BeLocal to lift digital marketing
FERDOUS Haider’s frustration at what he saw as poor quality digital marketing services tailored to small business led him to create his own company on the Gold Coast.
Mr Haider, who was born in Bangladesh, completed a Bachelor of Information Systems at Central Queensland University between 2006 and 2009.
He then worked for a number of companies as a digital marketing consultant where he found the industry had a poor image.
“Digital marketing is an industry with a very low reputation because of the manipulation of Google,” he said.
In 2013, Mr Haider, who worked with major clients including Microsoft and Bunnings Warehouse, saw an opportunity to make his mark on the industry.
“I realised there is a massive market gap when it comes to small business,” he said. “What I did is to start working as a consultant for multiple agencies on the Gold Coast and Brisbane.”
While working as a consultant he discovered low-value practices in the industry.
“One company sold a software product, at $3000-$5000 per month, to these medical professionals, medical centres, dentists and things like that. But all they were doing was using the software to create backlinks (backlinks are when a website links to another page) … and yet they were paying $3000-$5000 per month.”
Mr Haider launched BeLocal towards the end of 2013 with the idea of offering cost-effective digital marketing services for small businesses while providing traffic volume guarantees.
He said his approach differed from other companies by focusing on traffic rather than Google ranking.
“A lot of people care about ranking and their position on Google but ranking only matters as long as you get the clicks and website traffic and leads from there,” he said.
“Even if you rank for 600 to 700 keywords it does not matter because some do not have any search volume.”
Mr Haider said it offers a wide range of services to deliver the traffic including mobile responsive websites, social media marketing, content marketing such as blog posts, and local directory profile creation.
The company has three products called Webmax, Clickmax and Localmax with the latter package guaranteeing an increase in local website traffic by 1750 views.
BeLocal defines local as traffic originating in a business’s local area.
“Everything is location, especially for small business, and they want to do business within a 15km radius. So, we have a product designed to deliver localisation,” Mr Haider said.
Along with his co-owners, brother Imtiaz Rizvi, and Tony Bentall, who runs ADB print, Mr Haider is focused on opening BeLocal offices in Queensland and across Australia.
The company this month will open an office in Logan and also wants offices on the Sunshine Coast and Ipswich.