Comments on: MerchantCircle Gets IAC Money, 250,000 ‘Members’

By: J D Web Designs

J D Web Designs — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:26:30 +0000

I have been a member of MC since December and it has helped me to reach more clients than I really expected it to. I have received more calls and more leads in less time than I have anywhere else.

By: Kevin L.

Kevin L. — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:33:38 +0000

MerchantCircle recently crossed 500,000 members. We’re proud to help local businesses acquire customers by offering an alternative to over-priced, ineffective offline marketing channels. We’ve been interviewing our merchants in all 50 states – you can read about their MerchantCircle experience here: http://www.visualcv.com/merchantcircle.

We’re committed to providing every local business a web presence, easy-to-use marekting tools and a platform for connecting with other merchants, all for free. As always, please email any questions or concerns to support@merchantcircle.com and we will respond as soon as possible.

By: Local Search News Roundup » Small Business SEM

Local Search News Roundup » Small Business SEM — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:39:21 +0000

[...] all new to you, click the link earlier in this paragraph, or read Rae’s rant about them, or Peter Krasilovsky, who says the “vast majority” of their merchants “may have been duped”, or [...]

By: Scott Wyffels

Scott Wyffels — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:52:28 +0000

I wonder how many business profiles can a small local business have on the internet?

Facebook just introduced its “free” product last week, that gives businesses yet another place to exist.

For example, local restaurants are going to have to a hire a part time person or local agency just to keep their information current across the internet.

Merchant Circle, in my opinion, provides far less value as a host than most of the other businesses mentioned above. It is not a targeted vertical like a CitySearch.

By: Jeff Tadie

Jeff Tadie — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:58:10 +0000

Richard/Peter, we’re run across a few customers who have no idea why they got an automated call from Merch Circle…confusing and a bit misleading, we’ve heard. We’re actually having client use self-serve forms “after” the sale to help us keep their content fresh. Although we have the advantage of having the client in one of our new Your Marketing Corner stores or being serviced by a premise rep, the buy-in the client demonstrates is very high.

Seems to me it would be very hard to create enough of a sense of value and buy-in via self-serve + tel. to have long-term retention. However, I do think the urgency to answer created by your tool is interesting and will review it. Thanks.

By: Richard Rosen

Richard Rosen — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:17:33 +0000

Peter – what’s interesting is that the company’s investors are backing 100% self-service model. They are betting that local ad sales can be automated. It is the opposite bet of ReachLocal , Yodle, WebListic, etc..

From the blogs, it looks like MC has reached at least some merchants and businesses not in the yellow pages database (consultants, service providers, etc) I suspect they scraped phone numbers and dialed. This expands the addressable market of yellow pages listing from 15 million to 20, 25, 30+ million (SBA estimate of SMB market). It would be easier to get a sole proprietor to log on and register — a copywriter for example — but harder to get them to advertise locally.

FastCall411 also dials merchants, but only merchants listed in local directories and calls are only initiated by consumers. The goal is to establish a relationship with the local merchant by proving first that FastCall411 can deliver value. MC will ultimately need to prove their value to build a relationship with merchants.

What do you think? Will the SMB market ever give up the sales relationship and self-service?

By: LocalGuy

LocalGuy — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:02:14 +0000

BOY is this information a stretch…250,000 merchants? Dex, Superpages, The Yellow Guys, they cannot even claim that in their online initiatives yet and they already have penetration…This is the Wild West and it is a LANDGRAB but if we all use infousa or amacai data then we too can have over 250,000 merchants – Cant we? WE have to be very careful not to leave a poor taste and distrust in the small business owners mouth or we will all be in BIG trouble -

By: zippy

zippy — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:48:51 +0000

Good for you, Peter. It’s good to see someone deflating these ludicrous claims. Pure hype, and in MerchantCircle’s case, blackmail and extortion as well.