Here we are in the middle of National Small Business Week, which seems like a great time to unveil the agenda and key themes of our upcoming SMB conference, which happens Sept. 29-30 at the Marriott Denver Tech Center. This event helps companies understand what makes SMBs tick so they can more successfully build and sell digital marketing solutions for small-business advertisers.

We are bringing a new look and feel to this year’s SMB conference — a faster pace, deeper audience engagement, a much more tactical focus and truly candid conversations about what it really takes to win in this exciting and challenging space.

​The preliminary SMB 2015 agenda reads as a road map of the most exciting opportunities and vexing challenges facing the local SMB digital marketing ecosystem. Keep an eye here as we add VIPs in the local SMBs as headline speakers, executive interview subjects and panelists.

Our Day 1 Headliner will be a joint session with Chris Terrill and Craig Smith, CEO and COO, respectively, of Home Advisor, a leader in matching home improvement leads with qualified merchants. Chris and Craig have been deep in the SMB trenches and understand what it takes to find the right business model for success in this space. Other headliners, including leaders from many of the premier SMB facing brands, will be announced soon.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll tackle at SMB 2015:

Making Big Data Small Enough for SMBs
Is Location the New Local?
Programmatic for SMBs — Is This a Thing Yet?
Is There a Play for the Long Tail SMB?
We’re Not Going to Say ‘Content is King’ — But It Kinda Is
Crowdfunding and Micro-lending — The Democratization of SMB Finance?
Bringing Hollywood to Main Street — Evolutions in Video Advertising

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FiveStars, the well-funded SMB loyalty company that competes against Belly, SpotOn and others, is projecting it will grow its merchant base to 8,000-9,000 businesses by year-end, up from its current base of 6,000 customers. Customers who subscribe to FiveStars premium service pay as much as $200 a month. The San Francisco-based company has received over $45 million in funding.

Growth Manager Brian Lee, in a Webinar discussion with Radius Product Manager John Hurley, said the company is now positioned for rapid growth. Radius’ big data analytics helps it better understand its sales prospects and vertical segments, and manage its sales team.

Specifically, the company has grown increasingly confident in growing its sales team, which consists of 35 inside reps and 50 outside reps. “We had been stuck in neutral” with 15-20 reps for a long time,” notes Lee, who likes to call himself a “revenue hacker.” “But we asked ourselves: ‘Where can we grow as a team?’ Half the battle has been figuring out the addressable market,” he adds — something that Radius has helped with. “We are now ready to grow and talk to customers.”

Lee adds that it hasn’t been a matter of simply adding 20 sales people. “This isn’t a product you can (sell by reading) from a script. Every rep we bring on represents ‘X’ percentage of revenue. It is a very refined model that takes in both the performance of reps and the performance of leads. We look at what leads (the reps) are getting. And how are verticals performing.”

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Big Data is becoming democratized. That was an underlying theme at our SMB Digital Marketing conference. We discussed this in an on-site analyst roundtable posted last month.

To continue that discussion, we put together a highlight reel of conference Keynoters and their biggest conference takeaways when we were able to tackle them back stage.

“Increasingly, data [for] large advertisers are available to SMBs,” said Acxiom CEO Scott Howe. “Those that embrace it are going to be running all kinds of targeted advertising with much better results.”

See the rest embedded below.

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On Monday, BuildZoom announced it has raised $2.2 million. With the latest round of infusion, we asked the Co-Founder, Jiyan Wei, where the company is headed next.

“Our goal is to bring transparency to consumers who are shopping for a home improvement contractors. There is a knowledge gap that exists in hiring contractors. We want to bring transparency to pricing and duration of the project — we have the data.”

The Buildzoom platform is designed to help consumers look for home improvement contract work by matching them with the best-fitting professionals for the job. Buildzoom takes a far different approach than just relying on relying on customer reviews and other info. Buildzoom applies a Big Data method and analyzes more than 50 million construction permits, 3 million contractor profiles, and other third party data sources. The company’s Big Data approach is based on assorted information from state licensing boards and Better Business Bureaus; crowd sourcing via social media sites; insurance and bonding status; and self-provided information. A five star rating is just one piece of the puzzle — mitigating the risk of infrequent ratings.

