An Ignoble Experiment: Small Business Conversations by Network Solutions

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In our quest to hear great stories of companies growing from small to big we heard from FloorplanOnline.com on our Smallvolution Facebook page. Here is what they posted:

Reaching Out to Learn More

We really loved their story and wanted to learn more so we reached out to Kris Cone, CEO of FloorPlanOnline.com and did an extended interview. Here is the transcript:

1. What has been your greatest success so far in your growing the business from small to big?
We are still relatively small (about $2 million in revenue in 2010) but growing, despite the economy. The biggest success has to be creating a
loyal and satisfied customer base of thousands of customers that often tell us we have the best product on the market for selling real estate.
We have maintained over a 95% customer satisfaction rating for 5 years now, which I think is a combination of a fair price for what we offer
(we are not the cheapest, nor the most expensive), a unique niche product offering, all backed by real customer support. We grew the
company on a boot strap with minimal money invested (comparatively)….so we can’t do a lot of the things we would like to
do that maybe some of our competitors can, but focusing on the core floor plan offering has helped us keep our customers happy.

2. What has been your greatest challenge?
Getting real estate agents to spend money on our tours to provide the most robust online content to sell a home. The Real Estate industry is
a strange beast. You have properties selling for $500,000, $1 million or more, yet you are still lucky if the property online has more than 10
photos.

Amazon.com has more information on a $10 book than a lot of properties online. Yet the revenue opportunities are so much higher. Real estate agents are typically independent contractors, and they are very cost conscious. We are not the cheapest tour solution. Often, to get in the
door, you need to have the cheapest solution. Some agents have also been stuck in the past with buying print ads vs online advertising.

This is changing, but some companies still spend millions on newspaper ads. Why… 90% of people use the internet to search and in 1/3 of the cases, the buyer finds the house they bought first, online. Because of the industry structure, there has been a lot of bottom up selling – the real estate agent, not their company, typically make the purchasing decision, so you often have to focus on who holds the purse string. This is
difficult for a small company – how do you effectively reach the 1.3 million real estate agents to 1. Get them to listen to you and 2. Get
them to buy from you.

3. How have online social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Blogs helped you market your business?

Social media has helped with Viral Sharing of property tours and FloorPlanOnline services. Back to the greatest challenge, the more our customers, their sellers or even buyers can share their tours, their experiences and successes about FloorPlanOnline, the more people hear about us, and we let social media do the advertising work for us. A referral is much more valuable than a cold call…and social media is the new form of referral. Our marketing person, Chris Drayer, does a lot of work on the social media sites to get our name and products out to various social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain (a real estate oriented blog site) and to create ”Champions” for FloorPlanOnline. Often, the more successful agents are turning to these mediums as it is a hot topic in the real estate world.

We have also been involved in several grass roots industry events that use social media to talk about the events. In addition, our tours come with built-in social media tools. Anyone can post a home tour to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or over 100 other “social” networking sites, by clicking our “Share” button. So now, a home seller can actively participate in the marketing of their own home by posting a FloorPlanOnline tour to their Facebook Wall so all their contacts can see their home they are selling. Same for the agent. Even the buyer can share their potential new home with their friends. So the multiplier effect takes hold, and spreads.

4. Looking back, what are 2-3 things you would recommend to fellow entrepreneurs looking to grow their business from small to big?

Know your market, your customer, and how to reach them. Do this before you start the business, or before you introduce a new product. Often, I think people just start out with an idea and do not really know who their customer is, or should be.
Get a good website you can manage yourself. We changed our website last year from a home grown static site to a WordPress website. I bought some templates and started creating the site. And because Wordpress is a blog/content management system, it is so easy to add new information as often as you want. This has dramatically increased our online search engine presence. Launch a new feature…create a post. Launch a new product…create a post. Have a recurring issue…create a post. No matter what it is, we now have a really easy way to communicate with our customers. You can even get plug-ins to repost the blog posts to sites like Twitter. However, here is where you need to be careful about social media…do you want to direct people to Facebook, or your website? Twitter is good from this respect, since you can only post a snippet, and it should have a link back to your site or blog post. The social media sites need to be a portal back to your website, not the other way around…and so your social media strategy needs to always think about the call to action and how to get them back to your website.
Provide good customer service. Many people tell us one reason they continue to use us, despite our higher prices, is our great customer service. We help people…whether it is our problem or not (often it is because of some outdated software, malware or computer literacy issues). We use some technology tools to make our small company look big. We have a customer care call tool that routes calls and has call queuing. We have a virtual PBX phone system. We have an online chat tool that also allow us to do remote control trouble-shooting of customer’s computers. We use email tools to funnel issues. And we have effectively used off-shoring services through our own production department to help minimize costs. But, people want to call and talk to someone, and they need to be able to effectively communicate. Speak my language – so we have US people on our customer care lines.

