The GeoMarketing Top 5 Countdown

The current faces of GoDaddy: Danica Patrick (left) and GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving

When he took the stage on the final day of BIA/Kelsey’s Leading In Local conference last December, Raj Mukherjee, GoDaddy’s SVP of Product Management, acknowledged the work executives at the web hosting company had in trying to appeal to small-to-medium sized businesses.

Over the years, GoDaddy’s perception had been shaped by TV ads that were — to put it mildly —over-the-top racy — and in many minds, the spots were sexist and boorish, as they were designed to manufacture controversy by courting complaints. When Mukherjee joined GoDaddy in 2012 after product management stints at Microsoft and Google, even his wife was a bit concerned about where he was headed.

In his conference message to SMBs and the agencies and vendors who serve them, Mukherjee sought to separate the image of the 18-year-old GoDaddy presented in TV ads, which have generally taken a less salacious tone over time, from the unsexy, buttoned-up job of working with its 12 million worldwide users on building their web presence, providing commerce solutions, and supporting do-it-yourself websites.

GoDaddy’s Raj Mukherjee

The short version of Mukherjee’s message: GoDaddy is grown up.

On Wednesday, GoDaddy’s long-planned IPO opened for trading at $26.15, up 30.75 percent from its pre-market targeted price of $20. As of Friday morning, the stock was trading at $26.50, up 1.34 percent from Thursday’s closing price.

Despite its heavy debt load — about $1.3 billion as of the end of last year — the company is valued at $4.5 billion. There are many of reasons why the company’s IPO did so well this week — and a lot of them have little to do with what’s happening in the SMB digital marketing space. But the timing of the IPO does reflect the increased value of local marketing and the ways that tech companies from Google on down are looking to tap that market.

Speaking of the SMB marketplace, BIA/Kelsey announced its GoLocal Awards winners following its Dallas event. The local market researcher forecasts brands will spend $57.1 billion on local media and marketing in this year alone. Here’s the rundown: