Category Archives: Small Business Advertising
CitySquares lands $1M; Version 2.0 imminent
Peter Krasilovsky reports about CitySquares‘ latest developments…
neighborhood-centric directory of local businesses has got about $1 million in venture funding; almost 400 advertisers paying roughly $600 a year, mostly for “deluxe” business profiles; and an 88 percent renewal rate.
They seem to be getting some traction, and they’re going places…
In mid-October, CitySquares is going to re-launch using new neighborhood slicing-and-dicing capabilities from Urban Mapping and Localeze, all based on an open-source Drupal platform. The site is also confidently planning to expand beyond Boston, with another northeast city set for Q2 2008, and a third one for Q3.
Co-Founder Ben Saren says the site’s re-do reflects a key truism: hyperlocal is about neighborhoods, but the reality is that neighborhoods are often “in-between” other neighborhoods. The new version of the site is going to present searchers with the five closest neighborhoods, as well as proximity options. “They can be five miles or ten blocks,” he says. That’s the Localeze part of it.
They’ll also identify neighborhoods within neighborhoods, such as Observatory Hill, which is a section of Cambridge. That’s the Urban Mapping part of it. The ability to sell across neighborhoods will help sell ads for the many small businesses “in between.”
American Machine – Must See
Front Porch Forum is about people connecting with their neighbors and getting involved in their neighborhoods. That involvement ranges from organizing a blow-out block party, to watering the next door neighbor’s plants when she’s away, to just becoming aware of a spate of bicycle thefts on the street. All that tuning in adds up to a heightened sense of community within the neighborhood… a simple and powerful thing.
Which brings me to American Machine, the new play created by local artist Jim Lantz. Jim has done a rare thing… he’s written, produced, and directed this show on his own… with a great team of people around him, but not housed within some larger organization. He’s taken the creative, career AND financial risks.
In doing this, he’s offering all folks local to the Burlington area a chance to tune in and get involved in local arts and national political discourse.
It’s simple, if you want to live in a place that has this kind of creative economy coursing through it, then you need to turn out, buy tickets, and take in the play. The show is clearly an artistic success. Now it’s up to local residents to make it a financial success by filling the seats. Get tickets here (show runs through Oct. 7, 2007).
To the play… my wife and I attended tonight’s performance with friends. While Front Porch Forum is a sponsor of the play and American Machine advertised in FPF, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought it might be lean toward a heavy-handed political piece… not at all.
Simply, I was enthralled. The production grabbed my attention and kept it the whole show. The six characters, their stories and their relationships all rang true, even when the drama flared. I know I’ll be thinking of the characters for some time, wondering what comes next for them. And the political message struck me as timeless, not about policy minutia.
I look forward to discussing the play with neighbors out on the sidewalk in the coming days… lots to mull over.
One last idea for locals… post a message about American Machine on your FPF neighborhood forum… help spread the word and build local community! Here are some details.
Online Coupons?
Front Porch Forum has a new modest advertising platform for local businesses. The response is exceeding expectations. Our ad inventory is sold out for the next several weeks and the response from our members to the sponsor messages has been strong. Color me cautiously optimistic.
Also, we’ve seen some advertisers offer discounts to Front Porch Forum members and others are considering some kind of coupon option. So today’s posting by Greg Sterling is of interest…
Even though online coupons have been around for years, there’s really still no leader in the segment — quite mysteriously. Also the overwhelming majority of coupons are still clipped from physical newspapers and direct mail envelopes, such as ValPak’s blue envelope. But one gets the sense that the stars have finally aligned and online (and later some version of mobile) coupons will start to take off.
To that end, I previously forecast that the total face value of online coupons will be just over $16 billion in 2010 and the redeemed value of those coupons will be about $2.4 billion. (That may be too aggressive, but we’ll see; it depends on distribution and consumer awareness.)
And he goes on to write about AskCity’s efforts in this area.
Future of Local Online Advertising: Rosy
“All advertising is local”… Borrell did a study that showed in 2005, U.S. Local Advertising spending (YP, Newspapers, billboards, etc.) was approximately $140 billion (offline and online combined). 70% of that spend was done by truly local businesses, the rest was done by national advertisers targeting local markets. Total online advertising in 2005 (national and local combined) was about $4 billion… there is an enormous amount of potential growth for local online advertising as the offline spend of local and national businesses continues to migrate online.
National retailers increasingly understand the importance of driving Internet consumers to physical storefronts, as offline purchases still far outweigh online purchases. In fact, Yahoo recently reported that 92% of conversions occur in the offline environment.
Given this consumer behavior, as the local online advertising industry grows, national merchants will be targeting a larger percentage of their advertising budget to address the local consumer by utilizing geo-targeted ads, driving consumers to local storefronts and offering great deals on their Web sites. Local advertisers, of course, will be doing the same thing. This means that both national merchants and local merchants are very important drivers of the local advertising ecosystem, and both will be competing for the clicks, calls and wallets of local online consumers as this industry continues to expand.
Local Online Start-Up Funding and a Prize Winner
A couple interesting posts by Peter Krasilovsky today. First, funding levels for several start-ups with a local focus…
Belated congratulations to our friend Sebastien Provencher and his Praized Media team for getting $1 million from Garage Ventures Technology Canada… you can do a lot with $1 million. You can hire key staff, pay salaries, build software, do some PR, travel (and hire consulting firms). In fact, a number of firms have recently landed deals for $1 million or so….like Outside.in ($900k) and City Voter ($1.1 million). Boston’s City Squares is also apparently funded at this level. And if you haven’t been on the site lately, it is building nicely.
