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Lots of big news coming from Yodle this past week including a report of a 700% year over year increase in revenue and the addition of some experienced veterans Yodle’s leadership. I got a chance to catch up with Yodle CEO, Court Cunningham to get his insight on some of the latest news.
[Manoj]: What does Paolo Narciso (ex CEO of Open Integrity) bring to Yodle and Yodle’s client services department?
[Court Cunningham]: Customer satisfaction is driven by quality of leads, quantity of leads and service. Paolo brings 20 years of expertise in running service organization for world class companies like Microsoft and Gateway. We are excited to leverage his experience to continually improve our service experience for clients.
[Manoj]: Rick Faulk (CEO of Mzinga) joins Yodle’s Board of Directors, how will Yodle want to tap into his 20 years of executive management experience?
[Court Cunningham]: Based on his experience at WebEx and Picturetel, Rick knows how to marry marketing lead generation with sales to drive revenue growth. Importantly, he also understands the small business owner.
[Manoj]: Can you pinpoint some of the factors leading to the 700% year over year growth for Yodle? How do you continue to improve from a 700% growth?
[Court Cunningham]: A number of factors:
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Consumer behavior has shifted: 74% of consumers now search for local businesses and services online
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The local business owner knows he needs to be online, but does not know where to begin
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This consumer pull through and pent up demand from local advertisers is the biggest driver of our growth. But there are many players in our market and we are not aware of any growing as fast as Yodle. Hiring world class experts like Mike Deluca from Hot Jobs and Paolo and Rick gives Yodle the excellence in execution to capture this opportunity.
[Court Cunningham]: Yodle simply delivers the strongest return on marketing investment to the small business owner. We do this by using our patent pending technology to intelligently generate, bid on and manage thousands of keywords for our clients. We also allow clients to track not just click but also leads in the form of phone calls and web forms. They can then rate the quality of those leads and we incorporate that information back into our marketing strategy. Closing the loop with the right information helps our system make smart marketing decisions.
Great company goals, but my experience was that they completely wasted my money. I spent over $500 in 1 month with them and didn’t receive a single lead, so didn’t even get to rate one of their calls or leads. Very disappointing. If they’re so confident in their abilities, they should guarantee it.
Thank you for your post on this subject. Yodle is committed to driving as many online leads for our clients as possible. I would like to talk to you about how to get your program back on track and to live up to our commitment. If we cannot, then of course we should part ways. We have thousands of happy customers who are driving significant growth in our business and I would like for you to be one of them. Please contact me at info@yodle.com so that we can resolve this directly and quickly. We have only one mission, driving more leads at a reasonable price for our clients. We only succeed when you succeed. We have in the past and will continue to adjust our tactics to ensure we succeed in this mission. Thanks,
Court Cunningham CEO Yodle
When my husband and I started our carpet cleaning business in the early spring of 2008, we invested over $5000 a month on TV and radio advertising and neither gave us the kind of results we wanted. We signed up with Yodle just a few months after starting our business, and it’s the only form of advertising we find absolutely worth our advertising dollars. They are the only advertising company I know of that actually stands behind what they say. Their account management team is courteous, offer great suggestions for my website, and is willing to work with me at any time to make sure my campaigns are running smoothly.
Court Cunningham and the rest of the Yodle team that I've met are stand up people. Local is a hard market with small budgets and high expectations.
Much credit to Court and folks! Fantastic support is key to tweaking client campaigns for success– out of the box is hard to get right all the time.