(703) 272-6292
February 14th, 2008 at 4:32 am
This is a touching article very well presented. How is your child doing? Good luck with your business.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Chad, I find myself doing exactly the same thing with my most trusted business customers, friends, and family members who are in local business. I continue to spread the good word about local search because personal relationships with SME’s are the lifeline to our business.
Thanks Chad…Great Insight!
Joe Mohay
ITM RHDi
Orlando, FL