This whitepaper is about taking the small business digital marketing products back to the drawing board to deliver a product set that help small businesses easily, cost-effectively, and efficiently address three fundamental needs: 1. lead generation; 2. online presence and reputation management, and; 3. relationship management.
RE-DEFINING THE DIGITAL MARKETING PRODUCT SET
www.marchex.comMatthew Berk,EVP of Product Engineering
Seven years ago when I founded Open List, one of the first Most in the industry agree on the scope of the opportunity: local search engines, the "local" online space was a radi- capturing a broader slice of small business marketing spend cally different world: no Yelp, no Yahoo Local, and no Google is valued in the range of tens of billions of dollars; even more Maps; very few consumer reviews of businesses; and very dramatically, influencing offline consumer spending (the bulk little consumer adoption of the Internet to make decisions of which is local in nature), approaches single-digit percent-about where to spend money locally. Today, with the explosion ages of the US GDP.of online consumer reviews and social dialogue about local businesses, and with the establishment of local search as a Marchex is spearheading a revolution in the products avail-chronic online behavior (20%+ of all Web searches according able to small businesses to help them wring more leverage to many), the equation has shifted: consumers are firmly in out of the Internet. That primarily means delivering leads in control of the flow of information, and can leverage that to the form of phone calls because we know small businesses decide where and how to spend with local businesses. value calls more than any other lead source (along with actual in-person visits). But it also means delivering leads more effi-But for small businesses encouraged to shift their marketing ciently with form submissions and emails in addition to just spend from older, offline channels (e.g., the phone book) clicks to a website, as well as making it easier to communi-to more efficient online channels (e.g., search marketing), cate with customers and prospects or managing their complex product innovation has not followed at the same pace. The digital footprint. Marchex's belief is that small businesses will online acquisition marketing our industry sells to small increasingly look to unified marketing products to help them businesses doesn't begin to capture the full opportu- grow and manage their businesses and customer relation-nity to take advantage of the tremendous shift in online ships-with the primary intent being to have the phone ring consumer behavior. with new customers. We invite you and our industry to join us as we take the small business product set back to the drawing My four-year tenure at Marchex is based on a shared, board to rebuild it with an eye towards solving the broadest deeply held belief that when products are based on the real set of needs and tap into ever greater opportunity.needs of customers, they create powerful changes in behavior. By putting consumers in control of highly fragmented local content, products like online directories and search engines have transformed the consumer landscape; and by putting small businesses in control of their own digital world, we can create a revolution that unlocks the promise of the "local" space.
2 MARCHEX 3 Things Small Businesses Really Need: Re-Defining the Marketing Product Stack 3Overview 2010: A look at local
For nearly a decade, we have watched small business And, based on an updated, intimate understanding of how Consider the sophistication and complexity of the consumer Diving into digitalmarketing spend steadily shift from offline to online vehicles. leading-edge small businessess conduct business today, use of the Internet in 2010 to discover and make decisions But we are only now coming to a key realization: unlocking often to their great advantage, our product axioms are simple: about local businesses and offline spending. Consumers find All of this said, for small businesses willing and able to dive the local opportunity, for our entire industry, is not just about local businesses through rich mobile search and mapping into the complexities of social media, actively maintain their capturing transitions in small business spending; rather, we For small businesses, clicks are nice but calls are better applications; share their recommendations and experi- websites and profile pages, participate in online perfor-need to start with understanding the unique pain points of ences on blogs, Twitter and Facebook; upload and exchange mance marketing, dialogue with customers through email T... [download for more]
