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.

The post Go Daddy Go appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

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.

The post At ILM 2014: GoDaddy’s Raj Mukherjee on Leveraging 12 Million Users appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

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.

The post At ILM 2014: GoDaddy's Raj Mukherjee on Leveraging 12 Million Users appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The end of the year usually means a few things to us: the holidays; our annual predictions; and Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, the industry’s flagship event.

This year’s event is especially hot — a 2 1/2 day extravaganza taking place Dec. 3-5 in San Francisco. More than 50 speakers have been recruited by the analyst team, and we’ve added some great extra-curricular activities, including a Tech Expo with top companies showing off their wares “Before The Bell” on Day 1; a Women’s Leading in Local networking event on day 2; and an International Roundtable.

Here’s our newest news: BIA/Kelsey Analyst Emeritus Matt Booth (currently CEO, Connectivity) is coming back to moderate one of two Executive Sessions with Google leaders. We’ll kick off with Managing Director of Global Channel Sales Todd Rowe, than go deep in conversations with Head of premier SMB partnerships Christine Merritt; Adwords Express Product Manager Francisco Uribe; Google My Business Senior Product Manager James Croom; and Global Business Leader for Google Shopping Max Frause.

We also have feature presentations set by YP CMO Allison Checchi; Deseret Digital Media CEO Clark Gilbert and President Chris Lee; Yodle CEO Court Cunningham; Pinterest Head of Partnerships Joel Meek; and Salesforce VP Randy Wootton.

We are also set with a great discussion between me and Business Book of the Year Winner Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. And then there are the feature presentations by First Data SVP Krish Mantripragada; InfoGroup CDO Matt Graves; and Go Daddy SVP Raj Mukherjee. And we’ve also got a great, seven company Superforum dedicated to local’s most important issue: “Make the Phone Ring.”

There’s so much more. Check out the Full agenda. Register here.

The post Leading in Local Update: 50 Speakers Are Set (Dec. 3-5, SFO) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

GoDaddy, continuing to rev up its expanding SMB platform as its IPO nears, has launched “Get Paid”, an online and mobile payments service.

Get Paid lets Go Daddy’s base of 12 million customers – many of them SMBs – accept credit cards, debit cards, eChecks and PayPal transfers. The service has been developed in partnerships with PayPal, Dwolla and Stripe.

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GoDaddy will offer Get Paid service in three service tiers starting at $4/month and going up to $15/month depending on the configuration of features like expense tracking; connecting bank accounts; and other accounting integrations.

GoDaddy’s decision to integrate payments in their service offerings is because they did not have an existing product that allowed their customers to get paid for their products and services. In the press release, SVP of Applications Steven Aldrich said,”when we heard from customers that they want to offer their clients more ways to pay, we set out to create a best-in-class solution to ensure easy access to all the tools they need to collect payments quickly and efficiently.”

GoDaddy already offered other financial services for small businesses in the form?of accounting and billing, so the addition of payments should tie in well to the existing services. The combination of a payment tool and existing financial and business management systems can be very powerful when it comes to tracking and measuring sales for ROI purposes.

The post GoDaddy Enters The Payment Arena appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Local search has taken off in multiple directions, driving commerce and engagement for merchants via enhances listings, maps, video, and even store inventory. At BIA/Kelsey‘s Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media Conference held this week in San Francisco, a panel of experts in the local search area were brought together to discuss the cutting edge in search issues and techniques.

As always with local search, content was a hot topic. “I love when people say content is hard because really it is so easy” says Will Scott, CEO of Search Influence. Getting SMB’s to put all of their content online is often a struggle but social media is a great way to get content out there, according to Scott. Azim Tejani, Chief Revenue Officer of YaSabe, discussed how they “encourage users and others to answer questions that come from the community.” By commenting they access content that is “not very social.”

When it comes to the future of local search, tackling the international market is where GoDaddy is headed according to Raj Nijjer, Sr. Director, Product Management. “It is a huge opportunity and a huge market”. Gideon Rubin, CMO Local Market Launch sees things a little differently. He is looking back to the fundamentals. “We still need to participate in the fundamental activities, the market is still small so we still need to participate in the fundamentals.”

