Everybody’s chasing small businesses. Local search engines, Internet Yellow pages, Web directories, online classifieds: they’ve all taken a run at enlisting the majority of small businesses that are not currently using search marketing at all and may not even have company Web sites.
Add Google to that list, in a deal that may just hit Mom and Pop where they live: in the bookkeeping software.
The 2007 version of QuickBooks, the widely used back-office software program from Intuit, will include software that will automate users’ sign-up for Google AdWords, the program that lets advertisers bid to place pay-per-click ads against keywords in Google Search. QuickBooks 2007 buyers will also get a $50 credit toward search ad spending on Google’s platform.
QuickBooks 2007 will also provide preloaded install disk software that will let small business owners build a profile on Google Maps and post their products for sale on Google Base, the search company’s free online classified-ad service.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a conference call that the partnership could result in adding a million or more new users to the AdWords search marketing program. “Less than half of these [small businesses] have online presences, because it’s so difficult,” he said. “Using the QuickBooks franchise, we saw an opportunity to solve the problems once and for all. It’s a good win for Intuit, it’s a good win for Google, but more importantly, I think it’s the beginning of a much, much deeper partnership.”
“We take this long tail business very, very seriously,” he said. “We’re convinced this is a way to add a million or more online subscribers to the Google network.”
Small businesses using QuickBooks 2007 will be find a “Google marketing tools” icon on the software’s home page. Clicking on it will lead them to a streamlined version of the Google AdWords sign-up page, with much of their business information pre-filled. They can activate a new account from here and be led through the process of setting up a search marketing campaign.
Those small businesses without a Web site will be able to direct pay-per-click search ads to a profile page on Google Maps. Hosted by Google to bulk up its Maps directory content, these profile pages can include not only store location information and phone numbers but hours of operation, payment methods, services, specialties and coupons or discount offers. The business listings can also appear in the local category at the top of search results pages when users do a general Google search for an appropriate product or service in their region.
QuickBooks 2007 will also let users make their products searchable on Google Base. Using a free beta product listing service, retailers can select items from their inventory to be listed and upload data on those products, including photos and pricing, directly from their Intuit software into the Google Base database. Searchers who find those listings in a Google search can click through to the merchant’s Web site or small-business profile page.
The product listing service will be powered by StepUp Commerce, an online merchandising company that specializes in retail inventory control from point-of-sale systems. In addition to the alliance with Google, Intuit also announced yesterday that it has acquired StepUp and a subsidiary for about $60 million in cash. Google has an existing relationship with StepUp, making the integration with Google Base simpler.
“When we were putting this plan together with Google, we formed a partnership with StepUp,” Intuit CEO Steve Bennett said during the call. “And as we got closer to launch, we made a decision to buy the company.”
“You can’t overstate the importance of QuickBooks to a small business,” says Alan Rimm-Kaufman, president and CTO of The Rimm-Kaufman Group, specializing in online marketing for retailers. “This is the nerve center for small businesses, and this deal is big, big stuff. I think they’re going to get very broad adoption in both the business listings and the map listings. With a $50 credit towards search marketing on AdWords, this is a very compelling offer. To me, this looks like a direct shot across the bow of the Internet Yellow Pages.”
Most of those Internet Yellow Pages operations have an advantage when it comes to coaxing small businesses to open up shop or advertise on the Internet: their in-house sales teams. To compensate for not having its own feet on the street, Google has signed reseller deals with some Yellow Pages directories such as Superpages.com, as well as business software providers such as Salesforce.com. The company doesn’t break out results for local advertising, and certainly not for local accounts signed up through resellers; but it seems safe to say that those efforts have not exhausted the potential it sees in the local ad market, where ad spending will grow to $120 billion by 2010, according to projections by The Kelsey Group.
Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence and a long-time observer of local marketing, pointed out in a blog post that the U.S. Yellow Pages directory industry has about 3.2 million advertisers in total. QuickBooks software is used in 3.7 million small businesses. Intuit also manufactures Quicken accounting software, which is used in another 3 million small businesses.
While not all of those users are businesses, and while users will have to upgrade to QuickBooks 2007 to get in on the AdWords deals, Sterling admits, “Instantly Google gets access—through a trusted third party—to a huge installed base of potential advertisers.”
Beefing up local representation online also fits with Google’s mission to make search more user-friendly, since research indicates that many people who search for a product or service on the Web prefer to complete the purchase face-to-face. A comScore Media Metrix study published last March found that 63% of consumers who bought something they’d researched online did so at a brick-and-mortar store.
To Rimm-Kaufman, the deal’s largest potential flaw might be the expectation that it will induce small businesses, through Intuit inventory control and data feeds from StepUp, to sell their products on Google Base. “The inventory component is not the most robust part of QuickBooks,” he says. “I could be wrong, but I think the inventory controls are only used by some businesses.”