Earlier this month we examined SMBs that prefer a “Do it Yourself” model, but that’s only half the story. SMBs that told us they prefer a “Do It With Me” or “Do It For Me” model for their advertising and marketing services are larger (nearly two times the size of DIYers), more urban and spend more annually on advertising, as the infographic above shows. The majority are actively growing and expanding their businesses and the second largest sub group report that they are “maintaining share.” According to Stacey Sedbrook, our Vice President of Strategic Sales Consulting, there are no true DIWM/DIY models in the marketplace; to a large degree they are marketing terms to describe the amount of time, budget or sophistication of the SMB. Companies that go to market with DIY/DIWM products and services are in a win-win situation, as it allows them to meet business needs based on time, budget and/or sophistication of the client. Managed advertising services both traditional and digital are explored including commentary by Stacey Sedbrook, on the principles and best practices for implementing DIWM or DIFM models.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded by clients of BIA/Kelsey here. This report is one of a series of drill-down reports on the findings from Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ survey. Our LCM reports look at where particular SMBs (broken out by size, vertical, etc.) spend the most, as well as the top channels for marketing and advertising. Additionally it provides analysis on the best product and service offers for these highly coveted groups of SMBs. In the coming weeks we will be looking at SMBs by vertical category. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

Click here to purchase the SMBs That Prefer “Do It With Me” (DIWM) or “Do It For Me” (DIFM) — LCM Wave 18. To purchase any of our other Local Commerce Monitor drill-down reports, check out our new BIA/Kelsey Shop.

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For investors, the big plusses are: strength of the brand; the large customer base of nearly 13 million (mostly SMBs); and robust growth in revenues and customers. Evidently, these outweighed the negatives of: lack of profitability; balance sheet challenges; and assorted bumps in the road over the last 10 years.

From a strategic perspective, the big challenge for GoDaddy (and other providers of registration and related products to low-end SMBs) is selling more and higher-priced products into a highly price-sensitive customer base. Moving customers along the value-vector into higher-priced, more robust products, while staying in a DIY/low cost pricing zone, is a challenging balancing act.

We think Go Daddy is well aware of the endgame, and knows it will take a lot more than Danica Patrick running NASCAR laps to get there.

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This report is a view of SMBs that told us they prefer a “Do It Yourself” (or “Do It Myself”) model for their advertising and marketing services. This is in contrast to the higher-service level models of “Do It With Me” or “Do It For Me.” (The preference for service models is one of the questions we asked in Wave 18 of our Local Commerce Monitor survey of small-and-medium businesses).

The advertising and marketing services could include, for example: website creation, marketing automation, leads management, media performance analysis, CRM, listings management, etc.

Many of our clients are asking us for information on SMBs that use DIY products. DIY products are popular for several reasons, low-cost being foremost. Publishers, media companies and other service providers find many challenges to implementing a DIY model, however. These run the gamut, from a lack of follow-through by the SMB customers, to frustrations in trying to upsell SMBs to additional products.

In profiling SMBs that prefer the DIY model, we found several surprises. For example, these SMBs are often well-established businesses, in the “maintenance” lifecycle stage. They tend to be moderate-sized SMBs (not the very smallest), and spend more than $13,000 annually on advertising. They’re very oriented to digital media in general, and social media in particular.

This report also includes commentary by Stacey Sedbrook, our Vice President of Strategic Sales Consulting, on the principles and best practices for implementing a DIY model.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded by clients of BIA/Kelsey here. This report is one of a series of drill-down reports on the findings from Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ survey. Our LCM reports look at where particular SMBs (broken out by size, vertical, etc.) spend the most, as well as the top channels for marketing and advertising. Additionally it provides analysis on the best product and service offers for these highly coveted groups of SMBs. In the coming weeks and months we will be looking at SMBs who prefer “Do It With Me” and “Do It For Me” service models, and SMBs by vertical. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

To purchase any of our Local Commerce Monitor drill-down reports, check out our new BIA/Kelsey Shop.

