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Expanding firm is the one to watch

17th February 2009 - As featured in the Northern Echo

A Darlington business is growing and taking on more staff as more companies realise the importance of a web presence.

Business Editor Owen McAteer visited Infoserve to find out more.

EVERY business, whether it be a multinational company or an independent florist, is increasingly aware of the need to have a presence on the web.

This realisation has been one of the reasons Darlington company Infoserve has enjoyed success despite the recession.

As many firms suffer the effects of the global economic slowdown, Infoserve enjoyed two record-breaking months of sales in the latter part of last year.

The company, which provides small and medium-sized businesses with a web presence, exceeded record sales in September of £484,000 by £58,000 in October.

The success means that the company, which moved its call and sales centre to Darlington’s Morton Palms in 2006, has plans to increase its workforce in the next month.

What the company does is fairly straightforward. For £200 it will get a company’s website to the forefront of web searches and, for about £500, will also design a website if the business does not have one.

It is not the only company offering such a service, so what makes Infoserve different?

The company’s head of product, Richard Lee, believes tie-ups the company has with the two major search engines, Google and Yahoo, give the company an advantage.

Under its deals with Yahoo and Google, Infoserve manages Yahoo’s local advertising, and the company is a Google “AdWords reseller”, which allows businesses to manage their own advertising accounts on the search engine.

Mr Lee said: “Everyone’s internet journey starts with a search engine and they will usually carry out a local search.

“If you are looking for a dentist in Darlington, you would type in dentist and Darlington."

“We provide the solution to get that business found."

“It is competitive however, part of what we have done is build relationships with the major players in the industry. We are one of three resellers of Google Adwords, so that puts us at the forefront of a major search engine."

“The other major player is Yahoo and we have a relationship with them where we have exclusive rights.”

One of Infoserve’s main tools for getting companies to the forefront of searches is City Visitor, which was ahead of its time.

Sales director Mark Riley said: “That takes us back to 1999. The internet was young and there was a lot of smaller search engines without anybody being a major player."

“The foresight was to see that people would search for things generically, such as dentists, so they started City Visitor, which was a site where you could find everything you wanted to in a locality, it was ahead of its time.”

Mr Lee said: “We had virtual tours on it where say you wanted to go into a restaurant you could go onto the site and take a 360 degree tour, we were ten years ahead of our time.”

Mr Riley added: “Typically, a City Visitor listing is £200. It is not a lot for a presence.”

So how important is it for small and medium-sized businesses to have that presence on the internet?

Mr Lee said: “In terms of how massive the opportunity is, about 60 per cent of searches have a locality in them."

“To put that into perspective if you think about everybody going to Google and searching they reach about 87 per cent of the internet population.”

The company also believes that everything, from finding a tailor to a restaurant, is going to become more web based over the next decade as the internet continues its portable accessibility from PCs to portable laptops to mobile phones.

Mr Lee said: “In terms of people using the web, they are using it more and more, rather than a paper directory, and local search is still very much in its growth phase because of people’s accessibility to be on line.

BlackBerry is becoming more accessible and attainable. The mobile accessing of the web will grow and that is very much in line with local information.”

Mr Riley, who joined the business as sales director about 12 months ago, believed that companies who were not on the web were missing out on a golden opportunity to generate business.

He said: “It gives them that identity on the web. You are presenting something that someone is searching for.”

Internet advertising last year was worth more than £2.7bn and is forecast to continue that dramatic growth for at least the next five years.

Mr Riley said it was important that people realised that having a web presence did not necessarily mean online shopping, or taking away from the core business.

He said: “When you speak to people it is important they realise you are not talking about them doing everything online.

“It is guiding people to the business, a lot of it is about finding things in the locality.”

Mr Riley said the technology was only part of what made the company a success.

When he joined Infoserve last year, he believed an important measure was to ensure that people saw a job in sales as a career and not a quick fix.

As a result, he has overhauled the company’s induction techniques and training and put the right people in management positions.

He said: “A major factor in the success of Infoserve, in Darlington, is local woman Nicky Taylor."

“She was part of the Infoserve team a few years ago and was one of our top sales people, rising to manager, before she left to pursue other interests."

“When I joined the company, I was looking for someone to help me take the business forward and it wasn’t long before Nicky’s reputation as a dynamic and motivational individual was brought to my attention.”

Mr Riley used “all my powers” to persuade Nicky to come back to the company and she returned in September last year.

He said: “As general sales manager in Darlington, Nicky really is a driving force behind the company’s sales activities and it is safe to say she leads from the front.”

Mr Riley said it was vital to appoint the right managers, not only to get the most out of the team, but also for them to get the most out of their job and not leave Infoserve’s headquarters in Pioneer House, which it has leased for three years.

He said: “They make 150 phone calls a day and sometimes you don’t sell anything, you don’t need a manager telling them they haven’t done anything, you want to cajole them through that and help them to improve. It is the morale issue."

“We want people to build a long-term career with us. What I need is good people in here wanting careers. We have a team of 95 people and we have another 25 to 30 people starting next month. We are on one floor at the moment, but are hoping to eventually fill all three floors we have.”

Searches for debt recovery services rocket

12th February 2009

Online searches for debt recovery services have rocketed in the past six months, according to one of the UK’s leading internet local search specialists, Infoserve.

Infoserve has recorded a rise of nearly 300% in the number of online searches for debt recovery services since August 2008.

The results follow the recent report from the Insolvency Service, which announced there were 2,428 corporate insolvencies in the last quarter of 2008, a rise of 220% since the same period last year(1).

Infoserve, which has an extensive portfolio of online business directories, has also recorded substantial increases across a whole range of ‘credit crunch’ related search terms, including a 15% rise in job searches and a 56% rise in the number of people looking for recruitment agencies. UK unemployment figures released this week shows the number of people out of work is set to exceed 2 million this year.

Steve Barnes, Infoserve’s CEO said, “The key terms that people are searching for offers a valuable insight into the impact of the current downturn and it comes as no surprise that we are finding more and more people hunting for jobs and looking for financial help online. The dramatic rise also shows how it has become second nature for us to turn to search engines and business directories to find what we need.”

Infoserve specialise in local search, combining specific business sectors with particular locations, and currently lists over 3.5 million SMEs in its family of online business directories. It’s product portfolio includes the local search facilities on Yahoo!Local, leading local search site www.cityvisitor.co.uk, and over 100 Single Industry Sites, which collectively receive over 32 million visitors a month.

(1) Information from www.insolvency.gov.uk. Direct link to information can be found here.

For further information, please contact:

Peter Downey
Source Marketing Communications
Tel: 0113 380 1644
Email: peter@sourcemc.co.uk

Infoserve Ltd. Registered in England & Wales, Number 5750143. Registered Office: South Side Aviation, Leeds Bradford Int'l Airport, Leeds, LS19 7UG
City-visitor is an online product of Infoserve Group plc