Sam’s Club, the Wal-Mart owned mega store which is a godsend to small businesses looking to stock locally breaking dependency on wholesale distributors, is now offering a search marketing service targeted towards those same small businesses.
Sam’s Club’s LeadConnect, which seems to be a resold version of Innuity LeadConnect, offers McMarketing for the small business which does not have the time to conduct search marketing themselves and sees an easy $25 per month payment plan for their site as an alternative to the Verizon Superpages and other pay-per-month services which are actively targeting this small biz market [thanks Karl].
These small business services have been in existence for a long time and basically submit sites to search engines (which is an outdated practice) along with listing them in local search databases and business profile pages.
Of course an upsell may also include monthly AdWords ads or locally targeted advertising; but such services are not a replacement for smart or aggressive search marketing and intelligent SEO.
But how many times are we going to be in discussions with leads or prospects who ask that same question; “Why should I pay you when I can pay Sam’s Club $25/$50/$100 per month?” [Which would be an excellent white paper]
What do you think? Does Sam’s new search marketing service open new doors for the search marketing industry or will it lead to unknowing businesses being content with 5% of the pie?
Comments
9 responses so far ↓
Brandon on Dec 27, 2007 at 10:50 am
I don’t think this is much more different than domain registers offering SEO (1000+ search engine submissions).
If a website owner is only willing to pay $25 a month for SEO, then you have a slim chance of snagging them as a client anyways. SEO is still not understood by most business owners, which means they aren’t going to pay much for it.
Dan Perry on Dec 27, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I think it’s a sign that Online Marketing has hit the mainstream.
Also, for those that say “Why should I pay you when I can pay Sam’s Club $25/$50/$100 per month?”, would anyone really want that business for a client? Anyone seriously considering paying $100/month, and seriously questioning paying more is never going to be satisfied with results.
Peter Davis on Dec 27, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Eventually, SEM will become a commodity. It cant’ always remain this much fun, can it?
SEO for Yahoo Small Business - Terry Reeves on Dec 27, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I have to agree with Dan. I find that those businesses who question the price tend to also be the ones who understand the least about SEO. If price is your only concern, there are thousands of alternatives on the net.
I still get weekly emails selling $49.00 Search Engine Submission Services. Somebody must be buying or they would be selling something else.
neo on Jan 3, 2008 at 9:14 am
First came the geocities copycats that ran through communities creating one page worthless websites hidden in web malls. At the beginnning they were charging like $2500 for one of these pathetic hidden one page sites.
Since no one ever came to these sites, it totally turned off all the small businesses to the idea of the Internet . It made it so much harder for legitimate website developers to come back through and recharge again for something that really worked.
Looks like history will repeat itself again with, “Oh yeah, I tried SEO, it didn’t work for me.”
Guess I’ll have to start a huge anti-Sams Club SEO campaign that will sit right below their listing and explain exactly what your $25 will get you. I’ll even provide a virtual match and lighter fluid so you can burn your virtual $25 right there online and get the same results you’ll be getting from SEO through Sam’s Club.
Hey free speech everybody. That’s what the Internet’s there for.
Les Blatt on Jan 3, 2008 at 9:18 am
Your commenters have it right. Five years ago, these are mostly the same people/companies who were asking, “Do I really have to spend money and be on that Internet thing”? It is a long, slow educational process, and there will always be those who believe price is the only consideration, and they will always wonder why they are not succeeding.
Fuzzy Beaver on Jan 3, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I used to work for the agency that Innuity bought out and eventually dissolved. Those guys haven’t a clue what they’re doing. They turned SEM into an assembly line affair, a cookie cutter one-size-fits-all approach. I feel bad for those small businesses who get suckered into this deal.
Oh wow on Jan 7, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Have you guys actually researched what this company is selling? It’s all about getting your business on local search engines like, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, places like that. There are so many small businesses trying to compete with large companies with small budge PPC campaigns or basic SEO work when we all know that doesn’t work. Yet if you do your research you will see everyone has a better chance at the local search engine level. It’s just that everyone one is stuck on getting on Google.com when they are likely going to get more traffic from local people search for their business and or services on Google Map for example. I have a small SEO business and after reading a lot about local search engine start to work on get my business on all of them. Of course it took a while (2-3months) but I glad I did it has help me a ton.
Anne Haynes on Jan 8, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Lot’s of agencies out there are looking for a cookie cutter approach to search marketing services.
Danny Sullivan mentioned the Sam’s club offering on webmasterradio.fm a few weeks ago. The sad thing; this search marketing package has been around for years! This is why we search marketers are having a tough time explaining the logic, time and effort it takes to implement a solid SEO campaign.
From my little research it sounds like a custom CMS system people buy into when they find out they need SEO. The Innuity crew explains that they’re system has SEO built in and that’s why using there system is the best. Clients move their static site into a “dynamic” CMS (with no rewrite) and are upsold on other search marketing services.
Bottom-line; the biggest part of SEO is the offsite optimization strategies! Thanks for the website, but how about some referral traffic!
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