This document evaluates the idea of a platform that provides small businesses with a website builder and marketing software in one place. It analyzes the size of the local online marketing market, which is large and growing. The value proposition is that non-technical small business owners can easily create a professional website and integrate online directories and social media through a user-friendly interface. Customer research found strong interest in such a do-it-yourself solution to gain more local leads. The results suggest there is demand from small businesses for an affordable way to build their online presence and brand without high costs or reliance on external companies.

1. Is Idea worth pursuing
● The Idea
● How big is the market
● Hypothesis
○ Value Proposition
○ Customers
● Experiments
● Results

2. 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.

3. 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]

4. Market Size Research (continued)
US Online Advertising Spend to Exceed Print
for the First Time in 2012

5. 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

6. 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

7. Market Size Research (continued)
USA market
USA 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]

8. Spending breakdown

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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/