When Will the Age of the Consumer Come to Yellow Pages?

Excerpted from a Kelsey Group Blog by Michael Taylor November 27, 2007

Empowering consumers to directly ask companies for what they want and to vocalize when they see something they do not agree with has certainly become the “norm” today. Bloggers have become citizen journalists, Web sites are “community owned” and supported, and brands are allowing consumers to direct new TV ads – all indications that major companies have understood the change in the marketing rules. Time Magazine in fact named “you” as the person of the year.

According to the Time article: “It’s about the many wresting power from the few … and how that will not only change the world, but change the way the world changes. In other words, ‘you’ have the power, and brands and its institutions must get ready for the changes that ‘you’ will demand.”

The Yellow Page brand continues to remain closed to consumers, and consumers are showing their displeasure by refusing to accept or keep the print book and opting for local search options on the major search engines rather than going to publisher sites.

The Yellow Pages industry has yet to fully embrace and understand that its advertiser base and content is currently less of a strategic advantage in the age of the consumer.

Consumers are in charge and they are vocal about what they want and who they support. Yellow Pages as a group has done a mediocre job of telling consumers why the print and online directories are relevant products in their lives, how they are changing to meet new demands, and how consumers can continue to benefit from the most comprehensive database of local businesses available.

In this age of “empowered consumers,” what can publishers do to understand what consumers want and how they want to interact with the massive local database Yellow Pages offers? Does the industry really have a grasp on how the way people search for local information has changed and how can this understanding change the way the print product is formatted and produced?

The goal should be to listen and learn from consumers about what makes for a great local search experience, then delivering it in real, differentiated, meaningful features and benefits.

The empowered consumer shift is well under way and now is the time for the Yellow Pages industry to use its considerable local advantage while it can to swing the pendulum back toward viewing the directory product line as the most comprehensive source of local business information whenever and wherever people need it.

My Take

It ain't never gonna happen.

The Yellow Pages will not change - at least not until they are forced to. Nor can they - their functionally obsolete printed medium is so far out of the consciousness of 20-something's making their first major purchases - homes, appliances - that it would require past life regression therapy to resurrect.

The yellow tome will soon be amusing history. "Hey kids, when I was young the coal man delivered house-to-house in a horse-drawn wagon" will become "Hey kids, when I was young they dropped big yellow phone directories on my driveway that we used to use to find phone numbers. Isn't that unbelievable?"

Lead-Generator Yodle Pulls in $12M

by Ken Schachter 26 November 2007, 13:55

Yodle, which aims to solve the knotty problem of using the web to connect potential customers with the local plumber, pizzeria, or podiatrist, has landed $12 million in a second round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the company announced Monday.

Also participating was prior investor Bessemer Venture Partners, which led a $3 million first round in 2006.

Yodle competes against the many print and online Yellow Pages companies as well as Los Angeles-based ReachLocal, which in October closed a $55.2 million fourth round of venture capital led by Rho Ventures. The Kelsey Group, a Princeton, New Jersey, research house, forecasts that global local search revenue from Internet Yellow Pages, local search, and wireless will climb to $13 billion in 2010 from $3.4 billion in 2005.

Andreas Stavropoulos, managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, said New York City-based Yodle tackles “the unsolved problem” of using the web to generate sales leads for local businesses.

“Of all the companies I’ve seen, it’s the closest to having a scalable model,” he said. “It’s a huge market and one that’s very difficult to crack in a scalable way.”

Yodle Chief Executive Court Cunningham, said the company, founded as Natpal in 2005, plans to ramp up to 10,000 customers from the current 1,000 within 20 months.

Despite the web’s frantic growth, historically, local businesses like the neighborhood locksmith would never consider advertising on the web, Mr. Cunningham acknowledged. But with more local content migrating online, the web has become an important source for finding consumers.

“We’ve hit that tipping point,” he said.

The company, which expects to expand its work force from 70 now to about 200 within a year, helps local businesses buy keywords on the major search engines and guide web surfers who click on the link to a Yodle-designed web site set up for the client. Should a potential customer call, the message is delivered through the Yodle phone monitoring system, which provides statistical analysis.

Yodle reaches local businesses by advertising on the web and through a direct sales force, Mr. Cunningham said. The company offers service in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., and plans to launch in up to 10 additional cities next year.

Mr. Cunningham, a former executive at online advertising company Doubleclick, said Yodle is growing revenue at a rate of 350-400 percent per year and that the new cash infusion is expected to bring the company to profitability.

My Take
There is a big difference between a "lead" and a "sale". This should go without saying. Yet Yodle seems to offer "leads" - leads that are expensive and time consuming for a small business to convert into revenue.

Yodle may be bypassing the opportunity to create something revolutionary. Are they going to settle on being another expensive VC funded Web start up?

Granted they offer a unique feature - direct contact with the consumer.

But how is this scalable? When I think 'scalable' I think Craigslist. Did Craigslist need so much VC$?

When I think 'direct sales force' I think expensive. Did a CraigsList sales rep knock on your door?

Is this why they need $12 Million?

Isn't this the opposite of the direction that the Web is heading?

The Crazy Local Ad Biz

Excerpted from article by Chris Silver Smith
Nov. 26, 2007 at 7:35am Eastern

Internet Yellow Pages: Worth The Effort?

Here at the end of 2007, it's painfully obvious that the local search advertising market remains highly fragmented. Numerous local search experts attending the recent SMX Local & Mobile Conference reiterated the observation that businesses seeking to target local audiences have a plethora of options, and identifying and selecting the right locally-focused sites can be an overwhelming task for small business people who have limited time to devote to the task.

So, where should you choose to devote your time and budget? What's the minimum number of sites you should appear in and which are the best for you? This article is geared towards businesses targeting local audiences, rather than businesses who do nationwide advertising—and specifically, how to choose the best internet yellow pages ("IYPs") for your ads and those where it's important to spend time optimizing your free listings.

