Is Idea worth pursuing● The Idea● How big is the market● Hypothesis

○ Value Proposition ○ Customers

● Experiments● Results

The Idea

A platform with a website builder along with marketing software that enables small businesses to gain an online presence and manage their marketing in one place.

Market Size Research

● Why Local Online Marketing is important?

73% of all searches are related to Local content in one way or another. (Google)For every dollar spent on the Internet, five are spent offline on products and services that were influenced by online research. (MIT Technology Review)43% of Internet users are searching for local merchants when considering making a purchase. Further 52% report that they have regularly substituted search engines for the Yellow Pages. And finally 91% of U.S. internet users do comparison shopping and research online and of that group 51% explicitly characterize themselves as “shop online, purchase offline” (ComScore) [1]

Market Size Research (continued)

US Online Advertising Spend to Exceed Print for the First Time in 2012

Market Size Research (continued)

Global● Emarketer 2011 global study reflects

traditional media ad spending hovering under $130 billion through 2015 [2]

● According to Borrell Associates, in an October 2012 report, 1 in 2 small business Online Marketing Service Dollars Spent On Web Presence

Market Size Research (continued)

● Globally $44.7 billion goes toward online marketing support, almost entirely spent on search engine optimization (SEO)

● Globally $50.3 billion is spent towards online advertising

● $47.3 billion goes to online consulting and research[3]

● Online public relations grabs $46.9 billion and includes services like press release distribution and managing and nurturing opt-in lists

Market Size Research (continued)

USA marketUSA online ad spending grew 23% to $32.3 billion in 2011, and is expected to grow an additional 23.3% to $39.5 billion this year—pushing it ahead of total spending on print newspapers and magazines, according to recent forecast by eMarketer. [2]

Spending breakdown

Value Proposition

● Our platform enables small business marketing via SEO, local online directory listings, social media integration

● Our state of the art software lets any non tech person to create his business website, verifies whether site content meets SEO requirements and also empowers user to integrate with local online directories and social media all through our extremely user friendly web interface.

● Our cutting edge software analyzes website content on the fly as user prepares site pages and provides useful feedback on including search engine friendly content

Our Market

● Local businesses have no or little time to devote to create online presence, create digital marketing campaigns to get more business leads

● Given our easier reach in USA region, initially our focus will be USA market and gradually roll out support for other regions

Experiments

● Sample size : 27● Online survey: 16● Face-to-Face: 11

Customers pain points

● Remain dependent for creating and managing own content for the site

● Highly relied on partner company (who manages online marketing) for applying right SEO, other related techniques with no transparency

● Feel frustrated with turn around time from the company managing their local online marketing

● Pay exorbitant amount of money to the managing company yet don't get the quality service

Our solution

● 8 out of 10 showed interest in our product ● 7 out of 10 said they liked do-it-yourself

approach provided by ServeLocals along with dynamic SEO integrated techniques/tools

● 9 out of 10 said they didn't have any mobile solution and are interested in trying out our product for attracting more business leads

● 5 out of 10 said they understand importance of online brand building but have little idea how it can be done

Results

● Mainly small businesses are interested in getting more local leads, so they understand importance of our online marketing and brand building product and quite keen on exploring do-it-yourself approach that we'll be building out

● From customer feedback and survey results we feel we are building a product that'll address the need of a market

References[1] http://www.amerobiz.com/blog/small-business-local-online-advertising/

[2] http://www.amerobiz.com/blog/how-much-money-do-you-spend-on-advertising[3]http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/interactive/1-in-2-smb-online-marketing-service-dollars-spent-on-web-presence-24048/[4] http://www.crowdscience.com/2012/01/us-online-advertising-spend-to-exceed-print-for-the-first-time-in-2012/