“What distinguishes us from an Angie’s list is our unique focus on the regulated marketplace,” Jiyan Wei said. Buildzoom has created a two-sided marketplace — one for customers to get recommendations on contractors and the other for home improvement service providers to be listed for prospective projects.

The company will use its funds for hiring and growth. BuildZoom was founded in 2012 by Jiyan Wei and David Petersen and is based in San Francisco. The company previously raised a first seed round of $1.4 million.

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“Not all data is created equal, but almost anything can be helpful,” said Acxiom CEO and President Scott Howe, who keynoted at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing in New Orleans Sept. 23. Now they can choose among connection speed, day part, geotarget, behavioral — or ideally, a multi-variable segment. If they can mix and match with a multi-variable, SMBs can see a lift approaching 6950 percent from unenhanced efforts.

“For so long, only thing SMBs could do to monetize was search, direct mail… things that allowed them to go a little granular… but they could not do what big guys did. Now they can,” said Howe. “But multichannel marketing works and should be a priority in your efforts. The best marketers know they need to do everything.”

Howe noted that SMBs are “nervous about this stuff” and often withdraw. But for digital resellers, it should be all about “test and learn, test and learn.”

Marketers can’t do anything, however, unless they get consumers to give permissions. Howe is confident that such permissions will be forthcoming. “Consumers want to have a voice,” said Howe.

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“Not all data is created equal, but almost anything can be helpful,” said Acxiom CEO and President Scott Howe, who keynoted at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing in New Orleans Sept. 23. Now they can choose among connection speed, day part, geotarget, behavioral — or ideally, a multi-variable segment. If they can mix and match with a multi-variable, SMBs can see a lift approaching 6950 percent from unenhanced efforts.

“For so long, only thing SMBs could do to monetize was search, direct mail… things that allowed them to go a little granular… but they could not do what big guys did. Now they can,” said Howe. “But multichannel marketing works and should be a priority in your efforts. The best marketers know they need to do everything.”

Howe noted that SMBs are “nervous about this stuff” and often withdraw. But for digital resellers, it should be all about “test and learn, test and learn.”

Marketers can’t do anything, however, unless they get consumers to give permissions. Howe is confident that such permissions will be forthcoming. “Consumers want to have a voice,” said Howe.

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In BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey, “Small Business Plus Spenders” with annual marketing budgets of $75k or more – such as car dealers. medical centers and other larger local advertisers — are all over big data. Plus Spenders are found to be data hounds, showing a strong desire and use for information on media performance, analytics, and customer comments in social media.

SMB Plus Spenders rated analytics as their second highest (at 61 percent) future priority for marketing and advertising. Plus Spenders are keen on incorporating analytics into their marketing mix.

Our LCM data finds that 48 percent of SMB Plus Spenders use their own organic data to analyze the effectiveness of their ad campaigns versus 29 percent who use vendor or third party data. Furthermore, 82 percent of Plus Spenders track the sources of their business leads either frequently or occasionally. This high reading is consistent with the overall priority assigned to Analytics by Plus Spenders.

Our LCM 17 data indicates, plus spender SMBs are keen on monitoring their advertising performance through analytics. Many small companies want to improve their marketing by pinpointing the best sales prospects through social media and other media channels. SMBs can harness data to analyze what customers are saying online to engage in more impactful dialogues with prospective or existing customers because that big data allows them to understand their campaign’s effectiveness.

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The “Big Data” revolution has hit every strata of the economy, providing insights into users and customers for everything from B2B materials to entertainment and travel.

But what’s the impact of Big Data on marketing to small businesses? The use of Big Data is very important, and highly applicable to SMBs, suggests Radius VP of Marketing Darren Waddell. If properly applied, it lends itself to market segmentation and more focused leads — something that is critical for sales and marketing organizations as they contend with an unwieldy list of leads.