This might seem ironic, considering that I've suggested that sites which are little more than online yellow pages might follow the expected decline of traditional print yellow pages. But, internet yellow pages overall continue to enjoy very high traffic according to independent reporting agencies, and IYPs are evolving to stay relevant in a post-print era. Also, there's fairly solid industry research that shows that true conversion rates (sales) are higher associated with referrals from internet yellow pages compared with many other channels, including major search engines.

Yellow pages sales reps who show up on your doorstep may blast you with tons of statistics on why you should buy their company's ads versus those of competitors or other media. The stats always sound good, but you've been in business long enough it's hard to trust anything coming out of a sales rep's lips. So, what do you do? If you live in a major metro area, the whole thing is compounded by the fact that you likely get jabbered at by sales reps from a few different yellow pages companies who all have books in the same area, and who all have online business directory products as well. They all spout different numbers at you, and they can't all be the best, most-used, and most-worthwhile can they?

This is nothing new—Yellow Pages sales reps have historically loved to play tricks like making you believe that you should choose to advertise in their books over the competition's because their books are bigger/fatter. The premise is that if more people are advertising in one book, it might be bigger, and if more people are advertising in one book over another, maybe they all know something you don't, right? Wrong! Unfortunately, a classic con job when starting to distribute books in a new territory involves the company printing books on thicker paper, making their books appear to be bigger than their competition's. Even if they had more ads, all that means is that the particular company sold more ads than the other—not that more people actually would see those ads, necessarily.

Chris "Silver" Smith is Lead Strategist at Netconcepts. The Locals Only column appears on Mondays at Search Engine Land.

My Take

Doesn't it seem crazy that there are so many choices for local advertising? Especially when you consider that all business owners know where their best leads come from. They just don't have the tool to connect with them.

Here comes YouGottaCall.com. Please hang in for just another month or so.

Nearly 200 Web 2.0 sites that didn't make it

Excerpted from Everything 2.0 by Bob Stumpel

DEAD 2.0 - Nearly 200 Web 2.0 sites that didn't make it
Going through this chore, I've found almost a hundred links that died since the first time that I saw them. You will find them in the list below, together with the cases that I've reported on before. Some of these simply stopped their activities, or changed names, or rerout their traffic to other domains. Others were acquired by third parties and went up into their websites. Furthermore, I took out a series of links to websites that never seem to come out of their perpetual stealth mode. Nevertheless, please notify me if you see new life in this Death List:

Betafy - Get alerts about new Web 2.0 companies - About
Saulweiner - Meta Web 2.0 list - About
Web20interact - Rate & rank Web 2.0 sites (Icelandic) - About
Woeba - How to Web 2.0 list - About

Breakinglocals - Local artists and fans community - Audio
Genielab - Explore, recommend & rate music - Audio
Ituneslove - Share your music tastes - Audio
Readio - Blog2podcast - Audio
Stridr - Upload & share or sell music - Audio

Blabb - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Bookmarkme - Help create & download bookmarks - Bookmarking
Bringalink - Submit better links on front page articles' content - Bookmarking
Linklog~ - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Lookmarks - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Maple - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Motorken - Digg automotive news - Bookmarking
Mybookmarkmanager - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Pixpix - Bookmark & share media - Bookmarking
Plueballs - Bookmark, rank & share film news - Bookmarking
Socialmarks - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Webringr - Create, send, manage & share links - Bookmarking

3Dplanets - VR chat community - Communicating
Ajchat - Create chat rooms - Communicating
Gtalkr (founders took job at Google) - Google Talk, Flickr, YouTube, feeds - Communicating
Hotxt (now Trutap) - Skype for sms - Communicating
Loquendotts - Text2sneeze - Communicating
Plugaid - Start or participate in discussions & take them with you - Communicating
Quickmail - Email2RSS - Communicating
Sametalk - Chat with other site visitors - Communicating
Swarmthedotcom* - See how other people browse & chat (Firefox) - Communicating
Talktrust - Call anonymously - Communicating
Tello - Locate & collaborate with your key contacts - Communicating
Vicito - Group text service - Communicating

Chipleaders (now Partypoker.com) - Poker community - Community
Eventell - Create & share records of events - Community
Facebox - Now Netlog.com - Community
Goop - Social tagging & more - Community
Peerprofile - Publish & share your profiles - Community
Pinbc - Pakistani int'l business and (?!) family networking - Community
Pissr - People in search of gender neutral restrooms - Community
Singlestatus - Myspace alert mash-up on member status - Community
Soapboxit - Share reviews on everything & everybody - Community
Woolygans - Street culture community - Community
Zamily - Connect & share with your family - Community

Tickethappy - Shared CRM management - CRM

Casabobo~ - Put youraself on the map & date - Dating
Subwaycrush - Dating(?) - Dating

Mockingbird - Collaborative design (Stealth) - Design

Mecenax - Donate & enjoy drm protected content - DRM

ÁndaleSmall online business sales toolsEcommerce
Blogbuy - Social market place - Ecommerce
Correlates - Parallel product search - Ecommerce
Localspring - Social yellow pages directory - Ecommerce
Skombo - Sell & buy rare music - Ecommerce
Slister - Bookmark & list products - Ecommerce
Zipingo - Find local business based on community input - Ecommerce

Helpwinmybet - Help this guy to get laid in a 3some - Economy
Kritx - Social reviewing - Economy
Lendmonkey - Trade everything - Economy
Myfreelanceauction - Buy or sell web services - Economy
Oolsi - Share links to free things - Economy

Ilovemynanny - Nanny jobs & support - Employment
Skillmeter - Identify, measure & retain talents thru assessments - Employment

Frugalbetty - Manage your spendings - Finance
Fundamentalee - Due diligence portal - Finance
Fygo - Connect to network, borrow or lend money - Finance
Investle - Community based investment decision making - Finance
Vcdiggz - Community based deal sourcing firm - Finance

Justcurious - Q&A at random - Fun

Abetx - Auction betting exchange - Gambling
Betbutler (now Danbook.com) - Betting exchange - Gambling
Betfanatic - Betting exchange - Gambling
Betxc - Betting exchange - Gambling
Binexx - Bet on stocks - Gambling
Bluevex - Bet on sports & stocks - Gambling
Elite128 - Betting exchange - Gambling

