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The online marketing business has seen excellent growth in 2010. Online ad spending continues to set records. One in four pages viewed on the web in the US are now at Facebook.

People are looking for alternatives to traditional advertising. Online marketing certainly fits the need. Why? It’s generally less expensive than traditional media and can be tracked using a variety of tools. This isn’t to say one should forego traditional media outlets (TV, print, radio). Integrated marketing using all of the methods is generally the best place to start and then one would refine as results arrive.

We’re expanding our online advertising options to include local media and niche site ad buys. For instance, WebMedley already offers online ad management for facebook, Google, and a few other well-known sites. The expansion allows us to help our clients buy online ads at local media sites like WTVQ, WKYT, WLEX, Smiley Pete’s sites, and more. If the client operates in a particular niche market and local ads do not fit, then we’ll seek out blogs and forums applicable to the niche. For example, if our client sells Ford Mustang parts, we’ll find sites like http://www.allfordmustangs.com/ to place ads.

This move makes WebMedley Lexington’s first and only independent, full service online media buying company. There are other firms placing ads through a third party service and outsourcing almost all of the work. Not us. We use the tools that sites like Google offer, but the work is performed by WebMedley staff and tracked using some third party and home grown tools. We analyze all the data and make recommendations based on the analysis.

Keep an eye out on the WebMedley blog for the full service description and official news release.

This change helps us increase service to our existing clients and will grow the business through new clients in need of help. Instead of a client managing 3-10 online media outlets, the client can work directly with us and we’ll manage the buys, changes, and analysis.

Thanks to everyone who provided input and advice related to this decision. I’d name names, but some requested anonymity.

Well, I’d like to thank our clients for helping us grow, my team for putting in the time, and our contractors for filling out our needs.

An update is coming soon!

Timeline:

Early 90’s – I establish my personal account at Fifth-Third

Late 90’s – I establish my first business account at Fifth-Third – just a checking account. In a few months, people started telling me I’d need a line of credit for operating expenses. At the time, I didn’t know I would ever need one, but I talked to Fifth-Third about it. They declined since I was 23 and didn’t own a house. A National City (now part of PNC) guy heard about it and gave me an unsecured line.

2001 (approx) – opened another business account for Dotson Ventures (my consulting company)

2004-5 – after I sold the business, all accounts stayed at Fifth-Third.

2008 – opened 2 new business accounts for WebMedley.

2009 — 1/12 – I apply for the line of credit. The application includes all 2008 financials, current A/R, personal financials, a description of our business, the industry, etc..

1/16 – declined for an unsecured line since the business is less than 24 months old; my branch manager is applying for a secured line and an unsecured line for Dotson Ventures. There is a bit or irony here…Dotson Ventures has no plans for revenue in 2009 and beyond. So if it is the entity that receives the loan, the system Fifth-Third uses is asking to be gamed.

1/20 – Dotson Ventures is approved for an unsecured line at half the amount we want – but its a start. The funds are available in 24 hours so that is one nice thing.

From that date until 2/5 everything was OK. Then, for some reason the Fifth-Third rep did not know, my line was reduced. When I asked my local folks, they got it fixed.

And its not just Fifth-Third who has issues. When I called my personal Banker at National City, she met with me and got the process started. They Nat. City folks sent me an even longer Personal Financial doc to fill out. I filled out most of it except the numbers – since I provided them in the documents in my loan package. These were returned to me a few times and I chose not to fill them out.

Why wouldn’t I fill them out? Because I’m the client and I already provided all the info they needed. They chose not to fill it in. To me, that says that they do not want the business. It may be that they do not want to take on liability by writing anything on the form or its a “test” to see how interested I am in getting a loan.

Finally, a manager at another branch heard about it and called me to make sure things were handled. He should be given a raise.

One thing they let me know is that the bank will never loan money to me to buy another business unless I have enough free cash flow to pay the whole loan from our main company. To me, this says: “If company A is buying company B and its easy to integrate and has monthly subscribers, we still think B could fail and you’ll owe us the loan amount.” While it is a possibility, the likelihood is small and that attitude will not help any growing business. We owners go to banks because we’re risking our assets (which guarantee the loans) to grow.

Today is 3/17 and they told me I’d have an answer on how much the line of credit will be.

It’s 3/18…Nat City called and will not grant the line of credit due to “new formulas in calculating free cash flow”. The local branch manager did offer to connect me with some community banks that may work with me. I let her know I’d be happy to talk to them and hope she can put me in touch with banks that make decisions locally. And, she did say she’d love to have our regular checking business, but knows that would only happen with the loan.

So, now what?

Well, it seems I’ll wait for another few days to hear from 5/3 and look at some other banks.

8/20/09 — 5/3 has no money so they cannot increase our line. It would be much cheaper for us to pay a bank than to pay the guy’s we bought the business from. So, I’m now looking at two other banks.

