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The founding team of Local Market Launch offers to get businesses listed in online directories so customers can find them. From left: Grant Lepper, Gideon Rubin, Ana Wilson, Brian Coryat (seated), Travis Purdy, Susan Seiden, Janis Gamble and Jerry Calkins. Ready for local liftoff ValueClick founder launches new firm By Stephen Nellis Staff Writer The man who founded Internet advertis- ing giant ValueClick is back, and this time he’s going local. Brian Coryat started ValueClick, now a public firm worth $1.2 billion, in 1998 above the Granada Theatre in Santa Bar- bara. After a hiatus from the online market- ing space, he founded Local Market Launch earlier this year. The goal: Help the 27 mil- lion plumbers, doctors, mom-and-pop shops and other small businesses in the United States get into the rapidly evolving local search space. This isn’t Google on your desktop PC in 2004 — this is what happens when you ask the iPhone’s Siri for the nearest carpet cleaning service after a red wine or pet disaster, or for the local Roto-Rooter at 11:30 p.m. Coming up as the winning answer requires the small- business owner to tap a variety of online services that most don’t have the time or expertise to navigate. Local Market Launch takes care of all the upfront labor and then gives business owners a user-friendly one-stop shop to keep track of everything, from Foursquare check-ins to Facebook likes to reviews and listings of competitors. Coryat got the idea when he tried to launch a local busi- ness of his own. After cashing out during ValueClick’s IPO, he spent most of the past decade spending his money and having fun, whether sailing around Europe for a year with his family or learning to fly airplanes. He dabbled in busi- ness — he brokered yachts for a time — and when it came time to market the launch of a Hampton Inn that he owned in Wisconsin, he hit a snag. It was “less fun than folding laundry,” Coryat said. “I found more opportunities than companies.” The problem is that many local services — “things you can’t buy on Amazon” — have essentially been left behind for years by big online search engines and limped along with an older approach. “They cut out their Yellow Pages advertising, but they haven’t filled it in with anything yet,” Coryat said. That has begun to change rapidly over the past few years. Old-style paper directories succeeded because they had da- tabases of businesses that were painstakingly built up, at great expense, over decades. Google and other technology companies have realized the tremendous value in having such a directory, but they have largely left it up to the small- businesses themselves to populate the databases by claim- ing and verifying listings. At the same time, there’s no clear dominant directory service to serve as an online analogue to the old Yellow Pages. As a result, the business that wants to come out on top for the search term “Camarillo plumber” might need to claim or fill out dozens of directories, all with different demands in terms of business descriptions, photographs and other information. Local Market Launch does all of that, and then checks back once a month to make sure that the client’s business is listed anywhere its competitors are listed. Because it’s early in the game, timing counts. “Local companies can gain an advantage because of a lack of effort by their competitors. They can come up higher in search results,” Coryat said. The company then creates a “local identity site” which is basically a listing page with links to a company’s website, social media pages and phone number and address, among other things. “If you’re a carpet cleaner, you don’t really need a website. A local identity site is probably fine. People know what you do. They just need to find you,” Coryat said. “This is not [search engine optimization], which is mostly link building. This is about getting you listed in the directories that you already should be in.” But perhaps the most enticing aspect of Local Market Launch is what the company calls its reputation management service. That’s a command center that culls user re- views from sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon along with tweets, check-ins on services like Foursquare. A business owner can see everything that’s being written about his or her shop or restaurant in real time and sort it to focus on addressing poor reviews and thanking customers for positive reviews. And because the data is scraped from existing services, business owner’s can also keep tabs on the same metrics for a competitor across the street. The eventual goal with reputation management is to sell it to larger chains. Coryat envisions a nationwide map where, say, a franchise restaurant can watch in real time whether its user reviews at each location are trending positive or nega- tive. “We want to move this to an enterprise service,” Coryat said. “You can monitor your reputation at the corporate level to find out why you’re getting all the crappy reviews in Go- leta and all the great reviews in Santa Barbara.” Many small-business owners are feeling burned by Groupon or other tech marketing gimmicks that did little if anything to help boost sales. Because of that, Coryat plans to partner with Web designers, community newspapers and other businesses that would ultimately sell Local Market Launch’s service to their own end customers. “We’ need trusted partners. Mom-and-pops need someone they look at and talk to,” Coryat said. “It’s often a high-touch business.” Of course, most of the Web work is something that busi- ness owners could do on their own. Local Market Launch even provides a guide to help them do so. But the value proposition is to let the company’s U.S.-based service or- ganization do the work instead. “Our customers are busy running their own businesses,” Coryat said. “It’s not rocket science. It’s just a time-consuming, frustrating process.” STEPHEN NELLIS PHOTO “If you’re a carpet cleaner, you don’t really need a website. A local identity site is probably fine. People know what you do. They just need to find you.” Brian Coryat Founder, Local Market Launch June 29 - July 6, 2012 Serving Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties Vol. 13, No. 17 www.pacbiztimes.com
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Page 1: Local Market Launch New Article

The founding team of Local Market Launch offers to get businesses listed in online directories so customers can find them. From left: Grant Lepper, Gideon Rubin, Ana Wilson, Brian Coryat (seated), Travis Purdy, Susan Seiden, Janis Gamble and Jerry Calkins.

