I just spent an hour with a local contractor who has started to feel the pain of the economic meltdown. Guess what? After years of avoiding it, he’s finally ready to put up a website and start figuring out how to market himself online. Good for him. Now he’s really screwed.
The guy barely knows how to click on a link let alone buy a domain, build a website, learn SEO, figure out what people are searching for, set up a paid search campaign, troll for customers on Twitter, etc.
As I was listening to him discuss his ambitions, it occurred to me that even after all of these years of investment in the local search industry, a huge number of the potential advertisers still don’t understand the options available to them in local online marketing.
Consumers may be a bit ahead of Joe the Plumber, but not by much. How many IYPs are there? What’s the difference between them? Why did that list of businesses show up for one Google search and not the other? Why is this phone number wrong? Why do I have to download your iPhone App or join your Facebook group when I just want to find a plumber? How is that video helping me hire a good DUI attorney? Why do I get a SEO blog when all I wanted was to find a place near me that sells enemas?
And you thought Eraserhead download 100 million bc dvd was confusing.
All I’m trying to say here is that until there is a service that makes it dirt simple for SMBs to understand how to get online and how to choose between the options, and until there is a service that makes it dirt simple for people to find reliable service pros, no one is going to “win” this game and every company will be ripe for having their clients and users poached by a better mousetrap.
There are a number of companies out there taking stabs at both sides of the equation, but I have yet to see a model that is not just an incremental improvement on what is already out there.
That said, you don’t need to have a state-of-the-art product to win at this game. You need to have a state-of-the-art customer education strategy. How can you sell me something that I don’t even understand? Companies that have education as one of the core services that they offer both advertisers and users should do well. Cause if you don’t know squat, you’ll probably be all ears if someone is willing to fill you in and you’ll probably be grateful to them for a long time to come.
So what are you teaching your ignorant customers?
Andrew Shotland - Local SEO Guide