How the internet disrupted traditional marketing

From My Voice, by Dan Campbell, Sun City Marketing

In 2008 I was a loan officer and assistant manager at New World Mortgage. Then the mortgage meltdown hit. Big names like New Century went down, and account executives, mortgage companies, and appraisal services disappeared with them. It looked like a Revolutionary War battlefield, with rows of people going down at once.

The company I worked for pivoted into online marketing and worked with eLocal, which grew into a much bigger player. I stayed on for a while. Looking back, I was standing at the intersection of several huge shifts, all hitting at once.

The monopoly nobody thought could end

I also worked at the phone book before it fell apart around 2010. A lawyer paid around $15,000 for a full page, up front, even if the business folded the next year. Even a basic listing ran a few hundred dollars every year.

The phone book, the newspaper, the Penny Saver, and the OC Register classifieds were how small businesses got found. It worked for a very long time. The people running it felt untouchable. "It has been around 100 years, so it will be around another 100." They were like Supreme Court justices who never expected to be replaced.

The perfect storm

Here is what people forget: it all happened at the same time. The housing market collapsed and money dried up. The iPhone launched in 2007, the App Store followed in 2008, and the first Android phone arrived late that year. By around 2010 to 2012, Samsung and Android had put a search engine in nearly every pocket. Advertisers were cutting budgets just as customers stopped reaching for a 300-pound book. The phone book became a doorstop, a booster seat, or something to hit someone over the head with.

Honestly, it is good it went out of business. If it had not, I would not have a job today, because I could not compete with a billboard on every corner.

WordPress and the PPC gold rush

Then the internet companies rushed in. WordPress came to dominate website building, so anyone could put up a site fast and cheap. PPC and the front page of Google became the new real estate, and contractors were told that was where the customers were.

How bad actors wrecked the trust

Because the barrier to entry was so low, bad actors from all over the world moved in. There were fake listings, fake reviews, spammy SEO, lead sellers promising the moon, and cheap sites that disappeared when the money did. Contractors got burned over and over, and the industry earned a reputation as worse than the mechanic. Google had to tighten up, and Google Business Profiles were reined in because they were being abused so badly.

Where we are now

Contractor marketing is still the Old West. What is left is Facebook ads, a little Craigslist (if you want that clientele, which most do not), and Google search. Paid search can burn through a lot of money before it produces anything, and everyone is competing for the same clicks.

Nothing is really proven. And if somebody has found what works, they are not going to share it. Nobody gives away the golden goose.

The lesson from 2008 is that the people who felt most secure got swept away, and the ones who kept paying attention found the new opening. Next time, I will get into Google Business Profiles.

Dan

Founder, Sun City Marketing

Dan builds custom websites and marketing systems for contractors across Southern California. He writes about local SEO, HTML performance, and the practical side of scaling a trades business with automation.