New York City start­up LocalVox is embark­ing on a poten­tial­ly stratos­pher­ic tra­jec­to­ry after secur­ing a $7.5 mil­lion Series A invest­ment last week and acquir­ing fel­low start­up Postling.

The com­bi­na­tion, as any chief rev­enue offi­cer or busi­ness devel­op­ment asso­ciate will see, looks set for a very pros­per­ous future.  With its focus on straight­for­ward, eco­nom­i­cal mar­ket­ing for local small busi­ness­es, the addi­tion of Postling’s tech­nol­o­gy and plat­form brings a unique social media angle to the firm’s reper­toire of strategies.

Hoot­Suite for SMBs?

Postling uses a G‑mail inter­face for its social media man­age­ment, rather than the coars­er and more volu­mi­nous stream approach, offer­ing a kind of stream­lined and sim­pli­fied Hoote­Suite.  As such, it’s much bet­ter suit­ed to SMBs, and will add a sig­nif­i­cant new dimen­sion to LocalVox’s cen­tral mis­sion; sup­ply­ing the small­er fry with access to the kind of mar­ket­ing tools and chan­nels nor­mal­ly reserved for the big fish.

For LocalVox Pres­i­dent Trevor Sum­n­er, the essence of this approach lies in lever­ag­ing mobile.
Small busi­ness­es find it much eas­i­er to mea­sure their ROI through mobile mar­ket­ing because it’s so much sim­pler to track the num­ber of cus­tomers claim­ing deals.  SMBs know that they want mobile mar­ket­ing but often don’t know exact­ly how to cap­i­tal­ize on it.  They need edu­ca­tion, pri­mar­i­ly, Sum­n­er believes.

Inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing and bespoke sup­port for local businesses

Google has been try­ing to move into the local mar­ket but, accord­ing to Sum­n­er, it’s fail­ing to notice that small local firms are expand­ing their dig­i­tal pres­ence and mul­ti­ply­ing their mar­ket­ing foot­prints by using Yelp, Face­book and Twit­ter.  And it’s not sup­ply­ing the des­per­ate­ly need­ed edu­ca­tion SMBs require, which is pre­cise­ly where LocalVox is poised to pounce.  Its unique approach is to com­bine an inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing plat­form, includ­ing social media cour­tesy of the Postling acqui­si­tion, with robust edu­ca­tion­al sup­port for local firms.  Every small busi­ness client on its books – and it now has 20,000 more thanks to Postling — is assigned a ded­i­cat­ed sup­port rep to offer tai­lored guid­ance on enhanc­ing local mar­ket­ing and improv­ing SEO.

LocalVox is doing well since launch­ing last Novem­ber.  It’s present­ly expe­ri­enc­ing dou­ble-dig­it month on month growth – and things looks set to get a good deal bet­ter.  With 27 mil­lion SMBs in the USA need­ing input like this, this start­up looks set to expand well beyond the Big Apple.