Why Local Is Different

After some hype, local search has earned the respect it deserves. The massive opportunity cuts across the yellow pages, direct mail and in-store marketing programs. What emerges is a notoriously difficult market of small and medium-sized businesses that number close to 20m, but fewer than 25% even have a website.

The prospect of converting local advertising to an online channel requires more than adding a ZIP code. It means understanding local geography and how small business owners think about advertising programs. It involves ad procurement systems, user behavior and other factors, which all add up to a complex puzzle that is challenging but rewarding to solve.

Learn about how geotargeted campaigns are designed and the status of inventory and distribution for local ads on web and mobile devices. Attendees will also better understand the pull on advertisers from search engines, who employ a technology-first self-service procurement approach, and yellow page publishers, who nurture established relationships to drive online campaigns.

Moderator:

• Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping

Speakers:

• Gib Olander, Director of Business Development, Localeze
• Benu Aggarwal, Founder & President, Milestone Internet Marketing
• Chad Schott, Vice President, Business Development, Marchex, Inc.
• Vik Advani, Co-founder & CTO, UpNext.com

Day Two - Tuesday

Chad Schott / Marchex:

They work with national brands to bring in traffic from the Internet.

Local is the next big Mega-trend (they say) The on-line equivalent of old media local, newspapers, Yellow pages, etc.

There are 15 million small businesses in the US, most w/o online advertising, so there is a huge potential for dollar$.

Local search is very , very fragmented - there is no one place to go and place and ad; it is the opposite of Google where you can just go to one place to place a nationwide ad.

Novel - many small businesses would rather have the phone ring or “feet in the door,” then a click on their website.

So “PPC” = pay per click, and “PPPC” = Pay per phone call (or PPA = Pay per action.) See blog.kelseygroup.com

Benu Aggarwal:

Important ingredients your web site should have:

1. Web site research

2. Site Design

3. Local search engines & maps

4. Internet Yellow Pages

5. Business databases (e.g. Info USA)

6. Web 2.0 and local search

7. Optimising local videos

Vik Advani UpNext:

Geotargeting: City > Zip code > Neighborhood> Block > where the user is standing

With a Map - the user explicity tells you where they are - you don’t have to know.

*Now you can have your ad appear if a certain map “tile” appears - Not if a keyword appears *

Gib Olander localeze:

People still overwhelmingly want to make purchases from a local, physical store.

(Less then half of all business have web sites)

Note to self: Are these speakers trained to talk as fast as possible because they want to share 15 minutes of a PowerPoint in a 10 minute slot? I would give then a 15 minute slot or ask them to share a 10 minute PP. Or is it just me?

For tiny mobile screens or auto GPS tools or Tivo or other devices, they require small, more concise bits of content.

<Ian> Trick or treat: Order something online and use a “fake” middle initial, then see what marketing you start to receive.!

QnA

If you have a local business, it’s not a matter of your financial budget, it’s your time budget - time spent submitting your specific local information to many database, directories, search engines, etc. And make sure that you web site is at least basically optimized (SEO) before you do anything like a PPC campaign (SEM) which will cost you some bucks.

I’m not sure why this moderator is essentially giving a presentation…oops, now he’s back to the panel.

With Google’s street view images, the minute an imagfe is captured, a business might go out of business. It’s very hard to keep every street scene in America current. Good one, moderator!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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