Crowdiq - Social delphi; set up your own exchange for futures - Gaming
Fotograb* - Participate in & create photo treasure hunts - Gaming
Llor - Build your street - Gaming

Eurotopmodel~ - Rate photo models (map mash-up) - Geo
Packagemapper - Track your package on a map - Geo
Pheromonetrail - Share places & sites & persons - Geo
Placestodo - Post & share places & things - Geo
Topspot-ornot - Spot & review locations (map mash-up) - Geo

Reputata - Manage your reputation (stealth) - Identity

Brainjams - Share knowledge & collaborate on ideas - Knowledge
Coursecafe - Share online research - Knowledge
Kweschun - Q&A - Knowledge

Giftornot - Get ideas for gifts (Amazon mash-up) - List
Tastydish - Report, tag & share restaurants - List
Ziblit - Recommend businesses to other consumers - List

Buymyprofile - Buy or sell ad space on profile pages - Marketing
Ecityxista - Buy internet real estate to increase traffic - Marketing
Feedweaver - Add ads based on keywords you select to your website - Marketing
My-brand - Manage online advertising (now Ads-click) - Marketing
Targetedpixel - Buy pixel space for 5 years - Marketing
Web20milliondollarhomepage - Pixel ads - Marketing

Babamix - Upload, mix & share your media - Multimedia
Grouper (now Crackle.com) - Upload, create & share media - Multimedia
Memoryark (now: Ourstory) - Publish & share stories & photos - Multimedia
Mexbrowser - Stream all media in this browser - Multimedia
Mophone (now Mixxer.com) - Store & share mobile content - Multimedia
Shooter7 - Send photos, videos, music (app) - Multimedia
Streamdrive - Upload & share multimedia - Multimedia
Streamload* - Store & share your media (now Mediamax) - Multimedia
Swapcore - Watch, read & swap it - Multimedia
Swapzies - Store & share or sell multimedia - Multimedia
Tagworld - Share music & photos - Multimedia
Woomp - Upload & share art, photos & video (now: Cpluv.com) - Multimedia

180n - Choose what's news - News
Blogdex - Folksonomied blog topics selection - News
Diggnews - Bookmark, rank & share interesting news - News
Getyourdaily - Compile & share your daily news - News
Googl-r - Views Google news as a tag cloud - News
Newradio - Find & vote for news - News
Nulltag - News tag clouds - News
On2go - News & alerts on your mobile - News
Podolicious - Personalized podcast news - News
Squeet - Get news, blog articles or feeds in your email - News

Jotspot - Take one set of notes, live - Office
Pianist - Save your notes online - Office
Stickytag - Make & share notesOffice
Studicious - Online note taking & sharing - Office
Studybuddy - Share notecards - Office

Orca - Online personal desktop - OS
Parakey - Web OS - OS

Linatree - Download, print & assemble your photo camera - Personal manufacturing

Bettr - Vote on best Flickr photos - Photo
Imagegravy - Host & sell images - Photo
Imobio - Store, share & rank your mobile photos online - Photo
Ivala - Order a photo montage (Latvian) - Photo
Kollabor8 - Collaborate on image mutations - Photo
Parazz - Store & share photos - Photo
Picturecloud - 360o view on your pics - Photo
Pixoh (now: Snipshot) - Edit pics online; relaunched as Snipshot - Photo
Webimager - Capture screens & upload them to Flickr - Photo

Groupsharp (acquired by HubSpot) - Share data, files & wikis - Productivity

Barewiki (now: Ottowiki) - Make a wiki in seconds - Publishing
Pmachine - CMS - Publishing
Socialcookbook - Post, rate & review recipes - Publishing
Tripster - Publish, recommend & share travel experiences (stealth) - Publishing

Fanaticzone - Digg sports - Rating
Jazznoodle - Digg politics - Rating
Newsbump - Digg news - Rating
Polidiggs - Digg political news - Rating
Relishio - Digg news - Rating
Showbloggers - Digg tv shows - Rating
Thenorp - Digg porn links - Rating
Xboxkicks - Digg Xbox news - Rating

Almondrocks - Share feeds - RSS
Beeplet~ - Set up reminders & get alerts - RSS
Egorss - Create meta feeds - RSS
Feedcatch - Manage your feeds (now Feedshake) - RSS
Immediat - Messenger notifications of feeds - RSS
Peoplefeeds - Aggregate personal content - RSS
Touchstone - Suscribe to your news & alerts - RSS

Broadmining - Meta search - Search
Cellpedia - Search for mobile phones - Search
Collaborativerank - Search & rank - Search
Dodloo - Shopping info aggregator - Search
Gadabe* - RSS metasearch (relaunched as Tagjag) - Search
Googlecircles - Find common interest groups - Search
Iamsearched - Are you googled-notification service - Search
Jyamit - Search for places - Search
Knover - Discover who's connected to what & whom - Search
Makidi - Search (stealth) - Search
Opsdo - Hyper meta search - Search
Outfoxed - Social search (now Lijit) - Search
Podzinger - Now Everyzing (http://www.everyzing.com/) - Search
Tanbul - Google-like search, better algorithm for user input - Search
Toptaggers* - Tag, rank & share links - Search
Zigtag - Search, save & share results - Search

Lifeio - All to the people - Software
Msgurl - Shorten links - Software

Fold - Personal portal (stopped) - Startpage
Fyuze - Feed portal - Startpage
Homper - Personal portal - Startpage
Start - Personal portal - Startpage
Zoobio - Startpage (now Zambio) - Startpage

Blogbeat (acquired by Feedburner) - Compare websites' Alexa rankings (formerly known as Alexaholic) - Stats
Dpolls - Create, vote for & search polls - Survey
Socialmeter - Check your 2.0 site's popularity in 2.0-sphere - Survey

Groopus - Visualize your social context based on tags - Tagging
Tagspy - I tag so I am - Tagging
Tagsy - Social bookmarking & feed management - Tagging
Talkinghub (now: Blogforum) - Add tags to your forum - Tagging
Thinglinks - Connect virtual with real world thru sema codes - Tagging

Beedeo - Upload & share videos - Video
Camraoke - Submit, rate & share karaoke videos - Video
Jimmystv - Post, watch & share videos - Video
Openvlog - Upload & record video - Video
Pixpo - Broadcast your video site (now: Mixpo) - Video
Shood~ - Upload & share videos (crashed after launch) - Video
VNCCasts - Watch live broadcasts of people's computer screens - Video
Woomu - Submit, vote for & rank videos - Video
Yashi - Upload & share video(Merged with Bolt) - Video

Posted by Bob at 00:47

My Take

A good reminder that just because it can be built does not mean it should be. Or at least not built without planning, research and funding.

