Tag Archives: business

Startup or Business

New Business or Startup? It Matters

Insights / Research, Startups, , , ,

I’ve been the “Grumpy Get Off My Lawn!” about this over the years and tend to just roll with the people who are adamant that words are interchangeable, feeling that it’s not worth pushing when people want to say one thing can mean another.

Of what have I been grumpy? Words matter.

  • An investor in a startup isn’t necessarily an Angel Investor
  • A VC isn’t an individual investing, it’s someone who runs a fund
  • And while a startup is new and hoping to become a business, a new business isn’t a startup

A Startup is Not a New Business, and a New Business isn’t a Startup

I’m cranky because this dilution of words misleads would-be entrepreneurs as people attempting startups get poor advice from business advisors and investors, while people starting businesses get misdirected by advice about startups.

I was asked today, just today, over the course of 4 separate meetings, “How much revenue do investors expect to see in a startup before they’ll invest?”

And that was just today

And thus, a great example of my grumpy attitude about this. Genuine “startup” pitches wouldn’t have many startup investors asking about revenue to such a degree.

I put startups in quotes because I find that people expecting revenue are actually working with businesses while people who work with startups, at this early stage, know too well that revenue is a red herring. A distinction between “new business” and “startup.”

Startups are temporary ventures in search of a business model. They are NOT “new businesses,” because we have to in some way distinguish what the thing is that isn’t yet a business. We call that a startup. We don’t KNOW yet who the customers are, how we’ll make money, or what that revenue potential might be.

VCs (and Angels who invest in startups) know this.

Asking me, as the founder of, say, Twitter or Google, how much money we’re going to make, and how, is an inappropriate and, frankly, ignorant question.

Hopefully, it’s obvious why… things like Twitter and Google could not know yet how they’d make money, they were inventing their model. They didn’t make money for years.

They were not “new businesses,” they were startups.

New businesses can (and should) KNOW how they’ll make money, and thus could work out to some extent how much they might make. How?? Because while new, they’re doing something other businesses have already figured out. One of those new ventures, the first one successful, *was* a startup, until they figured out how it works, they then became a business; and subsequent similar ventures are new businesses, not startups.

Uber and Lyft were startups. If you were to launch a ride-sharing app today doing that, it wouldn’t accurately be called a startup because it’s valid that we all expect you know how to make money, and how much you could make.

Why then are “Investors” asking so much about revenue in your venture?

If your reference to “startup” actually means startup, then appropriate investors would not be fixated on revenue.

Then again, were that the case, you shouldn’t get such questions because investors genuine to startups, wouldn’t be asking you.

This means one of two things:

  1. What you have is not really a startup, and thus you should know the revenues
  2. Or they’re pretty bad investors and they’re misleading you, implying they do invest in startups when clearly, they don’t.

If your startup is actually a “new business” then it’s valid they’re asking for revenue and revenue potential. Businesses and business investors make money and reasonably expect to invest with that measurable return in mind.

Startup investors seek 3 things:

  1. Exit potential
  2. Market (competition, trends, history, partners, and opportunity)
  3. Team capable and flexible

Notice what’s not there: customers and revenue. Because in a startup, customers and revenue can’t yet be certain, having some customers and revenue is nothing more than a signal, among many, that the startup *might* be on a right path. It’s just as likely (more so in fact) that those customers and that revenue will mislead a bit, or that competition will still put you out of business; hence startups aren’t fixated on revenue (and investors shouldn’t be).

Peter Drucker: Decades Later, Perhaps More Relevant to the 21st Century

Advertising, Insights / Research, Startups, , , , ,
  • The best way to predict the future is to create it.
  • Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
  • There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
  • The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
  • Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
  • Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
  • The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

  • Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
  • The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
  • Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
  • Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

I’m an amateur economist and a professional marketer. And there is something I truly appreciate about what both in fact are: Sciences.

Science establishes the notion that a “theory” is in fact considered definitive, until proven otherwise.

That is distinct from a “law,” which is considered proven conclusively.

Drucker, as an economist, established a great many theories of markets, management, and organizations.

Facts, until proven otherwise.

Today, in my experience, many challenge or question those theories and I think we can appreciate WHY so many question Drucker’s wisdom because the way we work, roles and responsibilities, and technologies involved in business, have changed how many perceive how things work.

That isn’t evidence concluding Drucker’s theories are wrong; that’s mis-perception of what Drucker established.

