LocalMarketingIO

Wall Street versus Main Street

What differentiates a local business from a large corporation? A corporation has size, resources, and powerful brands. However, a corporation is usually pretty out of touch with its own purpose. Can you imagine talking to someone at Sears or Home Depot about the story of the company’s founding or what the business ultimately hopes to achieve?

What a local business lacks in resources and size it often makes up for by having a personal story, an identity, and a purpose. If you are a local business owner or executive, your business is likely a big part of who you are and what you are trying to accomplish in life. You probably get up day after day and pour sweat into your business, yes partly in hopes of retiring comfortably, but also for reasons that are significant beyond wealth. Those reasons, the things that motivate a local business, are its biggest competitive advantage.

While the internet has traditionally been adopted more aggressively by corporations, it really favors local business. The internet rewards people and companies that are unique, transparent, and interesting, all things that describe a local business. This blog starts with that as a premise and goes from there. It explores the question: How can a local business take advantage of what is naturally inside of it – its character, identity, and purpose – along with the power of the internet to help grow its business.

About Me

My name is David Weinhaus. I am a former full-time small business owner. I bought a shipping franchise in 2005 and grew it with good success through 2008. Then the recession hit.  My main supplier went out of business and it became difficult to make a go of it.

At the time, I had recently run across a business owner who could not stop talking about internet marketing.   He made  specialty scaffolding products and when he would market his products on Google, orders from organizations he had never met would roll in.  While I have since learned it is not quite that simple, I began to appreciate what internet marketing could do. 

I also began to understand that internet marketing is a bit like the wild west.  There is ‘gold in them hills’, but there are a dizzying number of paths to take.    I decided to pursue internet marketing as a career, but much the same way that a company has to select the right path and partner, so did I.   After much research and conversation, I pointed myself towards a company whose work I admired.  I now work for that company and am in many ways building my own ‘business’ again, but within their walls.  For more information, check out my LinkedIn profile below. 

I am starting this blog for a few reasons.

First, it is hard to advise local businesses to tell their story online if I am not willing to do the same. Second, I don’t come from an internet background.  This blog is a learning experience for myself and hopefully for others. Finally, and to be blunt about it, this site is to help support my sales efforts. If you are a client of mine or prospective client, welcome! Don’t hesitate to contact me.

Regardless of my reasons for creating the site or your reasons for visiting, thanks for reading and I hope you find some ways you can better share what is naturally inside your company to help grow your business!

Check out some of my recent postings.