Rapid Growth of WOM for National Brands

Word-of-Mouth Marketing On The Upswing

by Mark Walsh, Friday, Nov 16, 2007 7:00 AM ET

WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING IS EXPECTED TO surpass $1 billion in 2007, making it one of the fastest-growing alternative media formats. In a new research report, PQ Media also predicts that spending on word-of-mouth marketing will grow at an annual rate of 30.4%, and will hit $3.7 billion by 2011.

Helping drive the growth of WoM marketing are Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, blogs that allow consumers to share information, and opinions about brands and products. While 90% of WoM activity is estimated to take place offline, marketers are shifting more spending to online vehicles that can provide more measurable results. Findings of the PQ Media study were presented Thursday at the Word-of Mouth Marketing Summit 2007 in Las Vegas.

What exactly is WoM marketing? PQ Media defines it as an alternative marketing strategy that uses online and offline tactics involving peer "influencers," WoM communities and brand advocates to encourage consumer dialogue about products and services.

The category doesn't include what are considered unethical tactics such as spam, "sock puppeting," (assuming a false identity online to promote a product or company online), or paying someone to talk about a brand without disclosing that they work for the company.

Also not counted in WoM estimates were spending on activities like in-store product sampling, coupons and loyalty programs, and advertising on social networks and blogs. So Facebook's new social ads, which let marketers attach messages to the communications of members who have identified themselves as "fans" of a particular brand, would not be included.

Only marketing through fully disclosed brand advocates on blogs or other online outlets would be included. "The brand advocates or agents have to state that 'We are hired by this particular company,' or 'we were given a sample of a product,'" explained Leo Kivijarv, vice president of research for PQ Media.

Wal-Mart and Sony both ran into trouble last year when they used paid writers to create authentic-seeming blogs evangelizing their brands.

Kivijarv says 2006 was a turning point for WoM marketing, when it went from being an experimental media buy to becoming "increasingly included in fully integrated marketing campaigns." Marketers are no longer just monitoring WoM efforts, but expecting to see a return on investment in increased sales or buzz surrounding a product.

That trend is expected to continue in 2007, when WoM will grow an estimated 37.7% to $1.35 billion. Overall, however, WoM remains the smallest marketing segment, capturing less than 1% of industry dollars. Direct marketing, branded entertainment, and business-to-business promotions garner the lion's share of spending.

Kivijarv estimates that there are about 200 agencies and technology companies that either specialize in WoM marketing or have units dedicated to it.

While no specific data is yet available on WoM spending by product category, food and beverage, media and entertainment, and sports and recreation are among the most active in employing WoM strategies.

Mark Walsh can be reached at walsh@mediapost.com

My Take

Mr. Walsh's article covers data and projections for national brands.

But you as a local contractor or professional are part of the Word-of-Mouth Wave already. "Huh? How's that?" Well, you Feel your ears burning?

Your clients, customers, friends and neighbors are talking about you right now in the grocery store, on the sidelines of sporting events, walking their dog and at PTA meetings. They're
registering with more social networks daily to discuss carpooling, child raising, retirement planning - and guess who else they're talking about.

The Web will allow you to engage your satisfied clients using these same social networks to convert more of these discussions into qualified leads for you. And you in turn will be able to reward them and strengthen your relationship - while benefiting the community.

It's the new advertising. There are many benefits to your company including fully variable expenses and improved cash flow.

Stay tuned. The YouGottaCall.com "Connect-gine" is coming.

Rapid Growth of WOM for National Brands

Word-of-Mouth Marketing On The Upswing

by Mark Walsh, Friday, Nov 16, 2007 7:00 AM ET

WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING IS EXPECTED TO surpass $1 billion in 2007, making it one of the fastest-growing alternative media formats. In a new research report, PQ Media also predicts that spending on word-of-mouth marketing will grow at an annual rate of 30.4%, and will hit $3.7 billion by 2011.

Helping drive the growth of WoM marketing are Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, blogs that allow consumers to share information, and opinions about brands and products. While 90% of WoM activity is estimated to take place offline, marketers are shifting more spending to online vehicles that can provide more measurable results. Findings of the PQ Media study were presented Thursday at the Word-of Mouth Marketing Summit 2007 in Las Vegas.

What exactly is WoM marketing? PQ Media defines it as an alternative marketing strategy that uses online and offline tactics involving peer "influencers," WoM communities and brand advocates to encourage consumer dialogue about products and services.

The category doesn't include what are considered unethical tactics such as spam, "sock puppeting," (assuming a false identity online to promote a product or company online), or paying someone to talk about a brand without disclosing that they work for the company.

Also not counted in WoM estimates were spending on activities like in-store product sampling, coupons and loyalty programs, and advertising on social networks and blogs. So Facebook's new social ads, which let marketers attach messages to the communications of members who have identified themselves as "fans" of a particular brand, would not be included.

Only marketing through fully disclosed brand advocates on blogs or other online outlets would be included. "The brand advocates or agents have to state that 'We are hired by this particular company,' or 'we were given a sample of a product,'" explained Leo Kivijarv, vice president of research for PQ Media.

Wal-Mart and Sony both ran into trouble last year when they used paid writers to create authentic-seeming blogs evangelizing their brands.