To appreciate my point, let’s explore an actual scientific theory and how perceptions change: The Big Bang Theory.

Referred to as a theory not because it’s an idea, but rather because it can’t be proven conclusively. It’s not a “law” but it is considered the fact, the answer, as nothing refutes that it is in fact what happened.

As humans, our perceptions change, don’t they?

The Big Bang Theory established an origin of the universe and for a time, was vehemently argued against by religion. As our perceptions evolved, many religions came to embrace the theory (interesting fact, the theory was proposed by a Catholic Priest!), citing that even if true, it doesn’t refute a creator because *something* had to go bang… “therefore there still must be a God.”

Now, I don’t mean to spark a religious debate nor discussion. My point is only to elucidate how the foundational theory remains considered fact, no matter how people interpret what it means over time.

Peoples’ perceptions changed and our application of the theory was questioned; but in reality, the fact of the theory is exactly the same as it ever was.

In this case, people adapted to embrace it… but the theory remains the same regardless.

Back to Drucker’s case

The best example of where this question is pertinent is in how the opposite has been happening; perceptions changing, causing us to doubt, rather than accept (but nuance), the theory.
 
In the most obvious case, his theories of Marketing.

In recent years, (no)thanks to the internet, our perception of Marketing has changed. Roles have changed in organizations.

In Drucker’s time, the CMO was paramount in the Company. It’s from this era that we have the 4Ps, for example: promotion, place, price, and product. Marketing, evident in his ideas above, is the distinguishing and unique function of a business.

The internet changed things. Drastically.

I’m a literal example of that.

Having started my career, online, in the late nineties, I was one of the earliest to apply my traditional Marketing education, directly in the dawn of the internet (at Yahoo).

Imagine that time…

“Marketers” did focus groups and and surveys, something people like me we’re experiencing being done in a fraction of the time and with sample sizes far more substantial. Analytics.

“Marketers” ran advertising on radio, television, and in magazines, something we’re still doing of course, but along came *us* and we were able to run ads FAR more efficiently and measurably online.

“Marketers” didn’t write software! That was the work of engineers and developers. But with the internet, websites, and SaaS, suddenly we, anyone really, could build the websites and more.

And what happened?

Older marketers, the VPs and CMOs in most cases, had no idea what *we* were doing.

I recall being a 22 year old kid (my word, I don’t mean it antagonistically of age), and being called into Board meetings by people twice my age and more, to explain to the CxOs and investors, things they just couldn’t grasp. And things with which the CMOs couldn’t even help clarify: search engines, social media, behavioral targeting, multivariate testing, and more. All of this was new.

How on Earth was this *kid* driving business results so much more substantially than these wizened marketers?!

Screw it, let’s shift hundreds of millions of dollars of our budget to this Google thing and whatever else he wants.

In the span of a decade, those young people and the internet, practically single handedly destroyed the Ad Agency, traditional Marketing, News Media and PR, Advertising, and more.

And those who had been the keepers of that trusted and pivotal Marketing theory (MBA students, Executives, and Marketing Academics) had no idea what was happening.

Now, don’t get me wrong, traditional marketers eventually caught on, obviously, but for a time there, we went through a revolution. And the Marketing execs and Agencies didn’t take that revolution lightly.

And what happened?

Have you ever wondered why we actually have something called “digital marketing” or Online Marketing?

It’s still just Marketing, isn’t it??

Whether we work online or off isn’t actually a meaningful distinction, is it? I put campaigns together today that factor in online copy and print, because it’s really just a different medium of consumption.

MediaTech Ventures works with startups and entrepreneurs today who are fixing the technology gaps between online and off in media.

Is radio really different from podcasting?

Is online video really different from broadcast television?

Sure, yes, sort of. And yet no, it’s just written content, audio, or video… different mediums of consumption.

But what happened that’s pertinent was this revolution.

The unaware-of-what-was-being-done-executives of the time didn’t sit idly by, looking dumbfounded while these internet marketers took away their budgets (and credibility); they drew a line in the sand to explain things to investors, CEOs, and Board…

“well that’s our ‘online marketing’ department, they just handle that internet stuff.”

And a rift was created.

Now, today, we’ve bridged the rift BUT the damage has been done.

