Vertical Marketing Digest for Small Business

My favorite session of the morning was a panel that included three small business owners (SBO), who gave their perspective as potential customers of the services being discussed at the show. As with any contact with SBOs, it was refreshing and deeply illuminating. (Whenever one thinks they have figured out small business, one just need listen to a few more small businesses to shake them from that complacency. Too few companies in this space do this with great regularity.)

Highlights:

• all three were retailers, generally carrying specialty items of some sort to avoid direct competition with big national chains
  
• one had a vendor that pays them every time the vendor makes a sale on its website (compensating them for the local marketing the store presumably did, and also lessening the pain of that channel conflict)
  
• web site development and maintenance is still hard, with unclear returns
  
• Pay-per-click (PPC) is interesting, and even pay-per-acquisition is intriguing
  
• they do not respond to ad pitches from vendors; do not call them as they are too busy in the store; sometimes respond to snail mail
  
• they find that print ads are no longer effective
  

The VP from SuperPages.com (online yellow pages with pay-per-click category ads) was asked an excellent question: "How can little guys compete, since the big national players can outbid them?". His answer was that they specifically carve out the #4 - #6 spots in their paid rankings for LOCAL merchants (regardless of bids). Interesting approach!

He also described a risk-sharing continuum for the various ad payment models, and felt that PPC was fairest:

Pay per xxx Model:	Impression	Click	Acquisition
Risk:	Business	Shared	Publisher

Two great quotes from the panel:

1. I hate updating our site, it's painful, i just want to get it working, "make it as easy as banking" (small apparel retailer)
   
2. SME's "know value" but "need help" (VP of SuperPages)