FreshLime growing by serving big data to the little guys
Jay Bean, company CEO and founder, poses for a portrait at the FreshLime offices on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. FreshLime is a data-driven marketing tool for small businesses. SAMMY JO HESTER, Daily Herald
Jay Bean, company CEO and founder, poses for a portrait at the FreshLime offices on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. FreshLime is a data-driven marketing tool for small businesses. SAMMY JO HESTER, Daily Herald
Jay Bean, company CEO and founder, poses for a portrait at the FreshLime offices on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. FreshLime is a data-driven marketing tool for small businesses. SAMMY JO HESTER, Daily Herald
Jay Bean, company CEO and founder, poses for a portrait at the FreshLime offices on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. FreshLime is a data-driven marketing tool for small businesses. SAMMY JO HESTER, Daily Herald
FreshLime in Lehi occupies a smaller office tucked off a short hallway, surrounded by companies more than twice its size. But that’s the point.
Jay Bean, founder and CEO of FreshLime, said his data marketing platform is a company servicing the little guys. FreshLime targets small business service owners to help them re-engage their customers and recapture return revenue.
As he draws it out on his glass white board-like conference table, there are three sections of every small business’ marketing efforts. One section is the actual marketing tools, whether online or offline, from social media to display ads. The next section is the website clicks, in-bound customer phone calls, and social media responses to those ads. The final column is where the money changes hands, where a business sees a financial result of their marketing campaigns. In between those last two columns, though, Bean said, is where small business owners are missing out on data that could change their business.
“FreshLime bridges the Grand Canyon gap between your marketing efforts, the clicks, calls and likes, and the actual transaction,” Bean said. “Still today, 93 percent of transactions still happen offline, and especially for the service sector, so we’re connecting the dots, just like Omniture did for e-commerce a few years ago.”
While many marketing companies approach small businesses from the first column of Bean’s drawing, FreshLime’s approach is the opposite — from the final “transaction” column. Using data analysis, the FreshLime platform is able to show small business owners (SMBs) where their customers are coming from, when they are purchasing, and when the business should re-engage them again. So he doesn’t see local marketing companies as competitors, but as partners in helping small businesses succeed.
“In the local market, SMB budgets are so small, they don’t have tens of thousands of marketing money to spend. And the big data companies aren’t looking at them, so we come in, give them the marketing analytics inexpensively, and help them understand their business better,” Bean said.
Bean, as founder and former owner of the local marketing business OrangeSoda, has been doing marketing for more than 15 years now. And yes, he does get teased about the citrus theme that seems prevalent in the names of the companies he starts. But there’s nothing fizzy about FreshLime, which he started in late 2014, and going from marketing and search engine optimization to data analytics was a natural progression for him. The plumber, the window washer, the housecleaner of yesteryear were usually only one of a just a few tradesmen in their local community. With the internet connecting towns and cities across the nation today, those small communities have grown exponentially, and small business owners are little fish in a very big pond.
“Data is so important today. It helps you know where your customers are. If these local SMBs don’t have that data, they can’t make a profit,” Bean said. “Data can tell them what their marketing should be.”
This type of approach aims to be helpful to small businesses everywhere, and only about 10 percent of FreshLime’s current clients are Utah businesses. Clients hail from 34 states, and Bean expects to be serving upwards of at least 1,000 clients scattered throughout all 50 states by the fall. Additionally, because the FreshLime platform helps businesses re-engage previous customers culled from a company’s marketing efforts, FreshLime can work with all the plumbers or electricians in one town, because each one is targeting different customers.
For most small business owners, using the FreshLime platform can save them both money and time in gaining and keeping customers. As many small business owners can attest, those two things are usually in short supply when the business only employs a handful of people.
“We rely on FreshLime to not only connect us with our ideal clients but help us stay connected long-term,” said Brian P. Smith, owner of Healthy Homes Housekeeping in Ogden.
FreshLime is fairly small itself, with about 20 employees today. But with Bean’s recent large aggregate company partnerships, he expects their client-base to grow exponentially this year, and add about 10 or 15 new employees by the end of 2016. Those newbies will join a young company that’s already winning major awards. FreshLime won “Best Use of Data in Campaign Targeting” at the 2015 Local Visionary Awards at the New York City Street Fight Summit, and recently took home the Business Model Development award in March at the Utah Big Biz Conference.
Local Business
