Lessons from the Borrell Local Online Advertising Conference
I attended the Borrell Associates 2010 Local Online AdvertisingConference in NYC city last week. It was their first conference and they hit some rough patches, but generally it was a good conference and I definitely learned a lot.
Here are some high points:
Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle, gave a very open presentation about their business model, and had some very important lessons for anyone selling online marketing services to SMBs:
- Don’t over-complicate your sales pitch! Keep it at the level of “we’ll make you more visible in the search engines and generate more leads for your business.” Anything more complicated and you will lost most SMB buyers with your jargon.
- Pick a handful of verticals and really focus on selling and servicing them. You’ll develop expertise that will help you stand out.
- Cold calling is their #1 sales technique. They close their deals over the phone, too!
- Don’t limit yourself to Google when trying to generate leads for your clients. They place ads on 75 different sites.
Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, is one sharp guy, and he gave a very interesting look into the future of local media and what it will take to be successful there:
- You must be able to “sell sales” to be really successful. What he means is that selling visibility, clicks, traffic, or any other measure doesn’t equate long-term to SMBs; all they care about is more sales.
- Location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla will revolutionize local online marketing in ways we haven’t imagined yet.
- Real time web services such as Twitter and Facebook Update will have more impact on local online advertising than search did.
And finally, some advice from a panel of professional advertising sales trainers, on specifically how to sell these services to SMBs:
- Make your pitch very simple and with a single value proposition.
- Sales reps that are dedicated to selling online advertising will be most successful.
- Sell the value of being on the web first, then the value of your services in particular – many SMBs still aren’t convinced they should be on the web!
- Offer 3 price points with an artificially limited inventory to apply pressure to the process.
Phew! That’s about 1/20th of the important notes I took at this conference. I’ll be sharing the rest with Everon Web Services Business Coaching Program members in the members’ site.
Mike
