Door to Door Sales, Geolocation CRM and Google Maps Scraping

[Adam Potaznik]

Hi, I joined up a few weeks ago but haven't contributed to the discussion, so I would like to offer my thoughts on a few connected subjects. I would love to hear your thoughts on these topics.

I am just getting started as a Local SEO solution provider, and a street view trusted photographer (my first tour has been submitted to Google yesterday).

I have been thinking a lot about door to door sales. There is a great podcast by Steve Kloyda, and I have devoured about 100 episodes and have picked up some great information: Podcast Archives - The Prospecting Expert

For Local SEO services, I really think door to door is an under-appreciated method of prospecting. The best thing is that B2B is so much easier than B2C, as you know that businesses are going to be open during business hours, and I think digital marketing experts are so involved in the digital side of things, some might find door to door sales "beneath them". This is a huge (or as Larry David, Bernie Sanders says) YUUUGE missed opportunity.

Related to this, I have been looking for a way to scrape the data from Google Maps. Google used to show every business in a street, however they removed this functionality and now it is very hard to see this even if you zoom right in. I am still looking for a good tool to scrape this data. Some tools are not well supported, so when Google changes the way the API or algorithm works, their software breaks, so tools which might be mentioned on Warrior Forum from 2012 or 2013, are definitely broken by now. The closest I have found to a working tool is Google Maps Scraper - Local Scraper and they have a 24 hour trial and the great thing is the developer keeps it up to date, as you can see from their blog, they just released a TripAdvisor scraper which is awesome.

Using Google Maps Scraper, during my trial I managed to put together a nice list of all businesses on an island near me called Phillip Island, which is a touristy place as there are penguins and other attractions. It was not easy though, as I had to do multiple searches in the tool i.e. first for Cafes, then for Restaurants, then merge the two lists and remove the duplicates. I did this for heaps of categories, and have what I think is a great list of 400 prospects in this one geographic area.

However I really wish there was a better tool, because being a seperate island made the search easier, if I want to focus on a particular suburb in a city it is not so good. I really would love a tool where I could just draw a polygon over a suburb or main street, and scrape all that Google Maps data.

Now, what CRM can I use to manage this data? Surprisingly, the only "popular" CRM which seems to use geolocation is Base CRM. There are some others that are addons for Salesforce. However I have not tried SF or Base myself so I can't say how useful their features are.

There is one that I have demoed, called Spotio, which I think will do a better job. This is specifically for door to door sales, however it is targeted at the B2C market. I have contacted the developer regarding this, however I don't think they have implemented my suggestion as yet, which is to make it more focused towards B2B sales. Currently there are issues such as not having a proper "web address" field which has a working hyperlink, if import a field for websites, it just displays as plaintext which is annoying.

So I am looking to use Spotio, along with Zapier to transfer data to Nimble CRM, which is a social CRM and my leading choice as my "main" CRM platform for 2016, due to the great integration with Gmail and LinkedIn and other social networks which Nimble uses to gather information on prospects.

Spotio allows me to attach labels to each propect, and different coloured pins, and KPI Groups (Attempts, Contacts, Qualified, Leads, Sales) so I can see at a glance at what stage in the sales funnel they are.

I would love to hear the thoughts of other forum members, or what tools they are using related to what I have discussed.

 

[James Watt]

Hi Adam! Yeah, I'm a big fan of direct outreach too... just starting to get into the habit of blocking out a little time every day for some cold calling, though I'm a little more in the 'research' phase, so I'm looking a lot more for a conversation to gather some more info in my niche vs making a sale straight off.