A couple of years ago, the “must have” amount for a startup was more like $3 million. Smalltown, Backfence and others got the larger amount (or said they did). I never could figure out what they needed that much for.
And a story about a local citizen journalism site succeeding in New Hampshire…
At first, there was no news coverage for the 15,000 residents of a central coastal New Hampshire area including the little villages of Deerfield, Candia, Northwoods and Nottingham. Manchester’s Union Leader, a family-owned paper that is fairly notorious for its politically-charged, NH primary coverage every four years, basically ignored the area.
But then three years ago, the residents started their own news site and called it The Forum. Today, the site, a recipient of the 2007 Knight Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism has 240 contributors, sells ads to local businesses, and even publishes an occasional print edition on special occasions… the site has an 1.6 “reporters” for every 100 residents.
Himmelstein on Google and Local Search
Marty Himmelstein writes today in Screenwerk about Google and local search. I recommend reading the whole piece. Himmelstein appears to be thinking systemically… holistically. Impressive… even if his state is upside down.
And given Front Porch Forum‘s initial local success, his recognition of neighborhood’s role is noteworthy…
The importance of community and neighborhood to local search: The fundamental role of a community in local search is to establish an environment of trust so that users can rely on the information they obtain from the system. Businesses exist in a network of customers, suppliers, municipal agencies, local media, hobbyists, and others with either a professional or avocational interest in establishing the trustworthiness of local information. These community members can contribute unique perspectives to create a rich and accurate depiction of the businesses with which they are involved.
Smalltown.com goes deep and local
I think I visited Smalltown.com a year ago and thought it looked interesting. Well, it seems they’ve been busy! They now host sites in five California communities…
Smalltown is the website where you can discover local treasures from the best source: your neighbors. Find a great babysitter, carpenter or stylist. Read reviews of the high school play. Watch a video clip about a new restaurant.
Smalltown recieved $3M of Series A investment about a year ago. But what caught my attention was co-founder Hal Rucker’s recent blog posting…
Which makes more sense for local: generate deep and uniquely useful content in a small geography, then replicate that process for hundreds of towns, or launch the whole US with shallow content all at once? (Choose one, because you can’t launch with deep local content everywhere at the same time.) InsiderPages went wide and shallow and it didn’t work out. Backfence tried to go deep in several regions at the same time and it, too, couldn’t get enough traction. Smalltown is going very deep in a very small geography, with plans to replicate that success quickly when we have all the technology and marketing knobs dialed in.
This gets at my previous postings about authentic local sites vs. global giants masquerading as local sites. As the number of web offerings explode, quality of information and genuine local knowledge will become more and more valuable. Sites that tap into that will become gems among the countless “wide and shallow” offerings.
I can foresee each city in the country having its own authentically local site (or sites) in the next few years that clearly dominate their town’s online space. Just like when every city had 1, 2, 3 or more daily newspapers. Just like in the past when you wanted news, sports, weather, debate, advertising, coupons, classifieds, etc… most people reached for the Gazette or Sentinel or whatever dominated the local newspaper scene.
Some sites will be homegrown entrepreneurial efforts (e.g., iBrattleboro), others may be a morphed newspaper that gets online done right, some areas will be covered by a “chain” like Smalltown or Backfence (RIP), and other poor towns will only have soulless cookie cutter sites supplied top-down by a giant dot.com.
So Smalltown appears to be doing the hard work of developing truly local sites based on their proprietary platform and process. I’m impressed with the concept. I’m not familiar with their initial communities, so it’s hard to assess the results to date, and I haven’t focused on the technology they’ve developed. More power to ’em. 🙂
American Machine – The Play
Jim Lantz, of Burlington’s South End, had a hit last year with his original play The Bus. Now he and his crew are hard at work preparing for the opening of his new play, American Machine (FlynnSpace in Burlington, VT, September 25 – October 7, 2007)…
Part parable on the American dream, part cautionary tale taken from the headlines, American Machine tells the story of a great factory that once made parts for classic American cars.
This local original production will rely heavily on word of mouth and any member of Front Porch Forum has an opportunity to help spread the word. First, write a short post on your own neighborhood forum announcing the play. Then, after you see it, post a brief review. While American Machine is advertising on Front Porch Forum, any posting from a neighbor will likely carry more weight with readers. Here’s how Jim put it…
One of Burlington’s great gems is Front Porch Forum, an on-line neighborhood forum created by Michael Wood-Lewis. If you live in Chittenden County, chances are you live in one of the 130 forums that neighbors use for all sorts of communication – finding a lost cat, recommending a plumber, to… letting people know about a new play!
One way you can help our production (and the Burlington Schools Food Project) is to place a free notice on your local FPF telling neighbors about our play and the opening night benefit for the Burlington Schools Food Project. Be sure to include our web address: www.AmericanMachineThePlay.com
Not a member of your neighborhood Front Porch Forum? Go to FrontPorchForum.com, take a tour, and join. … It’s free!
I’m looking forward to it! Get your tickets today.
About Blog
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more
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