Great Past Week For Localtek And Missouri.me – Just Getting Started

What a week, this is one of those weeks where I had a thousand ideas for blog posts then everything became a whirlwind and it became heads down and focus time.

First off we got confirmation on a top notch customer we had been working on and they actually purchased a multitude of services and advertising for several of their businesses, I love marketing packages versus pure advertising, it really helps pull everything together when you can do everything from the demand creation to landing page and conversion, especially when you can wrap it all up in a neat package for multiple businesses. Those deals excite me.

The other thing that made it an exciting deal is it is a multiple web property deal showing that value add properties can help win niche business along with a more traditional advertising approach on our key Missouri.me business.

Also, we confirmed (actually last week) that we will be attending the DNCruise, my wife is going although the first thing she said was "I don't have to listen to you speak do I?" Seems she gets tired of hearing me talk about domains, Localtek, SEO, local search and everything that is in my head everyday. Great job by Chef Patrick to create such a unique combination of business and pleasure.

It looks like I have another great trip to talk about in June as well, I look forward to sharing the details once I get all the details worked out.

We have a crazy next week ahead, we have two seminars to do along with a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce and economic development group in a fast growing area of Missouri who after seeing what we have done for local business has asked us to create their web site and marketing, this is the second community to do so. Great news.

On that note, I must say that I am loving partnerships with legacy marketing firms, earlier this week we had a call from a large legacy marketing firm who needed help promoting a project of theirs online. They had all the creatives worked out but really needed to understand how search and social could play a role. I see more of these types of partnerships in our future.

On a smaller note, the drop name God shown down this week and I managed to grab the few names I was after with little fight. I love those weeks, one of my employees comes from a seminar background so I can see good things for RetirementSeminars.com ahead.

We also made our latest hire this week, someone to help me on the marketing side, she comes to us with a great background coming from many years at AT&T and has great energy which is going to be very important as we move forward with our growth plans for the year. We needed a marketing coordinator but finding someone with the energy and drive can be tough to find. And why is this so important?

Well, even though I do not want to go into details, a few months back we had been contacted by some large investment firms about growing faster. Even though we did not go down that path for now we did find ways to keep things moving in the direction we would like and worked with a very solid group of investors who want to see us grow even faster in our current model. With the success we have had gaining customers and having success for our customers it was nice to see people have that faith in our plan to take it to the next level. Thanks to them, the first steps happened this past week with much more to happen in the near future. Great news yet again.

Now, on a personal note, 12 lbs gone! I got tired of making excuses and decided it was time to get myself back. The obsessiveness with being healthy, eating right, and exercising often is back.

Oh yeah, thanks to TheDomains.com , Fusible.com, ChefPatrick.com, DomainNameWire.com and MorganLinton.com for the link love this past week (if I missed anyone I am sorry).

iSupportServices.com Launches NorthCarolina.me and Business Support Services

Localtek is proud to announce a partnership with iSupportServices.com, the company owns several state .ME names and after the success of Missouri.me had interest in using our state Geo development platform for the launch of their state names and also extend the partnership into other areas where we provide rural small business services.

NorthCarolina.me is the first of the states to launch, over the coming months iSupportServices will be working directly with small business customers to support their technical and marketing needs and we are proud to be a piece of that solution.

Here is the press release that went out today:

iSupport Services, LLC
Chris Poer, 877-228-9002
cpoer@isupportservices.com
www.isupportservices.com

Internet Marketing Seminar In Bonne Terre – Thanks Small Business Leaders!

Thanks to the small business owners from Bonne Terre, MO and surrounding communities for taking the time to come to our local search and online marketing seminar held at Mario's Italian Grill. I know that you are all extremely busy and taking 2 hours of your time after hours is asking a lot, especially when it is concerning a topic that is new to many and before the presentation was probably something you thought a business in rural Missouri may not need to be concerned with.

As you know now, it is very important to take advantage of all online avenues to create a holistic online marketing plan, from your Domain Name selection to your use of Facebook and Twitter, it all needs to work together to make sure you customers remember your brand and know where to go to find out what you are doing next, what specials you have or new products you are introducing. As I mentioned, finding targeted visitors for your website is key, understanding what customers are searching for when looking for a service or product you sell is how you focus on turning browsers into buyers. As I mentioned, no longer is having a website something you do simply because you can, now with the shift of newspaper readers and local business search moving online faster than ever you have to think about how your customers use the web even if you do not.

As I mentioned a portion of the content on this blog is targeted at helping my small business customers, as such I thought I would point out a few posts that I have done that you may find useful:

Why Small Business Should Advertise Online - Open Letter

Why Small Business Should Advertise During Down Times

Offline Ways To Promote Your Website

How To Create A Facebook Fan Page

Once again, thank you for my time and let me know how I can help!

Speaking At The Affiliate Convention in LA December 4th

I have been invited and accepted the opportunity to speak at the Affiliate Convention in Los Angeles, CA which is being held December 3rd and 4th. I really look forward to this and if you are in LA or plan on attending the convention let me know, it would be great to meet up.