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: The New Local Search appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving said during his opening keynote at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media in San Francisco that the world’s leading domain registrar with 12 million, mostly SMB customers is moving beyond the “polarizing tactics” it has used to get attention in its early days, and changing its brand image and marketing approach.

We’re about a lot more as a company,and Go Daddy is really about helping people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures,” he said. A lot of the company’s attention is about discoverability, he added. “Discoverability is key to customer acquisition.”

Discovery marketing moves people from selection to intent to purchase to loyalty. The goal is to make it actionable, said Irving. Omnichannel Web and mobile services are a major part of this.

While the company is adding new services such as Locu, it is also adding to its traditional registration businesses. GTLDS domains enable micro targeting, with such entries as “.Luxury” and “.Camera,” he noted. Such efforts are likely to boost the company’s average customer value, which is $123 a year. Acquisition costs are running the company around $45. Figures are consistent around the world, he said.

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving on ‘Discoverability’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

How can you constantly top yourself? It is a challenge that leaders have, in whatever endeavor they are pursuing: whether it is sports, literature, academia, or business.

We are pretty sure this year’s Interactive Local Media event – BIA/Kelsey’s flagship – is going to top any other event we’ve done before.

The event’s handpicked keynotes, superforums and BIA/Kelsey research really do define the state of Interactive Local Media for 2013-14. We’ve just added Brian Boland, Facebook‘s VP of Product. Facebook is all over local advertising and commerce in ways that are obvious – and not so obvious. We can’t wait to hear his insights.

Other industry leaders we’ve added include eBay Marketplaces VP Jody Ford, who is helping lead the charge as eBay goes big in local (and against Amazon); and Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving, the visionary leader who is building a comprehensive platform to leverage GoDaddy’s 8 million SMB customers. Talk about disruption!

Kicking off the conference, of course, are two of the best: San Francisco Chronicle President Joanne Bradford and AllThings D Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher. The insights don’t come deeper or faster.

And at LIL:ILM, it isn’t just about the “industry.” On Day 2, we are especially proud to be joined by Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, the political superstar (and ex San Francisco Mayor) who has focused on tech’s impact on local (see his new book, “Citizenville”).

The Lt. Governor will also introduce Chris Schroeder, the former Washington Post Newsweek Digital chief who has written this year’s top books on start up developments, Startup Rising. Attendees can jockey for signed copies that we’ll be handing out.

Other major speakers at the conference include Groupon VP Sean Smyth; Weather Company VP Denise Chudhy; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge; and Intuit/DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry. They’ll join 40+ speakers and hundreds of attendees at what is truly “the industry’s largest gathering.”

What else? We have a special tour of Yelp headquarters before the event even begins. More info on that a little later on. Hey, does it sound G-R-E-A-T? We hope to see you in San Francisco!

You can register here.

The post Facebook, eBay, GoDaddy, Lt. Gov Join Leading in Local: ILM (Dec. 10-12 San Francisco) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the new local contenders is an old name: GoDaddy. The Phoenix-based company, which is anchored in registry services (and Super Bowl ads), has been working to leverage its SMB customer base with a series of moves, including the $75 Million purchase of Locu, a Single Platform-like company. At SMB Digital Marketing last week, GoDaddy’s GM of Presence and Commerce Raj Mukerjee and VP of Product Rene Reinsberg (the founder of Locu) spoke as surprise guests with BIA/Kelsey’s Mike Boland.

Reinsberg suggested that “SMBs love GoDaddy,” which he says as being perceived as a company that “really cares and want to help SMBs succeed.” SMBs, in fact, are a real focus of the new leadership team, much of which was imported from Yahoo, along with CEO Blake Irving. “We have big plans,” he says.

Mukerjee noted that eight million of GoDaddy’s 11 million customers are SMBs. Many of these are “super, super small with fewer than five or ten employees.” Their #1 need, he says, is to acquire customers. They also want solutions that are cost effective and drive traffic to their website. Mukerjee says his challenge to his team is to “enable SMBs to do that.” They aren’t at all focused on newfangled ideas like mobile sites, he adds.

The post SMB Digital Marketing: GoDaddy Extends Beyond Registrations appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.