Brand.com helps manage its clients' reputations online

MIKE ZAMMUTO, 43, of Society Hill, is president of Brand.com, which recently moved from West Chester to Old City. The company manages and monitors clients' names that appear online. Zammuto previously was chief operating officer of ChaCha, which gives free, real-time answers to questions online and through mobile phones.

Q: How did the idea for Brand.com originate?

A: The company was started in 2009 by local people with backgrounds in Internet marketing and related areas. I was brought in [in October 2012] to grow the business.

Q: What's the problem you're trying to solve?

A: Trillions of dollars in decision making is based on online research. Companies often don't understand that how they are presented in Google searches impacts decision making. We influence that research by producing content for clients we think Google will select to rank well for their names or businesses.

Q: A real-life example?

A: When people search for Brand.com, we want them to find out about our products and services. It used to be that you could rely on our website showing up as the first search result, and it does, but you also want to promote yourself so people see stories about our growth.

Q: The biz model?

A: Most of our business comes from the outside. We do some online advertising, and people will call us and we do a free consultation. We also have a platform called Command Center that has some free tools that can monitor what people are saying about your brand on social-media sites. If you want to take that further than you can on your own, you pay for those services.

Q: What are those?

A: One is called brand enhancement, where you can have more control over search results that other people see and we can create content about you.

Q: Brand.com moved to Philly this fall. Why?

A: The most important reason is access to talent. We have 80 to 90 people in two offices here, plus another 45 in various locations, so we have 135 employees right now. We think we'll add 100 more employees in 2014.

Q: How big a business?

A: We don't discuss specific revenue, but we expect to do at least $50 million next year.

Q: Cost of services?

A: The range is from $4,000 a month for small clients up to $400,000 a month for bigger ones, but there are large companies that will likely turn into multimillion monthly accounts.

Q: What's ahead?

A: 300 to 400 employees and $150 million in annual revenue in three years. We're opening an R&D center in Silicon Valley in early 2014.

Online: ph.ly/YourBusiness