Kivijarv says 2006 was a turning point for WoM marketing, when it went from being an experimental media buy to becoming "increasingly included in fully integrated marketing campaigns." Marketers are no longer just monitoring WoM efforts, but expecting to see a return on investment in increased sales or buzz surrounding a product.

That trend is expected to continue in 2007, when WoM will grow an estimated 37.7% to $1.35 billion. Overall, however, WoM remains the smallest marketing segment, capturing less than 1% of industry dollars. Direct marketing, branded entertainment, and business-to-business promotions garner the lion's share of spending.

Kivijarv estimates that there are about 200 agencies and technology companies that either specialize in WoM marketing or have units dedicated to it.

While no specific data is yet available on WoM spending by product category, food and beverage, media and entertainment, and sports and recreation are among the most active in employing WoM strategies.

Mark Walsh can be reached at walsh@mediapost.com

My Take

Mr. Walsh's article covers data and projections for national brands. WOM is becoming a key strategy to build sales and customer loyalty.

But if you are a local contractor or professional you're already part of the Word-of-Mouth Wave . "Huh? How's that?"

Well, do you Feel your ears burning? Your clients, customers, friends and neighbors are talking about you right now in the grocery store, on the sidelines of sporting events, walking their dog and at PTA meetings. They're more of them are registering with social networks each day where they discuss carpooling, child raising, retirement planning, etc. And guess who else they're talking about. You.

The Web will soon allow you to engage your satisfied clients using these same social networks - and convert more of these discussions into qualified leads for you. You in turn will be able to reward them and strengthen your relationship - while benefiting the community.

It's the new advertising. There are many benefits to your company including fully variable expenses and improved cash flow.

Stay tuned. The YouGottaCall.com "Connect-gine" is coming.

Defining Social Media

Dave
Evans
Columns

By Dave Evans , November 7, 2007

The other day a friend asked, "Just what, exactly, is social media?" Over the past few months there have been any number of thoughtful articles, speeches, columns, and citations that present in one form or another possible answers to this question. You'd think it'd be a slam dunk. It's not.

I took a look at Wikipedia. Certainly I'd find the answer there. And I did...sort of. Actually, what I found was even better. I found a discussion of what social media may be. It's a sort of recursive irony wherein one of the ultimate social media platforms is used to define social media itself. What really caught my attention, though, was the two distinct camps forming around the definition of social media.

The two camps are ordinary people -- the kind who post their thoughts to blogs (think posts, but even more so comments) or photos and videos to such sites as Flickr or YouTube or who create buildings and characters in virtual worlds like There or any of the thousands of other places where self-made content can be shared. In a nutshell, these are the folks who put the "social" in "social media."

The other camp? Marketers. For this group, the term "media" has their attention, and they're still trying to figure out the "social" part. This is the rub. There's even a viewpoint (you'll find it among the posts and comments in Talk pages associated with social media and places like Robert Scoble's blog) cautioning against the "hijacking by marketers" of social media.

I don't want to see my social spaces cluttered with ads. Sõo Paolo enacted a city-wide ban on outdoor advertising, citing "preservation of the cultural aspects and character" of the city. People look upon social spaces in pretty much the same way: they're about socializing. Of course, there's more to it than that, and advertising is a part of it.

America is, among other things, the land of the consumer. We advertise with a passion and intensity absolutely unmatched anywhere else on the planet. We have the economy to prove it. Advertising and marketing are part of what drives us. A big part. Such a big part, in fact, that wearing logos (Donna Karan T-shirt, $56) and tattooing a brand name on ourselves (think Harley-Davidson) are commonplace. Marketing hijacked social spaces a long time ago, evidently with permission.

The real issue doesn't revolve around who's doing what or where. Rather, it concerns how it's done. I met with a couple of people a few weeks back who were pitching a social media concept that goes like this: "Create a bunch of videos that look like YouTube and post them. Create some communities and postings talking up the products featured in those videos."

I had one of those "OK, one of us isn't on Earth...is it me or them?" moments. I reached down, felt my chair, and decided it was them. I asked them about the Wal-Mart "Drive Across America" campaign. They'd never heard of it. I asked about deceptive advertising. Response: "We've got clients willing to pay!" Suddenly, "hijack" makes sense.

Like e-mail, like word of mouth (itself a major component of social media as applied to marketing), social media will go through growing pains. Hucksters will try to fit in. Fortunately, because social media is driven by a collective (everyone who participates in it), the hucksters will be exposed. Quickly. The greatest thing about social media is it corrects itself. Traditional media really can't do that, but then again it was never intended to.

As for that definition: the emerging Wiki definition is pretty good, particularly this excerpt: "Social media is the democratization of content and the understanding of the role people play in the process." Applied to marketing, the implication is that going forward, a lot of the messages that drive sales will be passed around, if not outright created, by anyone with a related interest or point of view. Marketers are certainly in that group.

Here are some things marketers can do to advance the state of social media and use it in a way that's likely to be accepted:

Participate in forums, blogs, and collectives on social media. A great place to start is Jerry Bowles's "Social Media Today." In one place you'll find discussions by leading social media thinkers.

Join the Talk group that's building the social media entry. Add your expertise, and help build related areas, like word of mouth and social media optimization. As the entry says, it's in need of an expert. How about you?

As an advertiser, build campaigns in ways that genuinely tap the power of your audience. Provide them with the raw materials to share and extend your message.

As a marketer, work to improve your products and services continuously. Roger Adams recently left Home Depot as CMO. "Ad Age" noted in a related editorial that Home Depot needs (in order) "a better floor experience, better trained associates, and more traffic." I'd bet 99 percent of the CMOs, CEOs, and COOs out there would see numbers one and two as operation issues and only number three as marketing. Baloney. When it comes to social media, they're all marketing issues. The floor experience, including the ability of an associate to help a customer, creates the very experience that drives more traffic.

Do you have a definition for social media? Let me know. I told my friend I'd get back to him with an answer.