The topic I will be discussing will be "New TLDs".  This is something that should be fun and interesting to put together after the experience launching a business on an alternative extension like .ME.

For more information check out AffiliateConvention.com

For detailed agenda information check the Affiliate Convention Agenda

Also, here are a few tidbits from the site:

Affiliate Convention bases its conference and tradeshow series on the idea that actionable information, business building and networking opportunities should be freely available to everyone in the affiliate marketing industry, especially to working affiliate marketers. Sporting a growing line-up of thought leaders in the affiliate and search engine marketing sectors, Affiliate Convention LA is a unique opportunity to meet and share ideas with the brightest business people in the affiliate marketing industry. Affiliate Convention is the only event in the affiliate marketing industry which gives affiliate marketers free access to the movers and shakers in the sector.

Localtek Upgrades Office Space – Moving On Up

The past two days we at Localtek have been moving into our much more spacious office space. After the past several months in our startup (translation: low cost) office we had grown out of our space and were in major need of an upgrade. We were lucky enough to find space less than a half mile away from our current location that quadrupled or pretty close to quadrupled our space. Unfortunately last night as soon as we started the rain started pouring down, still managed to get it all moved but it made it more interesting than it needed to be.

Now its time to go buy "stuff" to fill it up. Foosball table seems to be an option for the new break area....

In all seriousness this was a great problem to have, anytime you outgrow your space it is a good problem to have, it caused a bit of a distraction for the past week but that is business. Sometimes opportunities present themselves and you have to take it while you can. On another note, I had to be talked into getting office space when we first started the company, after working from home for 10 years I did not feel the need for it, I must admit I was wrong (that hurts, don't tell anyone I said that....).

We look forward to putting our big Missouri.me and Localtek Logos on the window and the big sign out front, whats great is it is right next to the interstate and very visible. After some of the things that happened today not related to the move that visibility is getting even more important, will post about that this weekend.

It was a bit tough to show the actual size difference of the office and the rooms, but to give you some idea of scale we determined we could fit our complete office space from before 1 and 3/4 times into our new reception and cube area alone before you even get to the offices and other space, and no that is not an interrogation room but I thought that would be funny until we go get the new cubes and desks to fill it up next week:) Te first few pics are the the old office, the last few of the new.

Here are a few pics:

Building Brand Awareness Pays Off

One of the toughest things when starting any business is making sure people are aware that you even exist. In the domain investment industry that we are in we do tend to focus on the online part of our marketing efforts (SEO, search marketing, etc) but we sometimes forget that word of mouth is still one of the best ways to gain traction for getting real business done.

We have focused hard on making sure we have a mix of online and offline awareness campaigns and we are starting to see the results. Our account executives have been hearing more and more comments like "Oh yeah, so and so talked about the website you did for them." or "I just submitted a classified the other day on your site".  Those seem like small little comments, but when you are a new business that is gold. People are talking, it spreads and if you have  produced results it gets even better.

This week we have started to get unsolicited requests for various products that we offer. Once again, that comes from people hearing about us and passing our business cards around, etc. What really has made us feel good is that its not just in one community, it has been in places hundreds of miles apart.

What does this mean to my domain investor friends? It means do not overlook the the value of having offline ways to build awareness of your business. The Tour of Missouri work we did is paying off, the various seminars we have done are paying off, plus a myriad of other things that we do that we do not necessarily discuss are all coming together to help us grow our business that all started with one domain name but is now much more than just a name. The value is now the business and the brand.

Hyperlocal Online Media Acquisitions Heat Up

With the hyperlocal/community based approach to news that we have built on Missouri.me we have already started to witness the community involvment we had hoped for start to happen in various towns across the state. In those towns that either community leaders or community networkers have started to post we get additional content plus the goodwill that comes with the citizens no longer having to fight the battle to get their story out.

As many people have seen this push for hyperlocal news has caused a bit of a stir in the legacy media world as well as sites that focus on online media as they fight to determine the proper business model to approach this type of news model. As much as we love our citizen journalists on Missouri.me we also know that it does take time get these people involved on a community by community basis and as such we have not focused purely on them as our news source. And I think overall the model in the industry will be a mix of local people reporting what they consider news alongside legacy media writers doing true research journalism for indepth stories.

All that said, there have been some great stories come out this past week and month about this, here are a few stories you in the Geo domain space, or online media space in general may find interesting or useful.

I normally try not to do posts filled with links to tons of other stories but these were interesting so decided to loosen up for the day.

Hyperlocal News a $100 billion dollar market - FastCompany.com This is a great read, if you have any interest in localized/geo domains read this.

Everyblock.com Acquired by MSNBC.com - TechCrunch.com

Jeff Jarvis Creates Spreadsheet to Save Local News - TechCrunch.com

Local Yokels - Hyperlocal News Sites

AOL Buys Two Hyperlocal News Sites - AllthingsD.com

And one story about print media continuing to fall on its face (to put it bluntly): Readers Digest Goes Bankrupt

Big River Telephone Partners with Missouri.me and Localtek

Well, I can officially announce our first strategic partnership between Localtek/Missouri.me and a leading technology provider to rural communities throughout southeast Missouri.