For more information on FloorplanOnline.com, check out FloorplanOnline.com

Got a "Small to Big" Story? We Want to Hear It.

Got a "Small to Big" Story?

We've all got that brilliant idea that started as a simple napkin sketch and somehow became its own full-fledged life force. Maybe it was a mouth-watering cupcake that became a catering business. Or a simple idea that became a successful enterprise. Whatever your "Small to Big" story, we'd love to hear it.

We're launching a new movement- The Smallvolution, and we're asking you to join.

What's the Smallvolution, you ask?

It's a movement of people, ideas and businesses that see the big in Small. Small sees possibilities where others see obstacles. Small is agile, passionate and all-around inspiring. At Network Solutions®, evidence of the Smallvolution is seen everyday-and you're a part of it.

Welcome to the Smallvolution. Tell us your stories on our Smallvolution Page and become a Fan atwww.facebook.com/networksolutions

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LazyFeed Offers A Social Reason To Use Real-Time Search

Last year, I wrote about a new startup emerging from relative obscurity to take the stage at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now, just last week, it seems that they have decided to evolve themselves to become more social. Just who am I talking about? Why, it’s LazyFeed, a real-time aggregator of content to provide you with info you want at your beck and call.

In its past form, LazyFeed was a service site designed not to show others about what you were searching for nor was it designed to do anything viral. It was entirely a one person viewing party, which makes a lot of sense because why would others care what you’re searching for in real-time? But in an age of social media where every startup simply needs to have a some form of shareability with their service, it seemed that LazyFeed was getting it half-right…they had the real-time search part down, but with no virality? That’s ludicrous! Well starting last week, LazyFeed has changed the way real-time search is being done by making it easier for you to share your searches.

With a redesigned website, LazyFeed is set out to change the perception that search is only a “read-only” function – now it’s also a “write”. What this means is that you can still conduct your searches in real-time to find out the latest trends and mentions as it relates to your topic/search query – whether that’s “Small business” or “online marketing” or whatever else you desire, but then you can easily take those results and pass them along in your very own channel. That’s right…LazyFeed will now let you create your own search channel that can be publicized to the world. Moreover, in the first release, we were only allowed one “lazyfeed”, but this time around, the team at LazyFeed has allowed us the chance to create multiple feeds to search. What this means is that you won’t have to re-type your search queries and will be able to search across multiple feed topics at once. Unlike their old iteration, users were forced to click and view feed topics one by one to see the new mentions and posts, but this time, you’re greeted with a dashboard that users can keep open and watch a dynamic display of updates come across the screen.

So where’s the virality? Well here’s where it happens…LazyFeed has followed the bandwagon like most social networks to allow you to follow other LazyFeed users. Just like in Facebook, MySpace or even Twitter, you’re now able to simply go to a friend’s LazyFeed profile and/or URL and instantly follow what they’re posting. Or, you can also periodically come back to their site, click on one of their channels, highlight one of the stories in that channel and post it to your very own LazyFeed account. The site now makes the web like a Chinese menu – you can simply pick and choose your own things of interest. It truly has become lazy.

What does this mean for your business? Well if you’re a blogger or are interested in creating your very own form of a social media monitoring tool, then the service that LazyFeed offers you might be worth taking a look at. The real-time social search dashboard approach is a pretty good way to find out what people are saying about your competitors. If you’re an airline interested in seeing what people are saying about you and your competitors, then you can do a Lazy search on your brand followed by additional channels focused on your competitors. From those posts, you can get a non-scientific way of measuring how well you’re doing in the industry. Also, if you’re trying to figure out how to do a marketing campaign on Facebook or even do some email marketing, then create a channel focused on those broad topics and see what news or posts appear in real-time. You might find one that you like. But the better thing is to see if an influencer has a profile on LazyFeed, then you can follow them on the site and see what content they find interesting so you could reach out to them on their level.

LazyFeed’s new service is out and available for use on their site by clicking here. You can read more about their update on their blog here.

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An Ignoble Experiment

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2010/05/27

Small Business Conversations by Network Solutions - 2 new articles

"Small Business Conversations by Network Solutions" - 2 new articles

FloorplanOnline.com is creating a Smallvolution with Social Media

Reaching Out to Learn More

Got a "Small to Big" Story? We Want to Hear It.

LazyFeed Offers A Social Reason To Use Real-Time Search

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