What about the small guy?

Lead generation on the Internet is eating away at the profits of small businesses.

If you run a small business, then you are already feeling the pinch. In order to stay relevant and be first in line to win business in your town - you are being forced to pay heavy ransom to sites like Google, Yelp, AngiesList, Facebook and probably a handful of others.

The data doesn’t lie:

72% of consumers that did a local search visited a store within five miles.

97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.

88% of searches  for local businesses on a mobile device either call or visit the business within 24 hours.

I could go on and on - but there is only one conclusion you can make as a small business - you need to be advertising online if you want to win business (or your competitor will get the lion’s share of leads).

Let’s be honest. It’s arbitrage.

The internet websites that consume all the traffic from consumers are not providing any unique value - they are front-running the small business, and getting the lead and selling it to the small business for a premium.

Even when you search by name the business you want to contact - the majority of the top results are websites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Expedia, Angies List. They capture your lead and then sell it back to you (or even worse they sell it to competitors).

The small business is paying for leads they would have received organically anyway. The portals that intercept leads have no value, and ultimately rob the small business of profits they could realize if they didn’t have to be forced to pay to play.

How do we eliminate the real Middlemen?

When the Internet started everyone would say it was going to kill the middleman. We saw travel agencies go out of the business within a few years once consumers could buy plane tickets online. But the reality is the “middleman” never was killed. It was replaced by Amazon, Expedia and other online shops. And to make the matters worse, MORE MIDDLEMEN showed up to take their cut - Facebook, Google, Yelp.

The economy has evolved from businesses providing products and services directly to consumers - to businesses paying to outbid their competitor for the consumers attention, leaving very little money left over for profits and making quality goods.

This not only hurts the small business - it hurts the consumer. Next time you wonder why you are paying $100 per hour for a plumber - it is because the plumber had to pay $100 to get your business. The middleman makes everything more expensive.

How Door helps with Small Business

The only thing a small business needs to survive is customers. They don’t need Google, Facebook, Yelp or any other 3rd party to survive and prosper. Unfortunately they don’t have a choice today. They have to pay the price to show up at the “top of the page” when people search for their product or service.

If you really think about it - it’s kind of ridiculous.

If a business could go directly to the consumer - they could continue to thrive and most likely provide a better product or service because they would have more money to spend on actually delivering value to the consumer - instead of paying for over-priced ads.

Door solves this. It enables a direct connection between the consumer and business. Door rewards consumers for sharing their data, and it provides a competitive price for that information to the business.