Large Local Marketing Firm, WebVisible, goes belly up

Am I evil for thinking this is good news? Orange county is one of my best markets. California as a whole, is great for me. Orange county, Sacramento and the bay area are extremely juicy and I'm not even local!

As for webvisible going down, I think it has been a long time coming, don't you? They have had some of the worst reviews in the country for local marketing. So many consumer reports, ripoffreports and everything else negative you can imagine. It seems from these peoples experience that not much was really actually done for clients.

Of course, that is business and there are always people unhappy so maybe thats all it is. With the volume of chargebacks they have received, I can't say I'm surprised.

so hold on, a big player in the offline marketing field goes under because....wait for it....they clearly couldnt market themselves well enough!!!!
And yet they still got $37m investment ?

Blind leading the blind, good riddance to them.

Large companies have processes and procedures, asses to kiss and levels of authority. Practically every decision has to be checked out by someone above. Anything that seems new, fresh, exciting or unusual will freak out the beancounters that often run the place.

So you, as an individual, don't have to put up with any of that crap. You can do what you want, the way you want it: give your clients the best and most effective marketing solutions that you can come up with. Nobody's going to say "that sounds scary; you can't do it."

You also don't have overhead costs, investors to answer to (who typically know nothing about your business or how to make money--but sure think they do), or people looking over your shoulder.

These guys can't do anything except by committee, and it takes weeks or months for them to do what you can in a few days. You have a huge competitive advantage.

From a business perspective, without knowing the financial details (which don't seem to be public) about why they shut, it's hard to draw any conclusions about the market for local services. Look how much money all the major search engines are putting into the local market as a whole. I think from a data perspective that is a lot more valuable as a point of reference than one company that was in the space that shut. Sometimes it's good to look at the 10,000 foot view rather than ground level to take the bigger picture in.

I'd love to see the business plan that allowed investment of $37 million (over about 7 years?) and then the company gets shut down. Or what changes occurred (or didn't occur) that forced the company to fold.

The Orange County Register has a short article about it:

Online local ad service shuts down | webvisible, company, online - Business - The Orange County Register

Marvin

I'm in irvine. Hit me up!

This is really news to me. The headquarters is right up the street from me. Didn't know that they were in financial trouble. They were really hot several years ago. Press darlings. Most companies that fail, fail because of mis-manangement no matter how much money that have.

Here's my opinion on this issue for what it's worth and I'm sure it mirrors some of the comments already made. This market is so perfect for those that are good at what they do and want to handle 10 or 20 clients regularly and give them specialized personal service. I have some clients that call me every week for something; others that I don't hear from unless I contact them. All of them are happy with their results.

It takes a certain skill set that very few have to ramp up an operation like Offline Marketing where you are managing clients in the thousands. Many can and will if they go about it methodically and slow down and ramp up their operations based not on sales, ego or pressure from investors, but on CUSTOMER SERVICE only.

If the matrix for growth includes a concrete policy that states, no new clients even for an extended period of time if customer service begins to falter, then that's the type of leader and business owner who will be successful and may very well create a business that handles clients in the 1000s.

Those that treat this business as a puppy mill and invest other people's money to ramp up too quickly with a large base of telemarketers and too few people to actually do the work and monitor success on a monthly basis are doomed to fail.

I have one client who I have a great relationship with. He tells all of these "script driven" callers that I handle things like that for him and that if I say so, he'll consider using them and then he gives them my phone number. You wouldn't believe the drivel that I hear at least once a week from these folks.

"We'll do X, Y, and Z for you and then we'll also do J, K and L and then you'll get more customers than you know what to do with!!!" The funny thing to me is that out of all the things they run through, very few of them have anything to do with driving traffic and sales. The good news? This market is wide open and we have only scratched the surface of the potential. The bad news? We will always be facing potential clients that have either been burned in the past, consider us just one more of those phone scripted jokers, or they simply lack the trust necessary to move forward.

For what it's worth, if you're struggling, go do a couple of jobs for free. It will give you an honest assessment of your abilities and it will give you references that can help jump start your business. As with most Offline Marketers, word of mouth and referrals from existing happy clients are the two foundational keys to your long term success.

As far as the mega operators are concerned? They'll always be there and the bigger they get, the further they'll stray from what keeps retention rates high...Results and sincere, personalized outstanding CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Think "Nimble"
Think "Agile"
Think "Flexible"
These are characteristic of young aggressive enterprises.
These are characteristics that older, more careful companies lose.

Hugh

It may have been smaller players that knocked them out. In other words, a smaller marketer can be fast on their feet with their clients, try new things and get much better results then going through a 10 person comity. They can also offer the services for way cheaper than a larger firm. Makes sense to me.