Local Online Marketing

One of the questions that new local online marketing consultants have asked me is what is the best way to see the local results of a distant market.

Google just made the answer a whole lot easier with the new ‘Nearby’ feature they just added into the search engine. Take a look at the following example:

My first search is for ‘pizza’, and I am searching from my office in Broomfield, CO. Here are the results:

By clicking on the ‘Search options’ button in the top of the results, I can display a list of options on the left that reveal the ‘Nearby’ option:

I can then select a ‘Custom location’, which I have entered ‘Chicago’ into to get the following results:

As you can see, I am now getting the local results for Chicago. That’s pretty easy, and makes it simple to research the local results in your clients’ markets.

Thanks Google.

Mike

Local online marketing takes lot of shapes and forms and is changing at a rapid pace. One of the latest developments is new services – such as FourSquare and Gowalla – that are used primarily through your mobile phone and get users to identify their location.

Another idea that is becoming all the rage is delivering discounts to large groups of people that join together to create critical mass in a local market. A leader in this space is Groupon.

A good example of how small businesses are taking advantage of these services to market their business and find new customers can be found in this article featuring FourSquare and Groupon.

This opens up all kinds of service opportunities for the online marketer that is advising small business customers. Spend some time getting to know these tools and brainstorm some ideas!

Mike

With everything from Twitter and Facebook to Foursquare and Gowalla offering ways to identify yourself online, geolocation has become a hot item on the web lately. And why not? Local search is growing, and more and more applications are finding new ways to turn the World Wide Web into the ‘Backyard Web.’

The implications for advertising are amazing. From Brightkite using augmented reality to serve up ads to Foursquare offering discounts when you check in at certain venues, knowing someone’s location gives you a huge amount of leverage when trying to figure out whom you should market to (and how you should do it).

But in spite of most location-based services’ desire to allow users to select their own privacy restrictions, the space is so new that best practices are still being established. And now Congress is stepping in to try and sort through it.

If you work in the local search field, you’ll definitely be affected in some way by the results of these hearings. We’ll keep you updated with any new developments.

Kipp

Everybody wants to get ranked higher in Google, but how many of us know exactly why?

Check out this table that shows statistical evidence of the power of getting ranked higher in Google:

Wow! It’s amazing to see how much traffic is skewed towards the top spots. Clearly the effort required to get ranked higher in Google is worth it towards the top!

Mike

It’s a little late for Valentine’s Day, but it looks like Yahoo! and Microsoft are the latest couple on the block. As of today, it’s official: U.S. and European regulators have approved the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement.

Under the agreement, Microsoft’s search technology will power all the core functionality of Yahoo! Search for a period of 10 years.

What does this mean for you? It all depends on what sort of search marketing you do.

The biggest direct change to search marketers is that all PPC advertising for both Yahoo! and Bing will now be managed via Microsoft adCenter (the previous control panel for Bing PPC). So whereas you used to have to manage paid search campaigns across 3 tools, you’ll now be able to reach 95% of the global search market via Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.

Yahoo!’s search blog has more details on how the merger affects your PPC efforts.

As of now, we still don’t know what this will mean for local search on both Yahoo! and Bing. We’ll be watching to see any new developments.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! and Microsoft have set up a SearchAlliance website where you can get more info.

Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist

I attended the Borrell Associates 2010 Local Online AdvertisingConference in NYC city last week. It was their first conference and they hit some rough patches, but generally it was a good conference and I definitely learned a lot.

Here are some high points:

Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle, gave a very open presentation about their business model, and had some very important lessons for anyone selling online marketing services to SMBs:

• Don’t over-complicate your sales pitch!  Keep it at the level of “we’ll make you more visible in the search engines and generate more leads for your business.” Anything more complicated and you will lost most SMB buyers with your jargon.
• Pick a handful of verticals and really focus on selling and servicing them. You’ll develop expertise that will help you stand out.
• Cold calling is their #1 sales technique. They close their deals over the phone, too!
• Don’t limit yourself to Google when trying to generate leads for your clients. They place ads on 75 different sites.

Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, is one sharp guy, and he gave a very interesting look into the future of local media and what it will take to be successful there:

• You must be able to “sell sales” to be really successful. What he means is that selling visibility, clicks, traffic, or any other measure doesn’t equate long-term to SMBs; all they care about is more sales.
• Location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla will revolutionize local online marketing in ways we haven’t imagined yet.
• Real time web services such as Twitter and Facebook Update will  have more impact on local online advertising than search did.

And finally, some advice from a panel of professional advertising sales trainers, on specifically how to sell these services to SMBs:

• Make your pitch very simple and with a single value proposition.
• Sales reps that are dedicated to selling online advertising will be most successful.
• Sell the value of being on the web first, then the value of your services in particular – many SMBs still aren’t convinced they should be on the web!
• Offer 3 price points with an artificially limited inventory to apply pressure to the process.

Phew!  That’s about 1/20th of the important notes I took at this conference. I’ll be sharing the rest with Everon Web Services Business Coaching Program members in the members’ site.

Mike

There were a couple of really interesting developments in the world of local online advertising today that you may not have noticed.

First, the FTC sent a warning to the industry that they need to find a way to self-police the rules of behavioral targeting, or the FTC is going to do it themselves. It’s not clear exactly what will come of this yet, but you can be sure that it will mean websites and advertisers having to be more clear about what information they collect and use to target ads at consumers.

Second, Apple announced that they are limiting local advertising through iPhone applications to only those applications that are obviously local in nature. This means you can’t sell someone a goofy game and then use the iPhone data to do local targeting. It has to be an app that is about something local – finding local businesses, providing directions, etc.

Both announcements just demonstrate how dynamic and potentially lucrative the local online advertising field is right now. You can be sure that neither the FTC or Apple would be spending time on this if big dollars weren’t involved!

Mike

The fun thing about being focused on local online marketing right now is that stuff is constantly changing!  Change means opportunity, so let’s try to stay on top of it!

Check out this recent post on Search Engine Land showing Yelp ratings in AdWords results.

I haven’t seen this yet myself; it’s probably a limited test in specific markets.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if this rolls out everywhere soon.

Why is this important to you and your customers?  It’s another resource that Google is taking into consideration in their results to searchers, and therefore another factor that needs to be managed by – or for – your clients.

Mike

Many of you joining this program don’t have Twitter accounts when you come on board. As part of the first homework assignment  you are to set up an account and start following me at @mcooch.

Twitter has had a lot of buzz over the last year or so, and a lot of controversy, and you may be wondering why you should bother using Twitter. Let me give you a few reasons:

1. It’s a fun and interesting way to pay attention to the lives of your customers, competitors, and people of influence
2. It’s a great tool for communicating with your friends, customers, and prospects
3. More and more clients are paying firms like yours to manage their Twitter accounts for them
4. It’s getting to be incredibly important in the world of internet marketing

It’s this last one that is the “another” reason I refer to in the subject of this post. Google recently announced a deal to start indexing tweets in their search engine to provide searchable access to content virtually as it is being created.

This is a big deal. To be honest, I don’t even know how big of a deal it is yet, and won’t until Google reveals their full plan of how they will incorporate this massive amount of data into the search engine results. But you can be sure that Google has plans to tie the content created in tweets to a whole new revenue stream. And it will be big. For some thoughts on this recent announcement, check out the following article.

And then, if you don’t already have one, head on over to Twitter and sign up for an account. And if you do have an account already, start putting it to use!

Mike