• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 1, 2012

Small and medium-sized local businesses continue to receive an abundance of attention these days. Google Ventures invested seed funding in Signpost back in October 2012, joining an initial investment from Spark Capital. At the time the company described itself as a community-powered deals site. Now the focus turns to SMBs in online advertising. On Tuesday, the company reported closing an additional $3.75 million in funding led by Spark.

In March, Signpost and others announced a deal with Google Offers expanding the way it delivers online advertising campaigns for local businesses. This means select Signpost merchant offers will appear on both the Google Offers Web site and in subscriber emails. The deal became available to 8Moms, APDailyDeals, AT&T Interactive, Boston.com, DailyDeals.com, DoubleTakeDeals, Half Off Depot, Morgan’s Deals, Savored, and Urban Dealight.

Signpost also brought on Christopher DePatria, former head of sales at AOL's Patch, to lead the sales team. DePatria will take responsibility for Signpost's sales operation and revenue strategy, overseeing and scaling the company's sales force.

DePatria, who built the sales team to 80 reps, brings experience in direct sales, sales management, and strategic planning from Yodle, where he helped the company reach No. 35 on the Inc 500. He also brings experience from Yahoo, where he became the youngest director at age 25.

Earlier this month the company released a marketing platform that enables merchants to optimize their online presence to attract new customers on sites other than Google Offers, Everyday Health, and MSN. Along with it, an analytics package to optimize campaigns through advanced campaign reporting measures how sales stack up against campaigns from other similar local businesses.

It also monitors sources driving the most traffic to offers, verifies vouchers with one click, monitors partner sites featuring offers, and enables marketers to gain insight into promoted offers on Facebook, in email newsletters, and in widgets.