Newspapers Step Up SMB Outreach

A number of newspapers have been offering SMB marketing packages for some time. Chief among those is McClatchy, which has had a long-standing relationship with WebVisible.

Now Matt McGee is reporting at SEL that Gannett’s local marketing arm (“Gannett Local“) is offering a new suite of marketing tools for local businesses, which includes SEO, email, web presence, display and other online marketing:

With the power of Gannett, the company behind USA Today, The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, we can jump start your advertising. What can we do for you?

1. Build traffic to your business and your website by getting you great placement on Google, Yahoo and Bing
2. Help your customers find you by getting your business on Google Maps
3. Ensure you stay top-of-mind through attention-grabbing advertisements in The Arizona Republic, the largest local newspaper in Arizona

Matt points out that the service is being fulfilled by OrangeSoda (which is now partly or majority owned by IAC). However there are likely other fulfillment partners in the mix as well, given the range of services above.

With the more aggressive entry of newspapers into local online market a noisy market grows louder for SMBs who are getting calls from ReachLocal, Yodle and WebVisible, as well as yellow pages, Groupon, and now newspaper sales channels.

One question is whether the local newspaper will be “trusted” or perceived as more credible by local businesses. OrangeSoda has a very strong reputation for SEO services and so the SEO core of the Gannett Local product could be effective.

ReachLocal, which just went public raised approximately $54 million out of an anticipated $100 million. The stock has gone up somewhat since last week and the company now has a market cap of $414 million.