In fact, you can witness how we started to bridge the rift in the emergence of the word “Growth Hacker.” What really was that about?? That was us then career experienced Online Marketers relegated only to the internet stuff but CMOs who still didn’t get it, firing a shot back in the war and saying, “we’re not just internet promotions people, we can actually grow companies more capably than you Execs who don’t get it can!”

Finally, today, there’s even a bit of a revolt against ‘growth hacking’ as Marketing wakes up to the fact that that was really just a rebranding of people pigeon-holed into online only so as to get out from under the thumb of being considered online internet capable and start filling those more senior roles. What is Growth Hacking really? It’s what should be expected of a CMO today…. and everyone’s starting to get that.

Well, sort of… Marketers are getting it… the problem is the damage has already been done; back to our story:

Engineers, business owners, startup founders, investors, and more, all caught on to the fact that THEY too could build those websites, learn SEO, send email, and run Facebook Ads.

They too could “do Marketing!”

S***

Businesses clearly no longer needed that Marketing Executive. But you know what they did need as a result? Leadership to run all the other things that didn’t fall under their perception of that marketing they were doing. Things like:

F***

Marketing has become, in most minds, merely Promotion.

One of the 4Ps.

Marketing is what you do to promote your product only when it’s ready to be promoted.

At least, that’s what too many perceive today.

After all, our Head of Product runs that P. That Chief Revenue Officer and Sales determines Price, that other P. And our CTO and those engineers run our website and the SaaS solution: the Place.

Marketing must only be Promotion

And thus, another P plays a role in our story. Perception. To a great extent, the Perception of Marketing has changed.

And yet, the fact of Drucker’s theory hasn’t changed at all, and his ideas remain as relevant today as ever, just as they’ll likely remain so forever, until conclusively proven wrong; not because we perceive them wrong, but because what Marketing in fact actually means is proven to not be the most important thing a business does.

Before You Start, Define the Outcome

Startups, , , , , ,

How do you determine when your business is going to be successful?

When it meets your definition of success.

Many, I’ve found, start businesses thinking forward; the test and validate, customer feedback oriented development.  I have a hypothesis or a business I want to start, what do I do first?  That’s generally actually bad idea because every business, every team, has a unique set of experiences, skills, resources, and market considerations. Forward development is how new businesses get confirmation bias (the tendency to believe feedback that is consistent with your assumptions); that, or they’re blind to market factors they haven’t yet encountered.

Start with the end in mind.

These are VERY different businesses; each successful:

  • A sole proprietor paying their way through life
  • A company that goes public
  • A corporation that employs people
  • A startup that gets funded
  • A local business that makes a difference
  • A chain that gets franchised

Those are all wonderful definitions of success BUT each a different road to get there.

When you set out blindly, and figure it out along the way, you might discover you’re heading down the path toward what makes a small business successful, while your goal was a funded company. Oops.

Now you have costs, time spent, and misleading experience that you have to correct. And maybe you can but either way, wouldn’t it have been nice to know that from the beginning?

In my work, in MediaTech Ventures, we’re moving capital. Will what we’re doing help VCs, Corporate Venture Groups, and Cities better support the Creative Class? If we’re not asking that question of everything we do, we’re failing our business.

Determine what success means for you as the road-map for THAT business guides you along the way. Without that, you’ll likely never find success.

The Internet of Everything

Advertising, Industry, Insights / Research, Startups, , , , , , , , ,

Before the holiday and the end of 2013, I had the distinct honor of joining dozens of San Antonio CEOs and Texas CEO Magazine in spending an hour with Smart Grid Pioneer and author of The Advanced Smart Grid, Andres Carvallo. Why you might ask; if you know me professionally, you know that energy and innovations in the grid aren’t exactly my forte. Weeks ago, I bore witness to one of the most profound discussions of The Internet of Things and a visionary explanation of what it will mean to businesses.

What is The Internet of Things?

In the early days of the internet, long before people were concerned with privacy, photos revealing their party antics, and the persistence of an inappropriate tweet, we dreamed about the promise of omniscience. Imagine: the internet is one big database and therein is the potential to attain near sentience in knowing and automating your life. Seems a little troubling until you really realize the implications. One of the things that really bugs me about the internet, as an example, is that I rate movies on Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, Facebook, and Flixter; independently of one another. In each experience, I rate movies to enhance my experience therein from that point on; to get recommendations, customization, etc. Why do I have to do it in a half dozen different places? The internet is one big database. And don’t conclude that the promise is that we should be able to simply rate once and be done: your experience on dating sites, events, with book recommendations, etc. would all be transformed because everything is connected. Knowing you like Batman and not Superman (god forbid) is a data point that correlates with your taste in so much more.

