I spent time earlier in the week talking to some local businesses about how they were faring in this period of recession. Some of the business owners responded with “we’re doing ok; but not as good as last year”, some said “business was good” and others responded with “business was not good at all and we are seeing fewer and fewer customer customers coming our way”.

I then spent some time trying to understand just where these business’ customers have gone. One of the interesting discussions that I had was with a local plumber who has seen a year-on-year reduction in the number of enquiries he is receiving for his services. He has traditionally advertised in the printed directories (Yellow Pages and Thomson Directory) and he has seen a steady decline in the effectiveness of this form of advertising. When asked if he did any online adverting he replied that he didn’t feel he needed to pay for online advertising as his business has its own website and he thought that was enough.

What he failed to realise was that having a website is of no use if nobody can actually find it. The guy I was talking to is a plumber and is skilled in installing boilers and fixing leaks, he doesn’t have any knowledge about how to put a website together and how to market it effectively; and who would expect him to know how to do this?

When I explained to him that the reason he is seeing such a marked decrease in customer enquiries is because the plumber in his area that has worked out how to market himself online is taking all his business away. That was the penny dropping moment.

Bill Gates himself said back in 2007 that “the Yellow Pages are doomed within 5 years“; people will search online to find what they are looking for and the business owners that do not adapt to and embrace the online world will follow the Yellow Pages into oblivion. It’s a harsh message, but a message that businesses will be foolhardy to ignore.

Everything I have written so far was the motivation for us to create LocallyCompared. We know that many, many businesses have a real problem understanding how to position themselves online and we want to build our business by helping them. For a business owner it is extremely easy and cost effective to build a detailed profile of their business on LocallyCompared. This profile of their business will be seen by the thousands of visitors that come to the LocallyCompared website each day as opposed to the handful of hits that the businesses own website (if they even have one) will get.

I spend a great deal of my time talking to local businesses and we always seem to get back to this topic; most businesses need to advertise and it is vital that the advertising budget is spent in a way to maximise the return on investment. The formula is simple; a business needs to spend as little as possible in order to reach out to the largest number of potential customers. We are determined to make LocallyCompared the most effective place for a business owner to promote their business online, and judging by the positive feedback we’ve got from our existing customers, business owners are agreeing with us!

Matt Grest

Follow me on twitter: MattGrest

We are not fully launched yet - we’re just cleaning up the last few odds and ends - so I’m going to share with you a quick overview of where we’re heading.

In a nutshell, LocallyCompared is a local business search engine for the whole of the UK. We have the highest detail on businesses in your area and many local deals; all wrapped up in a website that makes sure comparing businesses is a breeze. And if you are a business owner, we make it truly easy to use the Web for your promotion, no matter what your size!

LocallyCompared is built around four core ideas:

1. People want the fastest access to a lot of accurate information. They want to make the right decision first time.
2. People want the best deal possible from the highest quality businesses available.
3. While businesses know the Web is a revolutionary tool for cost-effective promotion and developing relationships with customers, most would rather not spend their time having to deal with its intricacies.
4. Finally, big brands have the upper hand in the fight for our trust simply because they can afford to get their well-crafted message to you. The unique and friendly little businesses down your road want to show they can be trusted too.

Over the next year we will be delivering lots of innovative advances to help you find, trust, contact and increase the chances of having great experiences using your local businesses. In due course we will be talking about those features on this blog, and hopefully some of you will jump into the discussion to shape what we become. But first, we have to get to launch…

You may well notice quite a few (small!) rough edges around the site. We are working at full throttle to get ready for launch. If you have any feedback about the site, big or small, nice or critical, we would love to hear it. Please feel free to share your thoughts by writing to hello@locallycompared.com.

We also welcome passionate people who just want to get involved. Maybe you have some great ideas you’d like to see implemented, or information you’d like corrected, or to help spread the word to other people and businesses in your area. If you want to get more involved, drop us an email with what you’re interested in and who you are, again to hello@locallycompared.com.

Andy (product director - andy.mitchell@locallycompared.com)