Ready for local liftoffValueClick founder launches new firm

By Stephen Nellis Staff Writer

The man who founded Internet advertis-ing giant ValueClick is back, and this time he’s going local.

Brian Coryat started ValueClick, now a public firm worth $1.2 billion, in 1998 above the Granada Theatre in Santa Bar-bara. After a hiatus from the online market-ing space, he founded Local Market Launch earlier this year. The goal: Help the 27 mil-lion plumbers, doctors, mom-and-pop shops and other small businesses in the United States get into the rapidly evolving local search space.

This isn’t Google on your desktop PC in 2004 — this is what happens when you ask the iPhone’s Siri for the nearest carpet cleaning service after a red wine or pet disaster, or for the local Roto-Rooter at 11:30 p.m.

Coming up as the winning answer requires the small-business owner to tap a variety of online services that most don’t have the time or expertise to navigate. Local Market Launch takes care of all the upfront labor and then gives business owners a user-friendly one-stop shop to keep track of everything, from Foursquare check-ins to Facebook likes to reviews and listings of competitors.

Coryat got the idea when he tried to launch a local busi-ness of his own. After cashing out during ValueClick’s IPO, he spent most of the past decade spending his money and having fun, whether sailing around Europe for a year with his family or learning to fly airplanes. He dabbled in busi-ness — he brokered yachts for a time — and when it came time to market the launch of a Hampton Inn that he owned in Wisconsin, he hit a snag. It was “less fun than folding laundry,” Coryat said. “I found more opportunities than companies.”

The problem is that many local services — “things you can’t buy on Amazon” — have essentially been left behind for years by big online search engines and limped along with an older approach. “They cut out their Yellow Pages advertising, but they haven’t filled it in with anything yet,”

Coryat said.That has begun to change rapidly over the past few years.

Old-style paper directories succeeded because they had da-tabases of businesses that were painstakingly built up, at great expense, over decades. Google and other technology companies have realized the tremendous value in having such a directory, but they have largely left it up to the small-businesses themselves to populate the databases by claim-ing and verifying listings.

At the same time, there’s no clear dominant directory service to serve as an online analogue to the old Yellow Pages. As a result, the business that wants to come out on top for the search term “Camarillo plumber” might need to claim or fill out dozens of directories, all with different demands in terms of business descriptions, photographs and other information.

Local Market Launch does all of that, and then checks back once a month to make sure that the client’s business is listed anywhere its competitors are listed. Because it’s early in the game, timing counts. “Local companies can gain an advantage because of a lack of effort by their competitors. They can come up higher in search results,” Coryat said.

The company then creates a “local identity site” which is basically a listing page with links to a company’s website, social media pages and phone number and address, among other things. “If you’re a carpet cleaner, you don’t really need a website. A local identity site is probably fine. People know what you do. They just need to find you,” Coryat said.

“This is not [search engine optimization], which is mostly link building. This is about getting you listed in the directories that you already should be in.”

But perhaps the most enticing aspect of Local Market Launch is what the company calls its reputation management service. That’s a command center that culls user re-views from sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon along with tweets, check-ins on services like Foursquare. A business owner can see everything that’s being written about his or her shop or restaurant in real time and sort it to focus on addressing poor reviews and

thanking customers for positive reviews. And because the data is scraped from existing services, business owner’s can also keep tabs on the same metrics for a competitor across the street.

The eventual goal with reputation management is to sell it to larger chains. Coryat envisions a nationwide map where, say, a franchise restaurant can watch in real time whether its user reviews at each location are trending positive or nega-tive.

“We want to move this to an enterprise service,” Coryat said. “You can monitor your reputation at the corporate level to find out why you’re getting all the crappy reviews in Go-leta and all the great reviews in Santa Barbara.”

Many small-business owners are feeling burned by Groupon or other tech marketing gimmicks that did little if anything to help boost sales. Because of that, Coryat plans to partner with Web designers, community newspapers and other businesses that would ultimately sell Local Market Launch’s service to their own end customers. “We’ need trusted partners. Mom-and-pops need someone they look at and talk to,” Coryat said. “It’s often a high-touch business.”

Of course, most of the Web work is something that busi-ness owners could do on their own. Local Market Launch even provides a guide to help them do so. But the value proposition is to let the company’s U.S.-based service or-ganization do the work instead. “Our customers are busy running their own businesses,” Coryat said. “It’s not rocket science. It’s just a time-consuming, frustrating process.”

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“ ”“If you’re a carpet cleaner, you don’t really

need a website. A local identity site is probably fine. People know what you do.

They just need to find you.”Brian Coryat

Founder, Local Market Launch

June 29 - July 6, 2012 Serving Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties Vol. 13, No. 17

www.pacbiztimes.com