WebVisible Contest to Award Free Local Online Advertising to Small Businesses

WebVisible has recently launched a nationwide contest and a new original Web video series – both calling attention to the still-vast divide that separates consumers looking for local products or services and the very businesses they’re seeking.

From the business owner whose daughter is helping her learn to use “Happy Face” (aka, Facebook), to the one who doesn’t believe people go online to look for a barber, it’s clear – there’s still a Great Divide. View the series premiere here: http://www.youtube.com/greatdividemovie.

WebVisible will unveil a new episode of this landmark documentary series every few weeks. Later installments will follow small business owners, telling their stories and offering a day-in-the-life glimpse into what it means to run a small business in today’s Internet economy. A dentist, florist, lawyer, restaurant owner, barber, eyelash salon owner, garbage hauler and others invited WebVisible and its camera crew behind the scenes to discuss the challenges of “being found” by consumers today. Each episode will showcase a different component of online advertising – mobile, social, search and more.

The Great Divide Watch & Win Contest gives U.S.-based small businesses two chances to win three months of free advertising services through WebVisible, valued at $1,500 for each winner (new customers only).

To win, watch The Great Divide and answer this question in 140 characters or less: “What is the biggest challenge in growing your business?” Answers can be submitted online at http://www.webvisible.com/the-great-divide/contest.php or via WebVisible’s Twitter page at http://twitter.com/webvisible. Submit answers by 11:59 p.m. EDT, June 30.

“Some local business owners still don’t believe that consumers want to find them online – but today, even so-called ‘walk-in’ traffic is often driven by searches conducted on a mobile phone while walking down the street,” said Kirsten Mangers, WebVisible CEO. “Advertising has to follow audience, but when the audience moves at lightning speed from one search engine or iPhone app to the next, it’s hard to keep up. Small businesses are losing potential customers if they don’t make themselves visible in all the different places consumers are searching today. Our contest winners will gain much more than $1,500 in advertising – they’ll gain the new business that results from being visible to potential customers online.”

Two winners will be selected by WebVisible to receive a full-service package, including search engine advertising on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, a call tracking number, and a multi-function landing page that includes video, form fill and SMS text lead delivery. WebVisible will provide the winning merchants with three months of search engine advertising with a $500/month budget. Existing WebVisible customers and employees or employee family members are not eligible.

Landmark Documentary Series Explores Small Business America
To kick off the contest, WebVisible is unveiling its new original Web series, The Great Divide, featuring real business owners and their real stories. In this documentary series, WebVisible explores The Great Divide – where small businesses and consumers fail to connect.

Last year, WebVisible partnered with Nielsen Online to reveal compelling data showing that consumers and business owners were using the Web to find local products and services, yet business owners were not fully embracing the Web as a marketing tool for their own businesses. Now, WebVisible has taken its cameras over the counters and into the factories, warehouses, shops and offices of small business America, to get total access into their lives, their struggles, their ideas and their insights into marketing their businesses and finding those elusive new customers.

The first episode, released today, poses the question: Where do consumers turn to find a business in today’s “local is wherever I am” environment? The Web? Yellow Pages? Mobile apps? Social networks? WebVisible’s cameras hit the streets of America, asking consumers how they are finding local businesses, and giving small business owners a chance to sound off about their own marketing efforts and examine how they’re evolving in this inter-connected, global marketplace.

“Our goal with The Great Divide Web series and contest is to shine a light on these issues in an entertaining way, and to take the mystique out of online advertising and simply help local businesses get found by their customers,” said Mangers.

WebVisible makes it easy for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) to be found online, where and how customers are looking. The leading provider of local online marketing products and services since 2001, WebVisible was among the first to pioneer the use of search as a reliable, measurable avenue to connect directly with a buyer’s needs. The company has helped more than 100,000 SMB customers from more than 4,000 industries in 14 countries to create innovative and accountable Internet advertising campaigns. SMBs partner with WebVisible directly and through its many partner companies, including Intuit, AT&T, British Telecom and The New York Times Company. WebVisible is based in Irvine, California.