Many of you have heard of Manta, the small business and B2B directory site. But my guess is that many of you still have not. The company has been around since 2005 and has become one of the largest SMB hubs online. In many ways it’s a “sleeping giant” in terms of what it could become for the SMB segment.
Manta offers business profiles and some enhanced visibility services for a monthly subscription fee. But the paid services are really in an embryonic state. Indeed, one of Manta’s challenges in the next year will be to define a broader array of SMB (marketing) products and services.
I caught up with Manta CEO Pam Springer yesterday on the phone and she related some stats on the company’s growth. Springer told me that Manta now has over 1 million claimed SMB profiles. By the end of the year she projects that number will double to 2 million.
Each day 3,000 business claim their company profiles on Manta, compared to about 900 a day a year ago. Springer also said that Manta sees 26 million uniques per month. A lot of this traffic is B2B prospecting but some of it is consumer traffic driven by visibility in search results (the company doesn’t sell an SEO product per se).
Springer said that SMBs tend to come back to Manta on average 2.5 times per month and roughly 25% of the site’s claimed profiles are updated monthly. She emphasized that Manta has a “zero customer acquisition cost” (future funders and potential acquirers take note). She added that among paying members retention is over 90%.
SMBs are permitted to claim and enhance their pages for free but they get additional features and visibility as paying customers. While there are more than a million claimed listings the number of paying subscribers is very small, around 25,000. However Springer expects that to grow dramatically as Manta ramps up additional services for its members.
She also told me that about 40% of Manta’s SMB-claimant-members have a Facebook Page. She added that 80% of the business owners that have claimed their company profiles aren’t on LinkedIn.
Manta has its own social aspirations. Currently the site offers a kind of Q&A community for business owners who often seek recommendations and operational advice from their peers. This burgeoning SMB social network — which is also how MerchantCircle positioned/positions itself — is perhaps the most valuable thing about Manta. Business owners who claim their listings can ask questions and participate though all can see and search the content.
I pressed Springer about the paradox of all these SMBs claiming and enhancing their company profiles when the Manta brand is almost totally unknown among consumers. She was unfazed and said that brand awareness will grow over time.
Manta is now sitting on a massive opportunity, with more than a million members now growing to 2 million by the end of this year. There are very few channels with this kind of scale in the SMB market (i.e., ConstantContact, Amex, Intuit, MerchantCircle) and almost no one with a zero or nearly zero customer acquisition cost.
Off the top of my head I can think of three or four companies that should think seriously about a potential acquisition. But I know Springer feels, that after about six years in business, the site is only just getting started.
February 9th, 2012 at 7:48 pm
I have experience only with the free services of Manta, and everything is great, except the fact that the owner verification process is more painful than it should be. Some improvements in this direction might bring many positive results, imho.
February 9th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
You should tell them.
February 9th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
I hope they are following the discussion here
February 9th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Hi Nyagoslav,
Yep, we are following the discussion.
I’d love to hear more about the frustrations you experienced during the verification process. I see you are on Twitter so I’ll follow you. Will you do me a favor and follow us back (www.twitter.com/manta) so I can DM you my direct contact info?
Thanks for posting about this and I’m glad you like being listed on the site. I’m anxious to hear back from you.
- Anna
February 9th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
[...] Manta’s Massive, Unrealized SMB Opportunity, http://www.screenwerk.com [...]
February 10th, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Greg,
Do you know the source of their (unclaimed) business listing data? Is it localeze.com or another provider?
Thanks,
Brad
February 10th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
I didn’t ask that question directly but it sounded like there were multiple sources.
February 10th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
[...] buy an ad, let alone, design the ad?’”Manta’s Massive, Unrealized SMB Opportunity (ScreenWerk) Greg Sterling: Manta offers business profiles and some enhanced visibility services for a monthly [...]
February 11th, 2012 at 5:17 am
Gday Anna
Great to see you following the discussion. My feedback as a brand new Australian user (just signed up after reading this post) is mostly great. Love the interface and love the detail I can add for my business.
However it seems to verify my business I have to call a US number. Now I’d consider a short international call but I think most wouldn’t. But ias ts a toll free US number I don’t think we can even access those from here. So I’d echo Nyagoslav’s comments re the verification needing work. (Of course I realise you might not be that focussed on Aust yet)
Regards Nick Sibbing
February 12th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Hi Greg,
Thanks for this post and to Matt McGee for sharing it. I am in the process of claiming several listings, but I’ve found that many of them have already been claimed by others and that the directory has multiple duplicate and outdated listings. This is going to be a lot of work! (Which is ok, but…)
Does Manta have a resource posted that discusses what to do when a listing has already been claimed by someone else. (I see you can tell them the person isn’t authorized) More importantly, how do I let them know that a listing is outdated and needs to be removed. I can’t see claiming a business I don’t own or represent as a solution.
Duane
February 12th, 2012 at 9:01 pm
Duane… You should contact them. I don’t know the answer
February 17th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Did your business grow through Mantas Program? On a Google,Bing,Yahoo search does your listing show up through Manta? Is the Manta program as good as Yellow Pages for web searches?
Please share your experience with me.
Thanks James
March 1st, 2012 at 6:33 pm
Update: The generic “Contact us” email was useful to remove the dead business listing. But, it did take over 2 weeks for a response.
From Manta 29/02/2012:
“Your address will be removed from the old company profile on Manta.com within 24 hours. Search engines such as Google routinely visit web pages and remove unusable search result listings from their pages on the World Wide Web. It may take a few weeks before a listing is removed from a search result page on the Internet.”
March 7th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Hi, Greg! Great post about Manta…would definitely like to engage with Pam Springer or “Anna” who has been monitoring the string. I sense she works for Manta, as well.
Cheers, Terry
May 7th, 2012 at 1:18 am
I run a Time and Attendance company dealing business to business with any company that has hourly employees. How does Manta perform B to B ?
May 8th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
@Joe: I don’t know what distinct options for B2B that Manta has. You’ll also want to look at LinkedIn.