Mediag at 23:23, 21 March 2007

2007-03-21T23:23:21Z

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===Steven Aldrich, vp-strategy and innovation, small business division, Intuit===

NOTES OF HIS WEDNESDAY KEYNOTE DISCUSSION

His key point -- small business drives half the private economy. At Intuit they have 7 million small business that use their payroll, finances, credit-card processing and supply-purchasing services. Now Intuit wants to help them get customers in the door.

KEY OBSERVATION: "For the marketplace to be as rich as the shopping district is walking down the main street today we are going to need the combination of the bricks-and-mortar local retailers and the big boxes."

Some data and trends they see from their customer base and general demographic data:

*U.S. economy is $5.0 trillion from large business; $5.1 trillion from small business.

*Age 55-65 group are starting businesses at twice the rate of other age groups. they have the skills and capital and are not ready to retire.These baby boomers are more willing to take entrepreneurial risk.

*Almost three of womens with children are now working. They call this new class the "mom-preneur."

*Immigrants are now 15% of the U.S. population. These folks not born in the U.S. bring contacts from the rest of the world and non-translatable skills.

*Eighty percent of small business do 75% of their business within 50 miles.

====New focus for Intuit -- helping their customers find customers====
Six million new businesses started annually. Almost all those are replacing someone else who decided to shut down a business. The key reasons business shut -- they didn't get enough revenue on the front end because they didn't get enough customers.

"The number one factor inhibiting their success is they cannot acquire customers," says Aldrich. "They know their are consumers out there, they see them, but they have no idea of how to go out and reach them. And that is where the web can become the great equalizer."

*Small businesses spend about $110B annually on marketing. Sixty percent have spent marketing dollars in the last six months.

*Less than one quarter of these businesses have marketed online. About 22% have marketed online in the last 12 months. The amount they are spending online is very tiny. If you think about a Main Street business, like the Los Altos toy store that has $1 million in revenue, and is spending $10,000 online and 5% of that online -- $500 -- something is broken.

Last year they partnered with Google to figure out how to create contextual links out to marketing products as people are using QuickBooks.

They asked the question: "What type of solution will it take to bring that spending number up to a respectable number for small business?" It has to be simple to try, buy and maintain. It has to be low-cost to start and affordable to continue. it has to help a consumer to find who they are looking for in a local business."

He sees [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID Radio Frequency Identification Tags] as becoming widely used by retailers to track the way products are used and move.

Another key observation: Having feed on the ground is not the only route to success. For example, ADP has 500,000 payroll customers built up over 50 years using on-the-ground reps. Intuit has 1 million payroll customers built up over 10 years -- entirely through interactive marketing -- nothing on the street.

Intuit's - Revision history

Mediag at 23:23, 21 March 2007