Today I received the first visit/estimate from a window company based on my earlier local search exercise. The company was The Window Specialist. The lead came from ServiceMagic. I met with the owner Thomas From II who had read my blog post and wanted to discuss online marketing with me 🙂
We chatted briefly about the state of small business marketing. He told me that he has never been a print yellow pages advertiser (cost) and has been in business since 1979. He’s advertised in various print publications in the past and said that just a short while ago he was skeptical about the importance of online advertising for his category. But he also said that now “things are changing so fast” that he now takes it very seriously.
He told me he got a lead from Angie’s List the other week and received a follow-up call in which the telephone sales rep. wanted to charge him $2800 on an annual basis for a priority placement. (I wasn’t aware they had advertising at all.) He said no and got a follow-up call wherein the fee had been cut by half.
He also told me that his website was built by a guy in Mexico that he and his wife met on the beach while on vacation. That just illustrates the still-random nature of how things get done online for SMEs.
Finally he confirmed to me, as one might suspect, that he’s got his hands full just running his business and, despite the importance of the Internet now, has no desire to become an online marketing expert.
More to come . . .
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Vaguely related: Peter Krasilovsky has a good post about planning a Yosemite vacation using online resources and the absence of any single local search or travel resource that did a complete job for him.
Screenwerk 
September 8, 2006 at 8:28 pm
[…] But, as I said in my “windows” update post, SMEs no longer have to be convinced of the importance of being online or the need to market themselves to Internet users. The “why” is done; the only question now for them is “how.” […]