Sunday, July 03, 2011

SEO for Small Businesses

Small- and medium-sized companies often resist spending on online advertising due to their limited marketing budgets and need for help when it comes to managing ad spending. For the same reasons, most ad agencies and media companies are reluctant to work with these companies because the revenues rarely warrant the costs. ProfitFuel, however, is one of the few companies that has been able to gather enough spending from small companies to make business with them worthwhile. (www.paidcontent.org, David Kaplan, May 24, 2011) Offering search engine optimization services to small businesses, the company was acquired this past May by Yodle, a US online marketing firm. With its product and sales force of 300 people, ProfitFuel is expected to extend Yodle’s customer base to small businesses. This deal is particularly interesting because it shows how sophisticated online marketing tools like SEO, once restricted to e-commerce giants, is now an option for almost any business regardless of its size or brand.

2 comments:

Tali said...

Unfortunately I wasn't able to access the link, so perhaps this information was provided there, but I would love to know how exactly are ProfitFuel or Yodle enabling small businesses to invest in SEO and other digital advertising initiatives. Are they providing discounted prices for their services? Are they targeting specifically small business by offering reduced rate packages? I think this is especially interesting since most of the companies this class is providing marketing strategy for are indeed what you would call “small business”, which could benefit from these kind of services.

Kudge said...

Thanks Danielle this is really useful. Like Tali I couldnt open the link but I was wondering whether you had any insight on the pricing compared to what you would normally pay? It seems like they are adopting 'the long tail' strategy as there are a lot of start ups/small businesses out there who probably need these services but are priced out or scope of what they can get is limited. I would be interested to see how this company develops.