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.