On Tuesday, we heard from David Durick of gotoBilling, www.gotobilling.com. This business experienced a 307% volume increase during the recession so I sat down with David to get his insights for other small business owners.
Here is the rest of that interview and more of David’s tips:
What kind of marketing and publicity activities have helped GTB grow quickly and why?
The Web and feet on the street. Even though we are a completely Web-based application and we market 
using the Internet, we have many independent resellers. That’s gives us a huge advantage to market and sell two different ways.
That I think is the key to us having grown quickly. Having both channels of sales maximizes our exposure to potential customers. One way is they find us on the Web and by word of mouth from existing customers. The other is by personal introduction and prospecting by our independent sales people.
What tips do you have for other entrepreneurs who want to go paperless?
Research, Research, Research. And it’s pretty easy now with the Internet and Google. I recommend any entrepreneur or businessperson periodically take time to search the Internet for products and services that can all be provided via the Internet.
Our suite of products, for the most part, helps a business go paperless with their payments, accounting, invoicing and contracts. For other products like phone systems, you can go Voice over IP and the list of things you can do completely paperless or virtual is growing as more and more companies provide you, in essence, a complete virtual office.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I think there’s a mix of things you have to do to be successful. One is to make sure you are looking at what the competition is doing from a feature and pricing standpoint and be on good footing to compete.
Also, you can charge more than the competition if you have a superior product or service that’s not being filled. From there it’s a bit of working on differentiating what you do and then market, market, market and keep marketing.
Our experience is that we have the best little product that no one knows about. If we could reach every business in the U.S. this year and pitch what we have, we’d have half a million customers.
We know it’s all about getting to your potential customers no matter how you figure out how to do it.
If you are in business then you have to prove there’s a need for your product or service.
From there, it’s about getting exposure to more of your customers. This may seem simple, but it really boils down to that. It might take a lot of testing, trying and playing with different channels and ideas, but really, that’s it.
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Thanks David! That’s great advice! For more information about gotoBilling, please visit www.gotobilling.com.
And if you have questions about your public relations and SEO copywriting efforts, please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com. I’d love to hear from you!