Big River Telephone, based in Cape Girardeau, MO serves 10's of thousands of customers not only in Missouri but in several other states that we will be launching in. As part of the partnership Big River Telephone will be promoting the Localtek services along with the associated state portal, intially Missouri.me. Localtek will also be promoting Big River Telephones business Internet services to its customers.

With a long history supporting the communities they are in and with their place in the upcoming rural broadband stimulus and drive we could not of found a better partner to work with. They are targeting the exact same customers we are looking to support and help.

As part of the initial launch they have scheduled a seminar at the Career and Technology Center in Cape Girardeau for September 29th. I will be speaking to 2 groups of businesses (125 people per group) on how to help bring their businesses online and compete as broadband continues to penetrate deeper into America. In a nice twist Big River Telephone is promoting this event with TV commercials, Radio Ads, and Billboards as well as online advertising. The cost is only $20 if you are in Missouri and want to attend.

To hear the radio commercial click on this link web-advantage-radio-spot

Second .ME Geo Domain Name Launch Moving Forward

Well our first sales meeting is behind us, we filled a room with our full time sales team and a few agents that will be working with us to bring us customers. One thing that we did a little different to make a point was we actually had 2 CUSTOMERS at our sales meeting. Thats right, normally an internal sales meeting has a bit of dirty laundry that gets aired, but we were so confident that having real customer feedback would be great we invited a couple customers. Talk about giving a sales team real feedback, real time and validating what will work and what will not.

Well we had a bit of a surprise acceleration in our launch plans for state #2, we had a couple people targeted in another state that we had previous experience with and due to various reasons we were able to bring them into our "world" a little faster than planned, they made plans at the last minute and made an 8 hour trek to come to our sales meeting to make sure all was as it seemed and then signed on to manage marketing and sales for another great Geo .ME domain name. I am not announcing the state yet but we expect the intial site to be up within a few weeks and their work to start right along with that.  My experience with these two individuals is long and their abilities are as good as anyone you are going to find from both an operations and sales perspective (I hate to admit it but I may of learned a thing or two from him.....). Exciting stuff.

I have had many requests in the last week for various partnerships, domain offers, etc. I will say that I am interested in partnerships on quality geo names but we will be very selective as the last thing we want to do is get distracted by a partership that may not have the sales and marketing legs behind it on the other side.  With our own names we control the sales and marketing efforts and have a plan in place. Many of the partnership requests are something quite different in that our platform is what is being used while the other side will be the sales and marketing leg, that only works if they truly have that experience.

Oh yeah, a reminder, StilettoSandals.com will be on Bido auction next week:)

LocalTek Launches Innovative Internet-based Advertising Solutions for Rural America

First Market Launched Serving Over 1,000 Communities in Missouri

August 03, 2009, Desloge, MO - LocalTek, LLC, an innovator in targeted advertising solutions, announces the launch of a new, internet-based advertising medium focused on small and mid-sized businesses throughout rural America.

LocalTek was created to provide targeted marketing solutions to businesses throughout the United States and also provide a local online resource for rural communities. LocalTek provides cost effective web development, advertising, and targeted online marketing packages that virtually any business can afford.  Targeted marketing solutions that normally come from three different companies can now be provided by one single source vendor, LocalTek.  LocalTek brings services to rural America to let businesses compete with large corporations who have strong search marketing resources that would preempt small local businesses from competing effectively online.

LocalTek's online resource web portals will utilize the state name and the newly released ".Me" domain name extension for various markets in America. The first portal recently launched by LocalTek, Missouri.me, is currently serving over 1,000 communities in Missouri.  For more information about the new .Me phenomenon, please visit www.domain.me.

"LocalTek's new approach to on-line advertising will transform the way businesses are able to cost effectively market themselves and attract new customers," said Bruce Marler, president and founder of LocalTek. "After working in corporate America for the past 15 years but still living in rural America, it became obvious that local businesses were not being offered the chance to compete fairly online. We created LocalTek and the Missouri.me concept to level the playing field. Missouri.me allows each and every community in the state to have their own online presence while LocalTek's web development and targeted marketing services provide value that cannot be matched by traditional advertising only firms, newspaper, and even radio".

Additionally, LocalTek has plans to launch service in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

About LocalTek

LocalTek provides cost effective, locally targeted, online advertising and website solutions for a variety of business types throughout the United States.  LocalTek solutions are targeted at specific geographic areas, which allow businesses to focus on the customers they find most valuable. Headquartered in Desloge, Missouri, LocalTek is rapidly expanding its service offering in over 20 markets nationwide.  For additional information, please visit us at www.localtek.com.

About Missouri.me

Missouri.me provides a local, online resource web portal that contains news, weather, free e-mail, classifieds and business information for most communities in Missouri. Headquartered in Desloge, Missouri, Missouri.me is a LocalTek company currently serving over 1,000 communities in Missouri with sales and marketing operations in over 114 counties.  For additional information, please visit us at www.missouri.me.