Wednesday, Feb. 20 2013 5:19PM
DOWNTOWN LEE’S SUMMIT MAIN STREET
‘Local savvy’
By Toriano Porter
tporter@lsjournal.com
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closeDLSMS’s latest Lunch and Learn series centers on local, online marketing
Talk about learning something.
A group of business owners and business-minded folks gathered Feb. 19 at the Stanley Historic Event Space, 25 S.E. Third St., for Downtown Lee’s Summit Main Street’s Economic Restructuring Committee’s Lunch and Learn seminar, and some came away impressed by a presentation from Turn the Page, an online marketing company based in Lee’s Summit.
Turn the Page’s seminar, “Google’s Big 3 in 2013: Social, Local and Mobile,” centered on using technology as a means to grow business. Topics included the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to engage both loyal and potential customers, as well as how to best optimize a company’s website and making that website applicable for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets.
“I thought it was very good,” said Sheila Clark, a real estate consultant with the Baird Group Real Estate. “I thought it was something that I could go back and actually do. I didn’t fell like, ‘Oh my, gosh, I’m going to have to hire someone to do this.’ I felt like I can do it.”
Clark attended the seminar with Hilary Baird. Baird said the information gleaned is something that the company can use immediately.
“I believe this was real, practical and important everyday information,” Baird said. “We have all set up Twitter accounts; Instagram. We’re just reaching out trying to stay connected with people.”
Amy Driver, Turn the Page’s chief technology officer, said the company has found its niche in delivering marketing opportunities for businesses to command their local market, and with each seminar, the company’s client base potentially grows.
“When we started talking to business owners we realized we needed to education them,” Driver said shortly after CEO Rob Rance gave a nearly hour-long presentation to a crowd that hovered well past two dozen. Turn the Page has grown from five employees in 2011 to 37 currently, Rance said. “When we started educating them…it just started spiraling into what it is now.”
Most of the seminar was informational, but it’s quite possible business owners or representatives left downtown Lee’s Summit strapped with more knowledge on how to navigate through the treacherous waters of online marketing.
“Honestly, because we sell real estate, we work with clients that are young to old,” Baird said. “The internet has drastically changed us. We have buyers coming to us and saying, ‘Oh, I’m so tired of looking at homes.’ They haven’t physically been in that many homes; they have been searching on the internet, but they are tired by the time they have looked at a few homes.”
Clark said: “We’re trying to get away from paper. So we’re trying to get away from the brochure boxes on the signs. Now we just need to make sure our website is local savvy so if someone drives by a house they can get on their phone and connect with us.”
Added Driver: “We really went into business because we wanted to take a small business owner and help them compete at the level of the big business owners and those big business owners have tons of money that they can just through at marketing and marketing and marketing. We wanted to help give them the opportunity to help them compete at that local level. We wanted to help the small man compete with the big man.”
The seminar and lunch was provided courtesy of The Fristoe Group in Lee’s Summit. The Stanley Historic Event Space and Ingenuity Consulting Partners also provided support for the event.