My Take - My definition of Social Media:

Social media – the space in which the naturally occurring dissemination of thoughts, opinions and experiences takes place between people. Social media may occur in print, video, broadcast and Web-based form, but it is differentiated from commercial media (print, broadcast and Web based forms) by the absence of a profit motive.

Also see:

Buzz or viral marketing - true buzz or viral marketing only takes place within social media. Artificial buzz marketing takes place within commercial media. It counterfeits the dynamics (enthusiasm, passion – positive or negative and sincerity) of “true” buzz marketing, but can rarely reproduce it.

Tim O'Reilly on OpenSocial

Tim O'Reilly Wed 11.07.07

OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid

While I'm a huge fan of the idea of an open social networking platform, I'm bemused by all the enthusiasm over Google OpenSocial. As I sit with what I learn, the mild skepticism I expressed the other day has turned into full blown disappointment. This is nothing like the social network operating system that I got so excited about when I first heard Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon's thought's on the subject.

My disappointment with OpenSocial was crystallized by an exchange between Patrick Chanezon, Google's developer advocate for the program, and an audience member at the OpenSocial session at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin. The audience member asked something about building applications that can remix data from the participating social networking platforms. Patrick's answer was along the lines of: "No, you only have access to the data of the individual platform or application."

This is SO wrong. And it shows a fundamental failure to understand two key principles of Web 2.0:

• It's the data, stupid. (Formerly "Data is the Intel Inside")

• Small pieces loosely joined.

Let's start with the first one. If all OpenSocial does is allow developers to port their applications more easily from one social network to another, that's a big win for the developer, as they get to shop their application to users of every participating social network. But it provides little incremental value to the user, the real target. We don't want to have the same application on multiple social networks. We want applications that can use data from multiple social networks.

And data mobility is a key to that. Syndication and mashups have been key elements of Web 2.0 -- the ability to take data from one place, and re-use it in another. Heck, even Google's core business depends on that ability -- they take data from every site on the web (except those that ask them not to via robots.txt) and give it new utility by aggregating, indexing, and ranking it.

Imagine what would have happened to Google maps if instead of supporting mashups, they had built a framework that allowed developers to create mapping applications across Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google as a way of competing with MapQuest. Boring! That's the equivalent of what they've announced here.

Would OpenSocial let developers build a personal CRM system, a console where I could manage my social network, exporting friends lists to various social networks? No. Would OpenSocial let developers build a social search application like the one that Mark Cuban was looking for? No.

Set the data free! Allow social data mashups. That's what will be the trump card in building the winning social networking platform.

IBM: The End Of Advertising As We Know It

Duncan Riley blogged this on TechCrunch:

IBM released an interesting new report earlier this week that predicts the end of advertising as we know it within 5 years.

To quote IBM

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising. To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels…

The report observes four change drivers tipping the advertising industry balance of power:” control of attention, creativity, measurement, and advertising inventories.” Consumers’ attention has shifted, with personal Internet time rivaling TV time. Consumers have tired of interruption advertising, and are increasingly in control of how they interact, filter, distribute, and consume their content, and associated advertising messages. IBM’s survey findings demonstrated that half of DVR owners watch 50 percent or more of programming on re-play, and that traditional video advertising doesn’t translate online: 40 percent of respondents found ads during an online video segment more annoying than any other format. Amateurs and semi-professionals are increasingly creating low cost advertising content that threatens to bypass creative agencies, while publishers and broadcasters are broadening their own creative roles. Advertisers are demanding accountability and more specific individual consumer measurements across advertising platforms. Self-service advertising exchanges are attracting revenues that were once exclusively sold through proprietary channels or transactions.

My Take:

This study is important for owners of small businesses who sell locally even though its focus is on changes in broadcast advertising by national firms.

New forms of interactive advertising are poised to benefit contactors, professionals and local merchants at least as much as they will benefit huge brands.

Tags: wordofmouth, viralmarketing, y

Local Mobile e-Commerce B2C Site in NYC

My Take: 8Coupons.com

This site is cool. According to them:

"8coupons.com is your local NYC "deals on demand." We feature the best restaurant, shopping, entertainment, beauty and spa deals in New York."

Look like a neat way to get coupons for local (NYC only - for now) businesses on your PC or cell phone.

I don't see a built-in social component. 'Or a viral component either.

'Looks like a natural candidate for Facebook integration to get it to spread like wildfire.

Judy's Book To Shut Down

Excerpted from: Local Search Site Judy's Book To Shut Down at Search Engine Land (Oct. 24, 2007) by Greg Sterling

TechCrunch first reported (confirmed on CEO Andy Sack's blog) that local search site Judy's Book is shutting down and/or looking for a buyer. After struggling to monetize its traffic, the site shifted its business model to emphasize coupons and local deals. The firm had raised over $10 million in two investment rounds. This follows the sale of Judy's Book competitor InsiderPages to IAC's Citysearch and the failure of Backfence.com.

Some might be inclined see this latest closure of a local site as evidence that local's not working. The truth is that it's quite complicated with little room for error by startups. For online consumers, however, local is growing in importance. Just to put the discussion in larger context, here are some facts and stats about local that I quickly compiled:

Internet ad spending will reach $62 billion and surpass all other media by 2011; local online spending will reach $19.2 billion. Local search is projected to be $4.1 billion. Veronis Suhler Stevenson, August 2007

Local search is the second most popular online activity after e-mail
Piper Jaffray (2007)

60% of all local business searches now happen online (33% happen in print yellow pages) and 82% of the people using local search sites follow up their research with offline action
TMP Directional Marketing-comScore, August 2007

Out of the 130 million monthly unique users of Yahoo last year, 116 million of them came to Yahoo with local intent.

Hilary Schneider, Executive Vice President, Global Partnership Solutions, Yahoo!

The Internet will influence a trillion dollars in offline/local retail spending by 2010/11
JupiterResearch, Forrester Research, 2007

Here's some additional recent data on consumer usage of the Internet to find local information from WebVisible and Nielsen. I've also got some additional discussion of the Judy's Book closure on my personal blog Screenwerk.

