The MerchantCircle Blog

Small Business Owners Saving Money By Leaving Print Advertising

MerchantCircle member Thom Millage of All Spotless Carpets was featured today on primetime news in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. For WRAL's "Here to Help" segment, Thom spoke of saving over $10,000 a year by leaving print advertising and the benefits he's seen from blogging and utilizing online networks, such as MerchantCircle! Check out the video by clicking on WRAL's site here. Here's a text excerpt of the video story:

More and more small businesses are saving marketing dollars by turning to the Internet to find customers. They use blogs and Web sites as a cheaper alternative to expensive listings in the phone book or advertisements in the newspaper or on television. Thom and Joni Millage, the husband-wife team behind Garner's All Spotless Carpets, cut their print advertising and turned to MerchantCircle.com, a site that offers tools to help small businesses build a Web brand and be found by online searches. The couple began All Spotless Carpets in 2002. "We started out the traditional way, with the Yellow Pages," Thom Millage said. Over the years, he estimates, he spent more than $10,000 for placement in the yellow pages.........

Labels: All Spotless Carpets, Durham, Merchant Circle, MerchantCircle, MerchantCircle.com, NC, North Carolina, Raleigh, Thom Millage, WRAL, Yellow Pages

posted by MerchantCircle Staff at 2/20/2009 05:35:00 PM , 3 comments,

MerchantCircle on WWAY TV3 in Wilmington, NC

The ABC affiliate in Wilmington, North Carolina recently did a piece on the 30-and-over crowd engaging in social networking. One of our merchants, John Burchetta of Burchetta Glassblowing Studio & Gallery, was featured in the news story talking about how he uses social networks, including MerchantCircle, to help promote his business. "It's such an integral part of our business now that if it was just removed, it would feel like I lost an appendage," says John. You can see the video of the story by clicking here and read the story by clicking here. In a previous MerchantCircle blog post, we spoke about our Rapleaf study, that showed we were introducing the concept of "social networking" to almost 2/3 of our merchants. At the time, 86% of our 650,000 merchants were over the age of 26, while 54% were over the age of 36. Social networking, is most definitely, not just for the high school and college crowds anymore. Sincerely, Community Relations

Labels: Burchetta Glassblowing, Merchant Circle, MerchantCircle, MerchantCircle.com, NC, Rapleaf, social networking, Wilmington, WWAY TV3

posted by MerchantCircle Staff at 1/08/2009 01:05:00 PM , 0 comments,