Internet Security

Therefore, how does a business get itself found online? It is first important to understand the current landscape of business marketing.

Today, the need for consumers to locate and engage local service providers continues to grow. Surveys of consumers indicate that that their jobs require them to work longer hours (88%). Many (75%) said they take care of personal responsibilities while on the job and 36% say they do this daily. Most importantly, it takes an employee nearly two hours to take care of personal business on company time. Consumers are looking for alternate ways to get their personal business handled.

At the same time, small businesses continue to grow in the U.S. In 2002, there were approximately 22.9 million small businesses in the U.S. Of these, there was an estimated 550,100 new employer businesses, a 0.9 percent increase over the previous year.

As consumers and daily workers continue to lead busier and busier lives, they are looking for ways to streamline their opportunities. Some online services, such as Angieslist.com, yellowpages.com, kudzu.com, etc. have attempted to fulfill this need. However, among other shortcomings, these and other sites receive their fees either from the consumer or in the form of monthly or annual listing fees charged to the business itself.

As the number of small business service providers grows, these businesses are seeking a way to reach their customers more economically. For the small business owner it is fundamentally a marketing problem - how do they reach their customers in a manner that provides them the greatest return on investment of their marketing dollars.

The historical and traditional marketing channels (Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, Flyers, Internet, etc.) are so numerous that they represent a problem for a local service provider. The service provider cannot effectively engage all of them. Furthermore, customers are constantly surfing channels and are able to block content at will and thus are able to avoid exposure to marketing messages.

A further need of a local service provider is the ability to reach the exact demographic/geographic market they are targeting. Many marketing opportunities are too broad and hence very inefficient. Since it is too costly to use all marketing channels, the service provider must cherry pick the best options (or what turns out to be the least costly options) and usually experiences poor ROI as a result. A limited marketing budget is not effective in a local market since using traditional channels since the local service provider will have to pay for a larger market and waste ad dollars.

Therefore, most businesses start with a website. However, there’s an incredible mis-conception about having what I’d call an “effective” web presence. A lot of businesses have a web page but most think it ends there. They’re wrong! Heck, after they’ve spent the $500-$1000 (a reasonable looking site with no features) to have their website built (not mentioning maintenance costs for updating), paid the $300/year for hosting - not to mention trying to get a .com URL that matches their name (good luck for Joes Plumbing) - you haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of cost to get your site noticed on the web. Without costly internet marketing campaigns that cost upwards of $15-$25k a month (for more competitive search terms it can be more costly than that) companies that have their own website quickly find out that it’s like having a billboard in the middle of the desert. Sure a business can do a little organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization), however there’s still a lot to learn about doing that well and it takes a long time to create meaningful results.

Enter online directories such as yellowpages.com, angieslist.com, yahoo local, kudzu.com and merchantcircle.com to name a few. However, the most popular online directories are charging businesses as much as $750 per year for little more than obscure placement on their site and a promise to land them on the first page of each search engine. Once they get your money, however, it seems they completely forget about your business and owners are left crossing their fingers - wondering if they’ll ever see new customers from the directory.

Those days are gone! As of today, subscription based online directories are slowly giving way to “pay-for-performance” based directories like an interesting newcomer to the online directory, ServiceOmni.com is positioning itself to be.

Pay for Performance is here! The new breed of PFP directories are not charging a penny for your business to list (see Craigslist success). Rather than pay up front, the premise is simple: list your business for free and If no one clicks on your site, you don’t get charged. Period! Another feature of these sites is they market on a larger scale for the businesses themselves. They drive new eyeballs to their site to find plumbers, dog walkers, auto detailers and more - and in the process, the smaller business has a better chance of being seen - and hired.

The bottom line is businesses now have a choice in online directories that don’t charge up front fees. The climate is changing for micro-businesses and its time for every business to have the opportunity to get more online exposure and only pay for customers that click on their information in the directory. These PFP directories are the wave of the future and small local businesses will be well served by this new online strategy to capture new customers.

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