Wal-Mart-owned, big-box warehouse retailer Sam’s Club has added PPC services to its wares, targeting small-business owners with its $50/month packages. The news has largely been met with surprise because this clearly isn’t an area of Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club known expertise; Mark Hopkins at Mashable wonders:
Then there is the issue of trust – despite the fact that they may be qualified to do an adequate job, when I think of internet marketing expertise, the first name that springs to mind isn’t WalMart.
Though the news is somewhat surprising, maybe it shouldn’t be: Sam’s Club has offered web design services for some time, so internet marketing is a natural extension. And for mom and pop shops that have small marketing budgets, this is likely an attractive service that Google can’t really provide because it’s gotten so big. Ashkan Karbasfrooshan at HipMojo writes:
As Google becomes bigger and bigger, it will turn its attention to Fortune 500 advertisers and global agencies, and many of the S&M sized businesses will continue to become increasingly disillusioned with Google. I am not saying Walmart will succeed, but I am saying that it makes sense to offer Sam Club’s mainly small business clients SEM services.
Though it didn’t do such a good job with blogging, Wal-Mart has been fairly forward-thinking when it comes to technology distribution: this year they signed a deals to sell Skype hardware in stores and to offer digital movie downloads on their site. We’ll have to wait and see what they do for small businesses when it comes to SEM.
