At the Otter Group we have been working on narrowing and refining our product and service offerings. They now fall into two categories: learning networks for innovation and podcasting for learning skills. From time to time we work with friends and associates on small blogging projects that will help them with their various endeavors. I like to think of these as falling into the “Friends and Family” category of projects. They include a blog for a restauranteur who used to be my neighbor: Rendezvous Central Square; a blog for my favorite bike shop: ATA Cycle; and a blog for my best friend's classroom expeditionary learning project on kayaking: WillauerKayaks.

These have all been successful in helping these small businesses and a classroom showcase what are they doing. But the most clear-cut business case for blogging for micro businesses can be made for the Nitewinds Kennels blog.

A bit of background: My step-father, Jim Morgan, met Nitewinds owner Donna Jasper five years ago when he was looking for an English Cocker puppy. Jim is a relentless researcher and to find the right dog, he knew he had to find the best breeder. He went to all of the dog shows he could attend in the mid-west and interviewed all of the breeders he met at the shows. After a few months of research, he concluded that Donna Jasper had the best dogs available and that her emphasis on breeding for health and temperament would deliver a great dog for him. Enter Jim's dog Buddy:

Buddy was taken out of competition before he got his championship papers but he has become a wonderful pet companion for my step-father.

A year ago it was time for me to find a new dog and Jim highly recommended Donna. In May I brought home Dusty, my beloved puppy.

Here she is in the garden with my 12 year old English Cocker, Stanley:

Earlier this year, Jim asked me if I could help Donna do some marketing for her kennels. I accepted and recommended that we put together a blog/web site so that she could showcase her dogs and services and so that she could maintain the site herself without the help of designer/programmers. I asked one of our in-house designers, Aixa Almonte, to put together a friendly design that would give a feeling of a home-based kennel with an owner who really loves her dogs. Here is Aixa's design:

We created three basic categories for her services of boarding, grooming and breeding. We set up a side-bar component that linked to “Donna's Story,” her personal history and breeding philosophy. We set up a system for uploading and showcasing photos, and we created a contact component that gave people a means to find Donna right from the top page. (At Donn'a suggestion we just recently add a side-bar component that links to a pedigree database so people can research her dog's pedigrees.) Then we showed Donna how to post new articles and upload photos.

Once the blog was up, I set up a very simple Adwords Campaign on Google for Donna. Here is her Google ad:

We set a limit of $2.00 per day with most of our key word bids costing between 10 cents and $1.00. From February 23 to today, the campaign has yielded 114,000 impressions, just over 117 clicks, for a cost of about $30.00 per month.

Donna reports that she has sold four dogs now through the blog and ad campaign. (Her dogs average $1,000 per sale.) She has also gotten some new regular boarders for her lovely Lake Geneva, Wisconsin kennel. So for a total cost of $90, in three months Donna has a wonderful return on investment.

I am reporting about this here because I think that any small or micro business could use similar strategies with comparable outcomes.

Share This

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Main Page. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.