Greg Sterling reminds us why we all chase advertising dollars from locally focused, small and medium businesses:
"We're in a recession; everything is down including local. And local is harder than other segments because of some of the factors mentioned above. SMBs are hard to sell to and they don’t spend lots online. But there are millions of SMBs online in various forms today. As I've argued before, from consumer behavior perspective, local/offline is a much, much bigger deal than anything else going on online. It's just often hard for people to see it."
Sterling writes in response to a Business Week article that suggests aiming at local won't pay off. I, like Greg, disagree, but we must also realize aiming at small-medium businesses means lean margins and plenty of hard work.
