One of the major challenges for small businesses is generating awareness for their products or services. You need to compete with major corporations that have a virtually limitless marketing and public relations budget.
Dave Scott, founder and CEO of Marketfish addresses this disparity by offering a 100 percent self-service automated marketing solution for companies to select a target demographic at affordable rates, and launch a customized e-mail or direct mail marketing campaign. The company has been successful thanks to Scott’s award-wining background as manager for AT&T Wireless and General Electric. Rolling out spoke with Scott about the benefits of his company’s approach to increasing exposure and revenue for small businesses.
One of the issues in your industry is lack of transparency. How does this service improve that issue?
In my industry today, there are a lot of list marketers who rip off their customers by offering bad mailing lists or by lying about the kinds of marketing campaigns they are sending on the advertiser’s behalf. The Marketfish platform allows advertisers to learn everything about a mailing list before executing a marketing campaign. This way, the advertiser knows exactly what they’re buying.
Does your company offer ways to target people via social media instead of just email or direct mail?
Today, our platform only offers marketing via email or direct mail tactics. However, by coupling an email campaign with an ongoing social media program, we can drive thousands of people to a brand or cause. Email is a very flexible channel, allowing you to reach millions of people, making it quite easy to use email marketing as a tool to drive interest in your social media channels. I see the two mediums working together, not standing in opposition.
How does your company level the playing field to help small businesses target potential consumers?
Small business owners can leverage the Marketfish platform to target over 200 million marketing records using 100 filters such as household income, age and even boat ownership. These businesses can then use those filtered records to create their own Groupon. Simply build a highly targeted mailing list and then launch an email or direct mail offer. You can do all that without ever leaving the Marketfish platform. Think about it, if you offer boat loans, which would you prefer? To offer a Groupon or to target 10,000 boat owners who own boats greater than five years old?