But that promise was never realized. The media grabbed hold of privacy concerns and tracking issues while businesses put up walled gardens, the likes of AOL, in which they could control, monetize, and leverage data about ourselves for their own purpose and profit. We got scared and the corporation got greedy.

Still, that idea, the promise, helps understand what’s possible when it comes to The Internet of Things.

Your fridge will tell you when to buy milk

Just as smartphones have forever connected you to the internet, increasingly every technology with a heartbeat has the same connection. And not just the obvious connections like that which you’re already experiencing with your TV, home audio, or even your car… your garage door, the windows, your glasses, dishwasher, swim goggles, football helmets, and certainly your thermostat are all being connected.

And built on that promise of the internet, those devices can know what the internet knows, track what the internet tracks, analyze with the power of big data, and enrich. That enrichment is the key; just as we dreamed of a day when the internet itself knew all of those things, imagine what the world will be like when just about everything we do, in life, knows. Imagine the implications in business.

Troubling, is that the reaction to this is not unlike that which we experienced with the internet. At CES this year, Maureen Ohlhausen, commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, warned, “Because interconnected devices collect and share large amounts of information, the tech industry must be sensitive. It’s crucial that companies act to safeguard the privacy of users in order not to give it a bad name.” Sounds like a slippery slope doesn’t it? Robert Pepper, VP of Global Technology Policy at Cisco, which reports that 25 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by next year, is pragmatic but prudent, “You have to bake in privacy and security from the beginning. When you have big data it requires big judgment. We have to think about building it in to give consumer the choice, control, and transparency.” Yet Bloomberg asks if The Internet of Things isn’t going to result in a “Horror Show.”

What was truly remarkable about Carvallo’s talk in San Antonio was not the future of The Internet of Things but in painting an strikingly similar technical picture of what I like to paint with regard to the future of marketing: that with all things connected, business has forever changed.

The light bulb going off

Andres Carvallo was a founder of Austin Energy so far more than being one of the industry’s foremost on our energy grid and the future of the smartgrid, he knows power and what’s involved in fostering efficiency therein.

“Smarter enterprise is the nonstop, on-demand redesign journey of the business models, processes, technologies, org structure, and applied human capital,” shared Carvallo during his talk, “to seamlessly blend existing and new standalone silo trends related to IoT into a more profitable business.”

Steven Collier, Vice President of Business Development at Milsoft Utility Solutions, shared last year in exploring the significance of technology in public power consumption, with Public Power Magazine and Hometown Connections, “Increasing complexities of operating a public power system in the 21st century require new solutions. New and emerging technologies can vastly improve economy, efficiency, productivity, reliability, sustainability and customer service. The benefits of these new technologies can far outweigh the costs, but it is crucial that you have a comprehensive technology integration plan in place that is based on open systems sharing data across multiple platforms from a variety of vendors. Only this will enable your utility to obtain the maximum benefits of each solution. In fact, it will amplify the total benefit, achieving a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.”

While CES has been full of exciting innovations and hesitant reservation about the interconnectedness of everything, the light bulb shines. “There’s a nice symmetry in smart light bulbs blazing the trail for the Internet of Things,” shares the Houston Chronicle’s Benny Evangelista. “When electric wires first appeared in homes in the early 20th century, the sole purpose was electric light. But inventors soon found other ways to use that wiring, giving rise to electric appliances like irons and vacuum cleaners.”

The light bulb went off for me in seeing the correlations between Andres’ talk, from the perspective of the technology and the CIO, with my own: when it comes to raising money, marketing, or understanding the role of search engines and big data in your organization, the bottom line is unequivocally that it’s all connected, and executives that hope to win, must think about the implications of everything, on everything.

“We can go everywhere from here,” Brian Bedrosian, senior director of wireless connectivity for Broadcom, shared with Evangelista. “There’s nothing that can’t be connected and there’s nothing that you can’t find some very simple use for to make it more pleasurable or make it an easier way of living your life.”