It is part of a move towards automation, which since the Industrial Revolution, “has been the only way that companies survive,” says Waddell, whose company is working with SMB solution leaders such as Amex, The Home Depot and Gannett. Without such segmentation, economic realities force companies to engage in untargeted “spammy” outbound marketing.

“From a lead generation point of view, this is a massive shift,” adds Waddell. “As an industry, we need to get away from lead gen data providers from the likes of Dun & Bradstreet — which are leads without intelligence — and move towards a thoughtful, differentiated approach to SMB marketing.”

Excerpted from a new Brief for BIA/Kelsey clients: “Building a Better SMB Marketing Machine: Inside the Development of Radius.” Waddell is a featured Big Data speaker at Leading in Local: The National Impact, along with VSplash advisor Neal Polachek and Dstillery VP Lauren Moores.

The post ‘The Impact of Big Data on SMB Marketing': Briefing Excerpt appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The “Big Data” revolution has hit every strata of the economy, providing insights into users and customers for everything from B2B materials to entertainment and travel.

But what’s the impact of Big Data on marketing to small businesses? The use of Big Data is very important, and highly applicable to SMBs, suggests Radius VP of Marketing Darren Waddell. If properly applied, it lends itself to market segmentation and more focused leads — something that is critical for sales and marketing organizations as they contend with an unwieldy list of leads.

It is part of a move towards automation, which since the Industrial Revolution, “has been the only way that companies survive,” says Waddell, whose company is working with SMB solution leaders such as Amex, The Home Depot and Gannett. Without such segmentation, economic realities force companies to engage in untargeted “spammy” outbound marketing.

“From a lead generation point of view, this is a massive shift,” adds Waddell. “As an industry, we need to get away from lead gen data providers from the likes of Dun & Bradstreet — which are leads without intelligence — and move towards a thoughtful, differentiated approach to SMB marketing.”

Excerpted from a new Brief for BIA/Kelsey clients: “Building a Better SMB Marketing Machine: Inside the Development of Radius.” Waddell is a featured Big Data speaker at Leading in Local: The National Impact, along with VSplash advisor Neal Polachek and Dstillery VP Lauren Moores.

The post 'The Impact of Big Data on SMB Marketing': Briefing Excerpt appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The impact of data on local marketing was Topic #1 during Street Fight’s Local Data Summit today in Denver. Speakers addressed the wide range of data issues that have begun to enhance local marketing and shift local marketing — and even diminish the spending and influence of marketing.

Mobile is the real driver of the new environment. The new era of big data is largely spurred by the technology in the phone, especially radios, said Qualcomm’s Aidoo Osei. In the near future, it will be further driven by sensors in stores , such as Apple’s iBeacon. The combination of in phone tech and in store sensors will create a “continuous user experience,” added Intel’s Greg Turetsky.

Turetsky said the data environment will be greatly impacted by the growing role of indoor intelligence, such as the sensors, which can react to consumers as they walk by with personalized promotions. Just last week, indoor got a huge boost when the FCC mandated that the e911 system should be upgraded to include indoor as well as outdoor. Commercial applications for indoor sensors should follow, he said.

But technologists can’t get too far ahead of themselves. Even at the Local Data Summit… not a single member of the audience said they had yet used iBeacon.

Other views focused on the nascent efforts to leverage location. Major progress has been made since some of the technology began rolling out in 2012, said Placed CEO David Shim. It used to be entirely experimental, said Shim. But now brands are coming in with predefined problems. “They ask: can you solve the problem for me?”

Many data issues directly relate to mobile marketing — especially in terms of audience measurement. It used to be all about projecting audiences based on panels, said PlaceIQ’s Drew Breunig. But now — thanks to the influx of mobile users — “we have populations. And we have the computing resources to deal with the data coming off the populations.” Breunig noted the new environment is enormously richer to today’s focus on geofencing, which tends to underdeliver.

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