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Tech firms offer seminars to help businesses prepare for Super Bowl

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014
By Carlene Reyes
Cronkite News

TEMPE – With only a few months left until the Super Bowl in Glendale, Diane Radeke wants her Native American jewelry store in Scottsdale, Old Town Jewels, to maximize the opportunity by helping visitors find her store online.

“We are a brick-and-mortar business for 30 years and last year decided to try expanding into e-commerce,” she said. “We’ve been trying to establish a Web presence and learn about social media.”

Technology companies GoDaddy, PayPal and Yelp want her to build her online presence too, so the three have teamed to create a series of workshops to teach Radeke and others how their small businesses can thrive during the Super Bowl and the months leading up to it.

Get Big Game Day Ready is a series of workshops that providing advice on how using each of the companies’ services can prepare them for the 90,000 visitors expected for game day.

On Thursday, 300 people attended the series’ opening event at GoDaddy’s Tempe location.

Rick Marvin, PayPal software engineer and an organizer of the event, said that businesses have a great opportunity to attract customers because when tourists come to town they’ll likely go online to find places to visit.

“I don’t think most out-of-towners know the corner store Italian restaurant,” he said. “So they’re going to go online to find them using the services of Yelp, GoDaddy for these businesses to host their sites and PayPal to help them conduct transactions.”

The event started with a panel discussion with audience-submitted questions featuring Chris Rising, director of small business growth at PayPal, Phil Bienert, executive vice president of commerce at GoDaddy, and Erica Galos Alioto, executive vice president of local sales at Yelp.

Panelists noted that businesses like hotels and restaurants will of course will benefit, but all types of industries can profit from the game’s large influx of people.

“Just think about the last time you were on vacation,” Bienert said. “You probably forgot your swimsuit, and your batteries ran out in your camera, and maybe you forgot your phone charger.”

They emphasized the importance of a small business being prepared by having a plan and knowing how to execute it.

“It’s not rocket science,” Rising said. “It’s making sure your product is fresh … making sure you have a way to be found … and there’s room for an e-commerce strategy.”

Alioto explained that small businesses can compete with bigger establishments by simply sticking to providing great service.

“Whether we like it or not, online reputations are a real thing these days,” she said. “And when we go as consumers … typically we’re doing our research ahead of time, and we want to make sure we’re spending our money wisely.”

The panel was followed by three separate presentations from each of the tech companies elaborating on mobile commerce and how to enhance business profiles online.

Kelley Bird, co-owner of Grabbagreen restaurants, said she’s hoping that Super Bowl visitors will help spread the word about her establishments beyond the Valley. With two locations in Scottsdale and another opening soon in Phoenix, she said her company is in the midst of franchising.

“Our vision is to lead the charge in making fast food healthy,” she said. “With that vision having people from the outside, tourists come in and then go really talk about it and spread some interest in other parts of the country, that could help our business grow.” listen