My Take

Mr. Sack, a seasoned tech founder, has been a pioneer in the area of energizing local commerce with online tools. Via his blog, he remained very open about the lessons he was learning while leading Judysbook.

The failure of Judybook to be profitable highlights the need for:
1. a model with a new approach to monetization - membership subscriptions and ad revenue fall short
2. achieving an early break-even - minimization of advertising expenses.

Connecting With Customers

Excerpted from Connecting Clients to Customers through Social Media Optimization | 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing (October 18, 2007 – 8:25 am)

Every few years major changes take place on the internet and often times this is driven by the way the internet is used. A major shift in the use of the internet has been taking place. The shift is one of transformation from finding information through search engines and buying things through portals to one where people turn to other people for their recent in depth knowledge of an issue or experience buying a product.

Google actually finds itself in a precarious position as a company attempting to protect old revenue streams resulting from search, while simultaneously moving into new social media territories that make Google Search as we know it obsolete.

How Does Social Media Marketing work?

If you had a good experience with a realtor, and a friend asks you, "Do you know a good realtor?" Odds are you might tell them about your experience and the name of the realtor. Offline this is as old as money, possibly as old as bartering, its called word of mouth. Online when a person shares their experience about a good or even a bad experience, its called social media marketing.

Google Search relies on an old derivative of word of mouth marketing online. That derivative is powered by the ability of a person or company to put together a website and take the time to mention the value or non-value of a product or service or even a subject. It used to be technically somewhat difficult to launch a website. Not everyone knew how to do it, nor had the money to hire a pro.

My Take

Social Media Marketing is happening. It will heavily impact the local market where millions of small business owners and professionals serve the needs of consumers and other businesses.

But these business people won't engage an ad agency to energize their social marketing. They need an effective, simple tool that captures the word-of-mouth that is already happening.

Can this model be monetized? (The crucial question.)

The answer depends on whether or not the model can demonstrate to these business owners that paying for advertising after it's already made them money beats the old way of thinking. Whether it's valuable to stay close to their loyal neighbors and customers vs. to essentially ignore them with their ad $ and to spend their budget on the Yellow Pages.

My prediction - a revolutionary model - a "Connect-gine"^TM will come along.

A Better Local Ad Model

Excerpted from SearchEngineWatch:

Searching for a Better Local Ad Model
by Michael Boland

Local search is a paradox. At least, its current ad models are. In one sense, online pure plays, such as search engines, have done the best job building local search products with online mapping, social search and Web 2.0 appeal.

Local search products from online pure-plays eventually hit a wall. Ad models rely on self-service. Advertisers sign up and manage search-based ad campaigns on their own. The vast majority of doctors, restaurant owners and bricklayers are simply too busy being doctors, restaurant owners and bricklayers to become search engine marketers.

On the other hand, yellow pages publishers with fleets of eager young sales reps knock on every small business' door in town to sell, launch and optimize their online ad campaigns. If only that were the case.

The truth: yellow pages companies have this capability, but haven't yet fully executed. Why? They're staring at the potential loss of core offline revenues. Undermine a model that brings in 40 percent plus margins? Not the lesson taught in B-school.

More to the point, yellow pages publishers have what online pure plays are missing (physical sales channel), but lack what they do have (better search-based products).

The fact remains: local search players have an edge from a product development standpoint. The natural tendency to cram an offline model into an online product doesn't work.

Worlds Collide

So, local search players lack sales channels, while yellow pages publishers lack the Web 2.0 gene. Can't we breed them to create some kind of mutant super local search monster? (I call him Yattoogle.)

Buy or Build?

As for building from scratch, we're also seeing a lot of action. Citysearch announced the launch of a 150 person Atlanta-based sales center in January. Online marketing firm ReachLocal received a $55 million investment to continue building out its own feet on the street earlier this month, while Weblistic continues to staff local sales reps.

Meanwhile, hyper-local site Smalltown has built up a small but successful local ad sales strategy in the San Francisco Bay area. The company brings local businesses online with low barrier "Webcards," a de facto Web presence that is easier and cheaper than starting a Web site. Webcards also have the portability, functionality and social elements of being easily e-mailed, shared and embedded with pictures and video.

Taking it to the Streets

To put the local ad sales opportunity further into perspective, it comes down to the wide swath of local advertisers -- representing billions in untapped ad dollars -- who aren't advertising in the yellow pages. Local advertising in the print yellow pages is a $16 billion industry, according to The Kelsey Group.

"In the century or so that the yellow pages has been around, the industry only has about a 30 percent penetration of the small-business marketplace," said Marc Barach, CMO of Ingenio. "There is an opportunity to grow this with new products."

Given that many of these businesses don't have Web sites to begin with, low barrier ways to get online such as landing page or microsite offerings (i.e. Smalltown's Webcards), could complement this product bundle.

Throw in hosting and other services, and this could represent the opportunity to be the trusted source that provides the training wheels for SMBs to get online and advertising. Develop this hand-holding relationship early in a company's transition to the Internet, and you could have an advertiser for life.

My Take

A new model is inevitable. In my opinion it will be completely contrarian.

But I do not think the next model will require an army of sales representatives. After all, who sold you on using Google? Or Facebook?

It will grow like Craigslist, involve people like MLM and benefit the community like SETI.

The infrastructure (persistent broadband, mobile messaging, etc.) is in place. Users are already conditioned and ready to accept it. Advertisers would dive in to be the first ones to benefit.

The only thing stopping this is the creativity of marketers.

Tags: localsearch, socialsearch, yellowpages

Friday October 19, 2007 - 11:50am (EDT)

The Missing Metric

Excerpted from: Offline Conversion Tracking: The Missing Metric

"I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted...I just don't know which half." It's not a joke: it's an astute observation from pioneer marketer John Wanamaker. John was a Philadelphia businessman who conceptualized the department store in the early 1900s. Today, 100 years later, we share the same problem Wanamaker faced of identifying which advertising works and which doesn't.

Online search drives offline sales

In March 2006, comScore conducted a study for Google that showed 63% of purchases by consumers who conducted online searches were made offline. This means consumers called or went to their local stores rather than purchasing an item from a web site.

