We just scored some wonderful press in STORES magazine, the official magazine of the National Retail Federation. The article discusses how easy and affordable Fanminder is for a small retailer to use social and mobile marketing from us.
The writer, Karen Kroll, did a wonderful job accurately capturing the Fanminder WOW.
Last year I gave a speech on Fanminder and the opportunity in local mobile. Tracy shared it with me and I found that I was curiously coherent by my own standards 
What’s nice about this speech in particular, is the focus on the small business owner using garden variety technologies to make an impact in his business. Earlier that day many others waxed on about the latest smartphone app or other doo-dad to help small businesses so naturally I felt compelled to state the obvious: Small businesses need impact, not cool new stuff.
Go ahead and watch a video of my speech, it’s #6 on this link at the 24:48 mark: Watch a video of my speech.
It’s Officially Statistically True: Fanminder helps a small business with their #1 issue: Growing revenues.
You can get support for this from a new Infographic released by Intuit:
It’s official. Google is rolling out a Groupon competitor. The Daily Deals Buying Wars Have Begun.
What does this mean for you, the small business?
More exposure. For small businesses, this is a good thing. Google will bring scale so more small businesses can make use of Daily Deals. Google’s reach is still vast and with a little cross-selling in properties like its Mobile Search or even its homepage, Google could help expose the local business very quickly to even more consumers than Groupon’s email list.
Lower prices on Daily Deals. Google will also help bring down Groupon’s price to businesses, at some point. We all know Groupon has a near monopoly on Daily Deals and with monopolies come high prices.With Google as a competitor, Groupon can’t afford to continue taking such a large % of fees. And Google isn’t the only large company gunning for Groupon. Facebook’s Deals will also apply pressure. But don’t expect Groupon to just rollover, as lowering its price will be a very significant event and with a planned IPO and its backlog of businesses, I doubt it will make the move for months.
Google’s new local services has been ho-hum and haven’t exactly set the world of the local merchant on fire. Its Offers, and Tags and Places each seem bland and ineffective as of yet. But overall, competition from Google should be seen as a good thing to spur innovation from all providers in the space. In addition, the biggest ding on the Daily Deals model is simply its usurious-like toll it takes on the merchant. So adding Google to the mix can also only help knock Groupon off its perch, if even only a little bit.
Well, it’s over and we did great.
Two weeks ago we were selected to participate in Under The Radar. The event was hosted at the Microsoft Campus yesterday and today. Thirty Five start-ups competed in 5 different tracs in front of an audience of 350 people.
I’m pleased to share that we did terrific. I pitched our story for 6 minutes and then had 8 minutes of questions with by judges. Many people came up to me afterwards and shared how solid the presentation was. My only goal for the day was to do a good job representing our company.
Watch the video and see the presentation here.
Separate from the presentation, Tracy and I met a whole slew of fellow entrepreneurs, potential business partners, and investors. Our hat is off to Debbie, Giselle, Clare, and Jasmine who did a fantastic job. The event was high-class, well-orchestrated, and the crew was very helpful at every step of the way.
All in all it was a day and a half well spent.
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