*Actually, I stood up — at the “standing desk” I recently cobbled together. Not just any standing desk — but one where I’m standing on a Bosu ball while at my computer. Try it!

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According to the survey, more than half of these VSBs chose to “do it myself” when purchasing online advertising, while only 24 percent chose any kind of paid assistance with “do it with me” or “do it for me” options. Still VSBs do remain open to managed services. LCM Wave 18 reveals that VSBs who use a third party (12.5 percent) pay an average $661 a year on maintaining and operating their online properties.

Economic necessity is one key reason behind the do-it-yourself nature of VSBs. More than 68 percent of the VSB respondents in our survey reported annual revenue of less than $100,000. While their average annual advertising budget is $4,252, four out of the five most popular channels used for advertising (Facebook pages, LinkedIn, websites and email marketing) are offered free or have low cost options.

Other business services that VSBs report they “DIY” include tracking sources of leads and monitoring customer comments. Opportunities exist with this group for low cost solutions (DIY or managed) for communicating with their customers and managing their leads/customer lists. Email marketing and online satisfaction surveys ranked high among advertising services they were considering using in 2015.

The VSB report released today is just the first peek into our LCM data by number of employees at SMBs. In the coming weeks we will be looking at mid-sized SMBs with under 10 employees, and even larger SMBs with between 10-99 employees.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full Very Small Businesses spotlight report here. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

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As GoDaddy reportedly prepares for a $4.5 Billion IPO, the company has increasingly focused on leveraging and upselling its 12 million worldwide members with a set of comprehensive solutions. At BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport, SVP Raj Mukherjee noted that the company is delivering on a new vision statement: “Empowering people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures.”

Mukherjee said GoDaddy is servicing its customers in three core ties: “basic identity,” “advantage identity,” and “marketing and back office.”

“Advantage identity” includes hosting and security, do it yourself websites, online stores and listings. “Marketing and back office” includes Domain specific email; Office 365; email marketing; invoicing and bookkeeping.

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As GoDaddy reportedly prepares for a $4.5 Billion IPO, the company has increasingly focused on leveraging and upselling its 12 million worldwide members with a set of comprehensive solutions. At BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport, SVP Raj Mukherjee noted that the company is delivering on a new vision statement: “Empowering people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures.”

Mukherjee said GoDaddy is servicing its customers in three core ties: “basic identity,” “advantage identity,” and “marketing and back office.”

“Advantage identity” includes hosting and security, do it yourself websites, online stores and listings. “Marketing and back office” includes Domain specific email; Office 365; email marketing; invoicing and bookkeeping.

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Home improvement services is a wild new frontier that has just scratched the tip of its potential, according to segment leaders at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport.

“ServiceMagic/Home Advisor is (only) a couple of hundred million dollars. Angie’s has never made a profit. The market is ripe but no one is there yet,” said Home Depot Silicon Valley leader Anthony Rodio, who also serves as GM of the company’s Red Beacon contractor scheduling service. “The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is repeat business.”

Rodio noted that a real opportunity for the industry is that many millennials have moved away from DIY. “For some, their idea of a home project is upstreaming iTunes in the living room,” he said. But Home Depot is traditionally geared around DIY. The company hasn’t done enough to develop ‘Do it For Me’, said Roddio.

Serviz leader Zorik Gordon, the former ReachLocal leader, said that the void in the industry is that the segment is not transparent. Serviz will move away from unreasonable 300-500 percent upsells, and provide price charts, and reviews; it will also assign contractors, said Gordon, who says the startup will move beyond southern California, where it launched in July, and will reach 10-20 cities by the end of 2015.

Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta noted that his company recently raised $100 million from Google and others. “What Google and others saw in us is that we have created a unique platform,” he said. “We have 600 unique categories.”

Thumbtack is taking a different approach than Serviz and The Home Depot’s Red Beacon in that it doesn’t assign jobs to service pros or collect money for jobs. Focusing on moving the money is “not the indicator” for the success of a transactional marketplace, he said.

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