With the holiday season fast approaching, small and local businesses should sit up and take notice. History repeats itself in marketing, just as in life, so there's a good chance this upcoming holiday season will produce similar statistics as previous years.

Local search behavior dictates purchase method

A Neilsen//NetRatings and WebVisible local search study revealed some interesting insights on local search behavior. The study found that consumers using a search engine to find a local service shopped very differently from a searcher on Amazon or eBay where the transaction occurred online.

According to the study, the local searcher would find a local business via search, but then use the phone 68% of the time to make contact with and/or purchase from the business.

The results of this study send two loud and clear messages: if you're a local company that is not advertising online, you should. And secondly, if you are advertising online and your company completes much of its transactions offline, you need to track offline conversions to get a complete picture of your marketing performance. And just which methods are proven to offer accurate offline tracking?

Methods of tracking offline conversions

Here are a few methods used to track conversions offline.

1. Simple Methods for Offline Conversion Tracking

2. Intermediate Methods of Offline Tracking

3. Advanced Offline Conversion Tracking Techniques

4. Graduate level offline conversion tracking

...The preferred method for conversion was the phone. This particular client does over 90% of its business by direct phone calls driven from their web site, but none of that is captured in their online analytics.

Offline conversion tracking gives you the information you need to make better marketing decisions and to better allocate your advertising resources.

Christine Churchill is President of KeyRelevance.com, a full service search engine marketing firm. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

My Take


The gist of this article applies to all local businesses - they need a way to track the efficiency of their advertising.

It is revealing that most companies that spend large amounts for online advertising are struggling with monitoring which of their ad campaigns really produce sales.

What if local small business owners had the power to immediately harness and measure their most effective advertising channel - and only pay as much as they want to - and pay it after they have earned their revenue?

Wouldn't that be something?


- - Tim

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Tags: localsearch, socialsearch

Thursday October 18, 2007 - 02:32pm (EDT)

Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?

Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?

From the blog of Seth Godin: Marketing Wed, 10/17/2007 - 5:13am.

I got a note from a college student last week, explaining that his professor told him he couldn't use the term 'viral marketing' in a paper. It doesn't exist, apparently, it's just a new-fangled form of word of mouth.

I found the interaction fascinating ("I'm not certain what benefit is gained by arguing with an instructor" is my favorite quote from his teacher) but I got to thinking about whether the instructor had a point.

"Viral marketing" shows up 2,000,000 times in Google, "ideavirus" shows up 200,000 times. Of course, you could argue that just because millions of people are using a term doesn't make it legitimate (though you'd be wrong).

Anyway...



Viral marketing ≠ word of mouth. Here's why:

Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that's it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. A lousy flight on United Airlines is word of mouth. A great meal at Momofuku is word of mouth.

Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn't have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.) The Mona Lisa is an ideavirus.

This distinction is vital.

For one thing, it means that constant harassment of the population doesn't increase the chances of something becoming viral. It means that most organizations should realize that they have a better chance with word of mouth (more likely to occur, more manageable, more flexible) and focus on that. And it means, most of all, that viral marketing is like winning the lottery, and if you've got a shot at an ideavirus, you might as well over-invest and do whatever it takes to create something virus-worthy.

And yes, I happen to think that arguing with the instructor is a very good idea.

My Take

If you are a successful business owner who sells in your local area and are not generating substantial revenue from word-of-mouth leads, then your business is dying. Your failure to generate word-of-mouth referrals indicates a structural failure in your business model.

Yet, as Mr. Godin points out, word-of-mouth is itself a decaying function. What you need to achieve is viral growth.

What if - with no additional effort - you could tie your word-of-mouth leads to a virally spreading engine? A "Connect-gine^tm". What if you could give your friends, neighbors and clients a means for passing along the leads that they normally give you - along with an incentive and a means of benefiting the community?

Now that would be cool :-)

- - Tim

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Tags: wordofmouth, viralmarketing

Thursday October 18, 2007 - 12:58pm (EDT)

Local Online Advertising Up for Grabs

Excerpted from: Times Online

Local businesses are still too hard to find on the web, but the big web companies are queueing up to help

For the most part, small businesses have been slower than big businesses in shifting marketing dollars to the internet, and it's not hard to see why: many small business owners don't have the time or expertise to learn about the new medium, and ad purveyors don't have the time or expertise to create the products and services that will work in small local markets.

Both of those things will undoubtedly change over the next decade or so. That's why a start-up company like ReachLocal can raise an incredible $68 million (£33.5 million) to position itself as the ad sales force for local online advertising.

The sleeping giants in the local ad business are the Yellow Pages companies, and they are rushing to build out their online offerings. But it's not obvious that they'll be able to translate their one-time stranglehold over sectors like plumbers and injury lawyers into similar dominance on the internet. In fact, Google and Yahoo!, with their local initiatives, are a big challenge, and lots of new players are rushing to get involved.

A new survey sponsored by a company called Webvisible shows a great deal of variety in how people do "local search." They use search engines, they use local directories, they use local newspapers, they use consumer review sites. There's a whole sector of companies - Yelp is probably the leader – whose premise is that getting a community to post reviews of businesses is the key to effective local search.

Certainly, the current experience when searching for small businesses online is often quite disappointing, with strange aggregations of generic directory listings leading to an unhelpful maze of links. A lot of money is being spent trying to do this better, but the smaller and more local the geography, the more difficult it will be for big national directory platforms to provide a good experience.

This online market, more than most, is still very much up for grabs.

by Jonathan Weber (founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States; previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard)

My Take

The local ad market is primed for a major upgrade. Social networks will soon alter the way major consumer purchasing decisions are made.

Like Facebook and MySpace changed the social lives of high school and college students; like Craigslist introduced online/offline community shopping; soon the selection by homeowners and families of merchants, contractors and professional services will be influenced by their network of trusted friends and neighbors.

Tags: localsearch, socialsearch

Monday October 15, 2007 - 08:14pm (EDT)