There's a lot of ways to get a list together. If you're just looking for a complete list by geography and category, you might be better off getting a more traditional list put together somewhere like InfoUSA | Mailing Lists | Email Marketing Lists | Business | Sales Leads | Consumer. You can use their tool for free too to get a sense for how it works, you just have to pay when you're wanting to export your list. In about 30 seconds I was able to pull a list of 100 leads for every business along a mile stretch of road near me, it's super easy. I'm too lazy to password hunt now though, so I couldn't grab the quote for how much it'd cost. For a list of just 400 leads though, I'd be surprised if it was prohibitive, and you can filter by size of business, gross income, number of employees, etc. Might be worth filtering for new businesses just moving in too, the trusted street photographer might be an especially appealing offer for them, though I don't know your audience too well.

If you're going to go through all the trouble of scraping from Google though... I'm sure you've already thought about this, but might not be a bad idea to think about the kinds of prospects you're actually looking for. Customers who are advertising (adwords, yellow pages, local coupons, etc) but aren't showing well in local? People who are semi-optimized, have a managed page, a number of reviews, but are showing on the second page of local results? People with a beautiful (read: expensive) website but have crappy pictures on the profile and an outdated street view that doesn't even show their business? I'm currently gearing up to focus on a particular niche... I like doing that too since the research I've done has already made it a ton easier to communicate to my target audience, and (of course) testimonials are always stronger when they're as similar to your prospect as possible. If you're mainly hitting touristy places though, that's going to have it's own little corner of marketing psychology that'll work, since they're probably all serving the same customers. I'd probably think about experimenting with a few different front end offers too... the trusted photographer lead-in in in a high-churn touristy area sounds like something worth testing out at least.

Either way, right on! Hitting the pavement is definitely the best way to get to know your audience at least, and I think that everyone should start there, even if they're intending to build out a more traditional marketing funnel a little later in. Gotta know how to talk to the people before you can know how to write to the people.

 

[NewSunSEO]

Hello, I wanted to ask you what you're doing with the data you've been scraping? I've been thinking of doing something similar & building some local SEO directories among several other ideas...

 

[Andy]

Hello - another strategy to build a customer list is described in this excellent post :

The Step-by-Step Guide to Turning Link Prospectors into Lead Generators
https://moz.com/blog/link-prospectors-into-lead-generators

Hope you find it useful

Best

Andy

 

[Adam Potaznik]

I'm sure you've already thought about this, but might not be a bad idea to think about the kinds of prospects you're actually looking for. Customers who are advertising (adwords, yellow pages, local coupons, etc) but aren't showing well in local? People who are semi-optimized, have a managed page, a number of reviews, but are showing on the second page of local results? People with a beautiful (read: expensive) website but have crappy pictures on the profile and an outdated street view that doesn't even show their business?

I have done some field tests, because I am trying to get to Level 4 as a Google Local Guide, so I get free 1TB of Google Drive for 2 years, as I need this to upload my photos for Street View Trusted Photographer program.

In Melbourne, Australia where I live, I went to the newest, biggest mall and took a photo outside each shop. I also went to The Strand arcade, another popular location, and lastly Chapel St, a street of boutique fashion stores.

I was amazed that at all locations, there were heaps of businesses that did not even exist on Google. I don't even mean "Claim this business", I mean that I am standing outside a shop called Oxford and when I search of Oxford, the map takes me to the UK. Or it zooms out and shows me other shops around Melbourne but not the one I am standing in front of.

There were also heaps of "Claim this business" listings. Then there were heaps of businesses with no reviews, or negative reviews, not optimised photos, categories or descriptions.

I would say fully optimised listings, that someone has gone into Google My Business and done everything properly, was maybe 2% of the total. This is such a huge opportunity for door to door sales. These people are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in rent each week.

So I plan to sell health checks, listing and citation management, See Inside tours (with the help of the new Galaxy S7 and Gear VR), enhanced virtual tours, review management, reporting and WordPress websites and digital marketing.

The scraper I mentioned in my original post is good because it gives me enough data to already know quite a bit about a business according to Google. I get NAP, category, website address, Rating, Number of Reviews, Description, Merchant Verified Yes/No.

But I need a better scraper, so that I can do it street by street or suburb by suburb, instead of category by category.