Archive for the ‘SMBs’ Category
Internet Yellow Pages and Local Search in 2009
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, Mobile, SMBs, Search Marketing, advertising
I was doing some late night number crunching and data research and I came across some interesting points. A few I touched on earlier in the week, but I’ve had some more time to address some of these and I wanted to talk about them. There are huge numbers involved here, and some interesting theories that I haven’t quite finalized in my head. Maybe these thoughts will help clear that up.
Check out this post form Conde Nast in February talking about the Yellow Pages. It is fairly amusing considering how just about anyone you ask in the Northeast will admit that they don’t care much for print advertising. (We hear this all the time) Note the comment:
If Nielsen can’t get TV viewership right after all of these years, how on earth can the Yellow Pages Association know how many times anyone “references” the Yellow Pages?
Thats exactly the point, you can’t track how people use the yellow pages, you can’t see which people read your ad, or how many times people read it and took action, or no action. There is no data to support their continued use.(or even to figure out why people aren’t using them anymore)
However, people still need to find stuff; restaurants, clothes, hotels, doctors, lawyers, whatever… simply now people are turning to the web for a quicker, easier search experience. And search is dominating the web these days. Google is raking it in, Yahoo and Microsoft are scrambling to get a bigger piece, and startups like Cuil and Mahalo are trying to get break into the scene. But however they’re gonna find it, people are going to use search, more specifically local search.
Local search will soon be the king of search, as the economy tightens, people are traveling less and are generally more concerned with whats happening in their community. (and thus more willing to spend their x dollars locally) A particularly powerful quote from A new report by Borrell Associates (which I referenced in an earlier post):
“Local online advertising,” defined as search, “local banners,” and video (classifieds are also in there), would reach $12.6 billion in 2008, with “local search” contributing roughly $5 billion to that total.
Those are big numbers, and there are big players already in and entering the local search market. But there are a lot of nuances in local, people are different, politics matter and most often they have no idea who Marc Andreesen is, they don’t care who backed your startup, they dont care about the fancy rails technology your site runs on. They want results and they want to talk to a person.
There is no concrete answer to the question of who will succeed in local search, there are many verticals and plenty of niches to tackle, but there is certainly going to be a battle over it in 2009. And I didn’t even touch on mobile, which Google’s Eric Schmidt thinks will one day be more profitable than anything else they do. Thats a scary thought.
Will the general population move towards mobile search, are we still two or three years away? Or will local search dominate 2009? I know there are other much hotter topics, but seriously if you are reading this you probably aren’t Joe Cleveland. (Ok, easy)
Local Online Ad Spending
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Local Search, SMBs, Search Marketing, Small Businesses, marketing, web 2.0
Local is good, and it is a significant part of the entire advertising market. Some estimates say that up to 54% of all adverterising is local, or locally based. In our increasingly localized and connected world, the power of local search, local content, and locally based interaction are unquestionably becoming key components of the advertising arena. Agencies and Local SMB’s are both very increasingly using local based targeting, or local search as an element of their campaigns. According to a new eMarketer Report, In 2008 Internet Yellow Page advertising is expected to reach $1.2 Billion in ad spending. Measurable to say the least.
Local content is largely becoming focused on user generated content; topix.com, outside.in, and others are focusing on creating a platform for people to share their reactions and feelings on locally relevant issues. The number of review sites (the likes of Yelp, BooRah, etc) seem to be doubling by the minute. While it is no question that people are extremely interestedin sharing their content locally, again how are these companies going to monetize this revenue?
Today, I saved $800 on a minor bumper repair to my car because I was researching some competition, checked out Topix, and found a video ad for a bumper repair place promising to save me hundreds. Well they did, and I had a long conversation with the owner of the business. He has totally abondoned anything in print, he created the video himself, and is advertising locally online to spread the word. Only purchasing a few text ads pointing to his website, he has designed his own viral campaign. Here’s the video:
This is how local advertising is going to be monetized. Simply, I was looking for something local, I found it and completely unintentionally I found something that I needed. Video can become a power tool in one’s local arsenal, and is quickly becoming sought after. I am now endeared to topix (they do have a ton of comments from nearly any city you visit), and I literally saved over 800 bucks to fix my rediculously expensive bumper. Local at its finest.
So listen up advertisers, agencies, publishers: here is the lesson - keep it local, keep it relevant and make the relationship meaningful. While there is no question in my mind (and many others’) that print YP’s and newspapers are no longer a useful advertising outlet and that online local search is the place to be, if you can make the ad meaningful, important, relevant - you can make money. This is nothing new, it seems rather simple, but to truly monetize a local site you can’t rely on CPM’s from exchanges or Honda, Verizon and others (a recent Borrell report estimates the relative CPMs for IYP is $3.65 vs. $9.29 for print YP) . It’s gotta be local, because that way I (the user) can convert that page view into a handshake. And isn’t that what local is really all about?
I think so, and I can’t imagine why any business out there will over look the power of a handshake and a friendly smile.
What Do Small Businesses Need?
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, SMBs, Sales Channels, Small Businesses, advertising, marketing
The latest question I’ve posed to myself and my company, What Do SMBs - Our Customers need? There are many answers, but there are only a few that we can provide to them. What to SMBs need from the internet might be a better question to ask me, so we’ll go from there.
Small Businesses need a cost-effective, results oriented marketing plan to transition their budgets online. The number of options is growing rapidly, but the value they need remains the same. The question is now how should they best approach their solution? Large market players (CitySearch, YellowPages.com, Yelp, etc) are beginning to diversify into smaller markets, but their models are designed around an easy to reach critical mass (read Large Market). But where do local businesses outside of major metro areas turn? Companies like mine.
Our company provides a mix of Lead Generation and Brand Advertising. We offer traditional Lead Generation forms on each business’s profile, multiple branding opportunities across each category, and click-throughs. We provide a short-term ROI and many great value-adds to increase the effectiveness and return for our clients.
Small Businesses need something that works for them, the first time, with a short learning curve. Make it easy, make it quick, make it work. Thats what we are trying to do better everyday. Make our website work better and faster for our customers. We do this by measuring our site, adjusting the layout, increasing our Search Engine Placement and building our traffic.
Our traffic is up, see the chart below (see my previous post Analytics, Where did you get these?, for my thoughts on the actual numbers), our customers are happy and we are feeling pretty good about what we are doing. But its not good enough. Its not easy enough, and its not fast enough.
Local businesses need help doing everything. They spend enough time dealing with employees, and payroll, and taxes, and banking, and and and. They shouldn’t have to spend hours dealing with their marketing. That IS after all, what they are supposed to be paying us to do for them. That is my job, and every marketer’s job that is trying to reach local businesses. Its our job to make their lives easier. If its not easy to sell, its because it isn’t easy enough, or fast enough, or simple enough for the small business to get. And that means we aren’t doing our jobs.
Small businesses need us to do our jobs better; to make their marketing decisions easier. We are the experts (or should be) and your product should have that level of trust built into it. This is coming from a Small Business owner, and a marketing provider. In our experience, it needs to be easy, it needs to be quick and it needs to work. If it does those things well, it will have the trust built in that you need to sell it and the SMB needs to make a decision.
Small businesses need to trust that their marketing (money) is working for them.