And your business

What the Internet and its Things Mean for Business

We talk a lot about Growth Hacking here and Steven Collier’s characterization of The Internet of Things, in discussing the implications in the power industry, is the very definition of growth hacking a business with a singular focus on growth; to paraphrase: Leveraging new and emerging technologies that vastly improve economy, efficiency, productivity, reliability, sustainability and customer service. The benefits of these new technologies can far outweigh the costs, but it is crucial that you have a comprehensive technology integration plan in place that is based on open systems sharing data across multiple platforms from a variety of vendors. Whoa.

Andres pointed out that promise of The Internet of Things, applied to the administration of your business, will transform business through:

  • A smarter playbook
  • Knowing your customer
  • Leveraging social media
  • Unleashing mobility

  • Accelerating collaboration – embrace frememies
  • Using analysis dashboards
  • Embracing the cloud
  • Automating everything possible
  • Empowering employees and sharpening skills

Imagine, marketers, sitting in a room with CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs, listening to one of the leading technologists, the very type of individual with whom we’re constantly trying to explain (justify) how marketing really works these days, draw a correlation from The Internet of Things, to connected technologies, to that transformation of business.  I was blown away.  And in seeing that connection, between tech and marketing, between innovation and growth, I was reminded of Peter Drucker who said that the only things that matter in business are innovation and marketing; and here in this room in San Antonio, I witnessed it come together – not as the internet of things, but in our future with the internet of everything.

The Best Resources for Self Employed Businesses

Insights / Research, Social Media, Startup Ecosystems, , , , , , , , , , , ,

It dawned on me the other night that an increasing majority of my readers are self employed: marketing consultants, small business owners, contractors, and startup entrepreneurs. While we focus, here, on marketing resources and tips, there are an ever increasing number of innovative resources to make your professional life easier; allowing you to focus on what you do best. Its time to graduate from spreadsheets and software and take advantage of web services, cloud computing, and shared resources to save time and money.

Collaborate and coordinate
Spend a few dollars a month and sign up with Google Apps to host your email address, calendar, and documents and spreadsheets with Google. Unlike a regular gmail account, Apps sets you up at your company’s domain name (that is, bob@mycompany.com) with Google calendar, chat, and address book built in. Also integrated, the accurately named, Docs, saves you money from buying Microsoft Office, putting your spreadsheets, presentations, and documents online: automatically saved and available from anywhere.

The real advantage in using Apps though is when there is more than one of you. Calendar becomes a meeting maker, chat facilitates collaboration, and files in Docs are shared across your company so everyone can access and edit important files.

Don’t worry about “social networking” or “twitter” – keep it simple and start a blog
Did you party too hard at the turn of the century and miss the change of the calendar? This is no longer 1999; businesses don’t have ‘web sites’ any more. A web site is a static, dry resource about as engaging as your listing in the yellow pages. Today, you want a blog. In this age of twitter and facebook you want an experience online that engages your customers and establishes you as an authoritative resource. Don’t worry, all the pertinent details are still available to customers through pages on your blog for your address, description of products and services, etc. It is the posts that will attract new customers and promote your talents. Spend a couple hours one night learning and setting up WordPress. I realize that, if you’ve tried a blog before with another service, you might be discouraged. Learn and use WordPress, your business will be FAR better for it.

Keep an eye on the numbers – without giving them away to do so
Have you discovered Shoeboxed yet? Perhaps so but let me go further and point you to Outright.

No, hang on… let’s start from the beginning: If you are anything like me, you have a stack of business cards and receipts filling your laptop bag, feeling neglected. Potential business languishing. Sign up for Shoeboxed and ship them off to get scanned, sorted, and returned in digital files. The contacts go into your address book (your now available Google address book)
But what of those expenses… surely there is a better way?

Automatically import them to Outright to track your income and expenses, online, with the most intuitive bookkeeping innovation available. Shoeboxed has a nominal fee, while Outright is free, so we’re saving money while making life easier.

Now, having cleaned up your expenses and related books, sign up with Freshbooks to give your revenue stream some polish. Freshbooks helps you manage blling with tools and professional looking invoices and reports. Why Freshbooks? It too is available for free and also plugs right into Outright so your books are managed end to end with no fuss.

