SES Chicago  Day 2  Local Search all day - 4 sessions, this is #1.

Michael Boland, moderator (The Kelsey Group)

For items over $500, people do the research on-line, but then purchase off-line.  Would you buy a huge TV on-line, or go to your local Best Buy / Circuit City?

Richard Rosen (fastcall411) - they connect consumers to local providers - literally - via cell phone (you call, they find, then connect).  Sometimes you call a local search and they are not “available” at that moment for some reason or another (small staff).

Using the traditional paper Yellow Pages may give you stale information (business moved / closed / other).  Here cometh the Demo! (They must have a website - fastcall411.)  A call is placed for a plumber - it goes simultaneously to 10 plumbers, and this is key - the first merchant to respond to your need gets the business!  Excellent.

Manish Patel, Where2Getit.  (W2Gi)  When consumers are ready to buy, who will guide them?  (see also Slifter.com)  1) Google  2) Retailer’s website (Best Buy)  3) comparison search engines (Retrevo),  4) social networks (see also Omgili’s new product reviews).  Organic search, Paid search (PPC), on-line directories, PriceGrabber.com, “smart” GPS devices, all places to find products. 

Scott Dunlap, NearbyNow.  They power shopping malls - you search just a real nearby shopping mall for what they have right there in that mall.  They will check availability, reserve the product (you buy it), and email you the receipt.  You just go pick it up.  They index every real item on every real shelf in that real (local) mall.

Fun act: People will accept no more than two ads per hour to their cell phone.

Traditional ads - how do you know if a billboard or newspaper ad lured the customer into your store?  On-line sales and in-store sales are apples and oranges.  people like local pick-up, “holds (85% will come get it and holds do not require a crdit card), and email receipts.  And if something is new and cool, people want to come and see it, touch it, and check it out.

Bob Armour, ShopLocal.  People use 34% of their shopping time on-line, but companies only spend 7% of their ad budgets on-line!  Can you say, ‘disconnect?’  ShopLocal does on-line version of your Sunday supplements (all those ads that fall out that you hate.)  Companies are starting to wake up to RSS, widgets, social networks, email, text messaging, and so on.

So use ShopLocal.com for all of your Christmas shopping!

End of session.

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