Virtual Entrepreneur

Clicks Are Great But Calls Are Better

April 26th, 2007 | Author: MrMoney

Forbes:
Some technology companies have been founded in a garage. Local Internet search company Natpal was hatched in a Connecticut car dealership. That’s where Wharton undergraduate student and future Natpal CEO Nate Stevens realized that Internet search wasn’t exactly friendly to small businesses looking for sales leads.

While working for his father’s auto dealership, Stevens was charged with buying search keywords – used to deliver small text ads on Google and Yahoo! – with the goal of getting Internet sales leads. The problem was that these leads often didn’t result in sales.

Based on that experience, Stevens started Natpal in 2005 with Ben Rubenstein, a 2005 University of Pennsylvania history graduate, and Kartik Hosanagar, Wharton professor of operations and information management. The company recently landed its first round of venture capital financing from Bessemer Venture Partners, a firm with offices in Larchmont, N.Y., Menlo Park, Calif., and Wellesley Hills, Mass.

Natpal’s mission: Bring local businesses online and then help them get sales leads via Web searches, mainly by purchasing text keywords designed to lead to a phone inquiry. For example, a consumer searching for ‘root canal dentist in South Philly’ might see a keyword on Google, Microsoft’s MSN or Yahoo! that Natpal purchased for a local business. However, the click to the dentist’s Web site, which also can be created by Natpal, isn’t the end goal. The goal for small businesses is to generate phone calls to get sales leads. That’s why Natpal tracks both clicks and calls via a proprietary algorithm.

‘Clicks are great, but calls are better,’ says Stevens. ‘Small businesses don’t want to be muddling around with keyword strings. Most are sole proprietors and focus only on what they do. They can connect through our network.’

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