I need help but can’t afford much!
Grab some freelancers (who themselves are probably using these tools and can help you with them). The best way to do that is not through a recruiter but web sites (hmm… not “blogs” huh?) such as Guru and oDesk. Guru is, perhaps, the best source for business support with legal, finance, marketing, and administrative folks available. You farm out the work in projects rather than as a typical consulting or contract engagement; that is, if you just want someone to set up a Google Adwords campaign or file a patent, Guru has people for you. Want help with the WordPress installation or the design of the site, your logo, or other infrastructure? Use oDesk.

Truth be told, both sites support any of the resources you might need but oDesk has a reputation with technical folks while Guru is known for others. The one exception, and it occurs to me therein that I shouldn’t have used ‘filing a patent‘ as a scenario in which you grab a legal freelance worker from Guru, is LegalZoom. LegalZoom is going to put more of the burden on you to take care of related work but as a self employed business owner, I tend to prefer keeping issue legal and financial closer to my heart.

Working from home? Create the illusion of so much more
The most turnkey solution is a Google Voice account which lets you indefinitely retain one phone number for personal and professional use, automatically routing calls to all of your phones through different voice message lines depending on the context of the call. Never miss a call; give out your one number with work related calls routed to a professional voice mail when you are unavailable to pick up from a cell or home phone. Forever: move, change jobs, get a new cell phone – you always have the same number.

Extend that professional image with a more robust virtual office through onebox. For as little as about $50 a month you get a toll-free number with extensions for a few coworkers (or services) as well as call trees, calendaring, conference calling, and more.

You might not have an office with a lobby and receptionist but you should have the next best thing.

What else…? Need IT?
I’m going to elevate our conversation just a bit and talk to slightly larger organizations. Self employed or home based business owners need not apply here; but if you have a few technical assets, you should look at Spiceworks. Combining software and hardware inventory, network and license monitoring, inventory reporting, and a helpdesk / IT portal into a free (ad supported) experience, Spiceworks is intuitive software that outsources your IT and keep that most precious of resources in your pocket.

I could keep going but if you are reading this statement, I can see that I’ve added something of value to your day, given the stamina required to keep up with my discourses to the end. Let’s not ruin that by going on and on and on, and on… and on.

If you have tips and resources of your own, please share them; especially, if you are using invaluable, intuitive tools that can make the entrepreneurs in us a little more effective.

Local Search Behind MTV Campus Daily Guides Reaches College Demographic

Fun, Local, Search, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With a tremendous amount of fanfare (I had a parade come through the office this morning), I’m excited to share that Zvents has partnered with MTV to deliver a comprehensive local search experience to Campus Daily Guides published by mtvU.

Creating a unique opportunity to reach the affluent college demographic, Zvents is powering the local search experience used by college students on 25 mtvU Campus Daily Guides. mtvU is taking advantage of Zvents’ Media Platform to provide details about millions of important college and recreational events, local promotions and sales, sports, concerts, and performers, specific to the location of each university campus. Together, mtvU and Zvents are serving up local search like it’s never been done before.

How could I possibly be more excited? One of the initial 25 includes my Alma mater, Arizona State University

“Initial 25?” That’s right, mtvU General Manager Steven Friedman shared with MediaWeek their plans to roll out another 25 campuses by year end.

The partnership significantly extends and improves the value of a new advertising vehicle for local merchants. We’ve learned from Google that search reaches consumers as no medium before, bringing to advertisers a revolutionary advertising opportunity that allocates budgets to contextual, behaviorally targeted search results. You spend to advertise against highly qualified traffic; the perfect model for promoting a website. Heretofore however, local search has been limited to enabling local merchants to only highlight their own business listing, reaching consumers looking for that business. Effective when someone wants to find your business, to be sure, but not the game changing search experience delivered through the major search engines; not the ability to search for everything locally. Zvents is making that change, adding local promotions and event listings to the search index, enabling local merchants to reach local consumers with sales, promotions, and events. And now, with mtvU, to reach students as they look for the things they want to do.

Read more about the partnership and opportunity for you as a local advertiser with Reuters, Senior PaidContent.org Correspondent David Kaplan, or The Washington Post. To get started promoting your local business, find your college campus or learn more about local promotions through Zvents.

Why You Need A Blog

Blogs & Blogging, , , , , , ,

I’ve had a dozen folks ask me about blogs since only the first of the year so here’s an episode from CommonCraft Productions, allowing me to, once again, cop out on a real post (I promise I won’t make it a habit)

The CommonCraft Show has found a niche with these unique videos providing brief explanations of popular and varied topics. They are contagious and informative, check them out.