September – I was introduced to Traditional Bank through a friend. The experience has been 180 degrees from any other bank. They’ve taken care of a line of credit to allow us to pay off the original owners of WebMedley, to get a mortgage to buy our office condo, and even called to check on things a few weeks after we became clients. I highly recommend working with Traditional.

So what did I learn?

1. Banks are not required to have the same level of customer or personal service as other companies because for the majority of account holders the banks hold the power. They hold the power b/c they have the money.
2. We are a relatively small account to large banks (and probably small ones)…for now…
3. Local banks trump national banks.
4. The entire process (rigmarole) is known by my entire office. So, who will my co-workers bank with in the future…Hmm, I wonder?

As a result of the decision, Traditional Bank now has two of our bank accounts, a commercial mortgage, and our merchant processing. We have recommended them to other area entrepreneurs.

Service matters.

We know that its rare when someone does not have internet access. However, there are those times when you are in a plane (already changing in some planes), in a cave, or in the middle of the ocean. We build FanStream on the iPhone first because it has the coolest interface and a lot of “wow” factor. Each time you open the application, it looks for the latest content from our servers. If you do not have a net connection, it’ll still work fine — just without the up to the minute updates. If you do, you’ll have the very latest news, updated schedules (for when the TV station changes the time), and roster.

Here’s another cool feature for the iPhone users…we’ve integrated location-based services to find out where all the FanStream viewers are when they are using the application. Want to test it out? Take your iPhone, open FanStream (link to FanStream in the App Store), and choose any team’s news. Click on a News article and read the summary. Then, to read the full article click “View WebSite”. When you do this, the iPhone Safari web broswer will ask you if its OK to use your current location. Tell it Yes. This sends data back to us of the date, time, and location. We’re able to plot your location on a map and you’ll be able to see where other FanStream viewers are in real time.

Right now, you cannot tell who is exactly where since its not integrated with a user management system. Stay tuned…

Want to help make the app better? We’re looking for the following:

• Photos to be used for specific team backgrounds – these need to be taken by you or able to be used in our app (no licensed photos!)
• Game commentators – each game in our system needs a pre-game and post-game comment from fans. We want opinions from fans on both sides of the game.
• Your ideas: what would you like to see in the app? We’re sports fan and want FanStream to be your game companion.

If you have ideas, thoughts, etc, e-mail me or post it in our forums over at the site.

In a few more weeks, we’ll have FanStream for the BlackBerry and other phones.

If you want to be updated when we have more news, join our the FanStream Fan Page on Facebook. All Fans receive a scoring update for major games and all UK games (of course!) each Saturday.

The blog post is titled: Adding Your Organization to Local Directories.

Every business should be in these directories.

One day, I’ll tell the story of the purchase, how it happened, and so forth. It was an interesting event.

Buying assets is much different than starting a company from scratch. I highly recommend it — and given the nature of our economy, there may be some great opportunities right now.

This post is just a “thank you” for all the people who stood by me through the years and helped me get to this point.

We’ve confirmed the number from an inside source – $75 million, all cash. Pluck revenues are around $10 million/year.

…

the price paid is certainly less than investors had hoped for when writing their checks.

OK — let me get this straight…revenues of $10MM/yr…sold for $75MM…investors not happy.

I’d be happy. The total amount invested was $10MM with the last raise in 2004.

That’s a nice return in my book.

Once its printed, we probably stack it somewhere so it can attract dust. Let no desk surface be uncovered!

Then, we wonder where that dang printout of the schedule went. Didn’t I print it just the other day?

Well, wake up! There are easier ways to manage your docs and then find what you need.

I learned my lesson when I decided to sell TransDigital. We accumulated paper in all forms: plain ol’ wasted paper, signed contracts, technical specs for projects, project status updates, and so on. The prospect of physically moving all of it was not enticing. So, right after selling, we bought an eFax account and faxed it all to ourselves. This allowed us to do the following:

• Recycle the paper
• Organize all our important company documents and quickly recall them
• Store all company documents electronically
• Quit worrying about the “act of God” issues: flood, fire, etc.

I still follow the practice of scanning all important documents (home and work). It’s simplified my life.

Your company can do exactly what I did or do it a little more professionally. There are companies that exist to scan, sort, and store documents. (If you are using them, then this post is skippable!). There is also software that can help you with this.

We sell a system called Teleform (retails at $8000/desktop scanning station). It helps companies manage documents and is one of the industry leaders. When you combine a system like Teleform with internal processes, you can achieve the type of benefits I did. We manage all our POs, signed contracts, policies, etc through scanning systems.

If you are growing rapidly, you should look into software to help you manage the paper, routing documents, and develop a retention policy. Otherwise, you’ll end up buying a lot of filing cabinets, wasting employee time looking for documents, and being frustrated.

Some resources:

Amdoc , Teleform, VeBridge

ELAN Web Developer Position PDF