That will never happen. That's the fundamental problem with "local". Small businesses and mom-and-pop shops need to be called and convinced. They need their hand held. They aren't studying lean marketing practices or split testing their offers.
Look at the head counts for ad sales vs editorial for any local publication (newspaper, magazine, newsletter). If you want to sell to local businesses, you have to call them.
elon musk tried to create one such company, Zip2, back in the late 90's. cost of sales ate it alive.
reachlocal, profitfuel, etc has been successful by making their companies into freakish sales-driven machines. the core competence of any "local" is maximaizing sales effectiveness.
Absolutely true. Reminds me of the yellow pages sales team. They had to show up to get the ad and coax it out of people who had success. Also, a small business advertising publication that I was affiliated with had the same issue. You couldn't run it remotely from another city. You had to be on the street collecting the ad copy from the pizza shop. And you were lucky if the owner was there for the "appointment" as well.
I don't bite. Sure it's difficult, but if Groupon was a good experience for the business then it would sell its self. Groupon wouldn't be the $6 Billion monster it is today but at least they might be making some money.
That will never happen. That's the fundamental problem with "local". Small businesses and mom-and-pop shops need to be called and convinced. They need their hand held. They aren't studying lean marketing practices or split testing their offers.
Look at the head counts for ad sales vs editorial for any local publication (newspaper, magazine, newsletter). If you want to sell to local businesses, you have to call them.