Trevor Nadeau is on a mission to make every business in the region discoverable on Google. And he describes the opportunity for making African and Middle Eastern small businesses fully discoverable online in very human terms.
“if we have the ability to help a business owner get discovered properly, with a proper address and category, that is transformational for that business and that business and that business owner’s family,” Trev said. “They will be able to send their kids to better schools, eat better food, take more holidays.”
A fully discoverable ecosystem is good for consumers as well.
“If there are only a limited number of businesses discoverable on Google, it limits consumers’ choices and creates friction in finding and getting to these businesses. If we can remove the friction, everybody wins.”
But this utopia of frictionless discovery is a long ways from reality. Trev estimates that most markets in Africa and the Middle East have single-digit rates of businesses claiming their Google listings, with some markets he serves like UAE and Turkey having rates closer to 20%.
What it takes to get to this utopia of a perfect competitive ecosystem is the subject of our latest podcast, featuring a conversation with Trevor, founder and managing director of Local Knowledge FZE, a UAE-based location management firm. Trevor is a member of the BigFive Digital Advisory Council and will be a speaker at the upcoming BigFive Summit.
You can listen to the podcast here:
This episode of the podcast was sponsored by Boostbility.