Hard to believe, but 63% of local businesses still have no website, despite the evidence that 88% of local mobile searches for a business result in a visit or call to that store in the next 24 hours. And 25% of local businesses don’t show up at all in search results. While there are now a glut of competitors, SMB digital marketing is still a huge opportunity. This infographic from Marketecture has the data and sources.
Selling digital marketing services to 27 million small businesses (SMBs) could become a $2 billion new business by 2016 for newspaper companies, according to Ken Doctor.
Some benchmarks:
Ken Doctor’s well-researched piece is here.
With ad revenue dropping by more than half in 5 years, to $22 billion, the $2 billion could make up barely 6 months of average industry ad revenue declines.
NYC-based Yodle is perfecting a telemarketing approach to small businesses across the USA. Yodle sells digital advertising solutions to 30,000 customers and generates about $130 million in revenue. This post from Kelsey Group explains some of CEO Court Cunnigham’s methods:
Cunningham tells us that by analyzing the metadata around the call activity (call duration, outcome, etc.) it generates for customers, as regular analysis of nearly 150 million keywords has led Yodle to a number of insights that have led Yodle to make tactical decisions that defy conventional wisdom.
One such example involves the number of times a company can contact a sales prospect unsuccessfully before “burning” the lead. Yodle has determined from statistical analysis that it is possible to contact a record (sales prospect) considerably more times (more than 2X) than conventional wisdom suggests.
Cunningham also has a lot of unconventional things to say about sales effectiveness.
“Drive, persistence and optimism are the attributes that equate to success in a sales reps, and everyone knows that,” Cunningham says. “Yet most companies don’t interview for these attributes.”