Local Search Frustration? Here's Why

Local Search Complexity = SMB Frustration

Excerpted from Feb 25, 2010 Search Engine Land article

Things in the local search space are out of the control of the typical small business owner; even if they know about the Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local Listings, or Bing Local Listing Center, they’re only covering half their bases (according to last year’s15 Miles survey.) And other portals and data companies typically don’t push updates live with the same alacrity as Google and Bing.

At our recent Local University in Spokane, Mike Blumenthalexplained to small business owners how Google and Bing assemble a Local listing. Mike explained that the major search engines pull in a number of disparate pieces of information (street address, phone number, hours of operation, etc.) about a business from just about any source they can crawl – obviously weighted more heavily towards sources they trust, including their own Local databases.

He further blew our minds with the notion that this two dimensional chart of location information not only expanded infinitely in two dimensions to cover additional local information sources, but also extended into three dimensions, with time as the additional variable. Suggesting, in other words, that recent changes to listing information that aren’t corroborated by other sources may be overwhelmed by the weight of a particular listing’s history!

This lack of transparency and understanding of how listing “clusters” are formed understandably leads to frustration on the part of the business owner, particularly when his experience to date has simply been to tell the Yellow Pages rep how he’d like his information represented year after year.

The bottom line: if you don’t claim and verify each and every listing on each and every search engine and data provider, Google and the other search engines are forced to make a “best guess,” by clustering information that seems to match up, and they don’t always guess right.

My Take

The daunting and inefficient choices for local advertising are temporary - a left-over effect of the mad rush by businesses to get found on the Web.

As Web advertising options begin to take shape, social media is achieving dominance in both traffic and advertising effectiveness. HubSpot's Mark Roberge demonstrated this in his keynote at yesterday's Hartford Business Journal eTechnology Summit. By a show of hands, he illustrated the staggering contrast between purchase decisions influenced by traditional ads vs. social/web research & recommendations.

The "Social Web" provides major advantages over the "Search Web" - higher quality interactions; less "noise"; lower cost' higher yield. Consumers and advertisers who 'get social' will realize these benefits.

The only losers will be the firms who thought short-term and provided unimaginative quick-fixes as well as old media firms that failed to adapt.

Curves Like This You Don't See Every Day

Excerpted from eMarketer Digital Intelligence 1/8/2010

Marketing, Not Ads, Fuels Social Spending Growth

Focus on word-of-mouth and earned media

Going social is no longer an experiment for marketers; it is a reality.

Marketers spent $800 million in 2009 on social network, word-of-mouth and conversational marketing, up more than 23% over the previous year. Further growth of 35% is expected for 2010 to more than $1 billion.

“In 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of marketers’ expenses will go toward creating and maintaining a fan page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the impact of a social network presence on brand health and sales,” wrote eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson in the report, “Social Network Ad Spending: 2010 Outlook.” “Paid advertising will serve to drive traffic and engagement with the larger social network presence.”

My Take

Good old fashioned WOM and social media - two great phenomenons that go great together.

Marketers are planning to spend more and more on getting word-of-mouth to happen. Let's flip the problem around. How about creating a Web infrastructure that facilitates the WOM that's already occurring naturally and normally?

Seems like the simplest solution.

Consumers Open to Online Referrals - But Of Course...

Consumers More Willing To Share Brand Info On Social Networks Than Previously Thought

Excerpted from Laurie Sullivan 11/6/2009 article

...Nearly half of people who saw a brand's name on Twitter went to a search engine to look for the product, compared with 34% on any social network. That's according to a joint study released Thursday by Performics, the marketing arm of Publicis Groupe's VivaKi Nerve Center, and ROI Research, an analytics and technology firm.

Performics Marketing Senior Vice President Michael Kahn says. "Being in a social network is like going to someone's barbecue. People are talking about the experiences of their lives. The sharing experience that happens in the physical world also happens in the social."

Among survey respondents, 30% admitted to learning about a product, service or brand on a social network site. Twenty-seven percent say they remain receptive to receiving invitations for events, special offers or promotions from advertisers through the sites, and 25% admit to going directly to an online retailer or ecommerce site after learning about a product or service on Facebook, Twitter or another social site.

The study found that 44% of people have recommended a product on Twitter, and 39% have discussed a product on Twitter. Facebook skewed a bit higher. Forty-six percent of respondents say they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook.

"Consumers are open to asking about brands, sharing information and taking action on information they get from social networks," Kahn says.

My Take

Social media is on a fast track to be the top source of local information. Because of its power to track and mine consumers' trust levels, social media will leave other forms of advertising in the dust.

Your Reputation Has Preceded You

Your reputation has preceded you. That’s right. We’ve been talking about you.

(Published at Working From The Basement - )

And it’s not just us at WorkingFromTheBasement (WFTB). Heck – your customers, your neighbors, your fellow business owners – they’re all talking about you. As scary as this is, it can be a secret to your success.

For good or bad, word-of-mouth is unstoppable and the most powerful form of advertising. Small businesses tell us that 80% of their new clients result from referrals. And these clients are more profitable since they take less time and effort to close. They’re also more likely to result in future referral business.

Here are some hard-learned reputation marketing tips from successful CT business owners:

1. Current customers are a good place to start. Let them know you welcome referral business.

a. Ask them for referrals early and often.

- Make it a habit.

- Bring it up in conversation and during your follow-up contacts.

b. Reach out to your past customers as well as neighbors, friends. The 20% of them that give you 80% of your new clients are like gold. (See Pareto Principle, also known as the “80/20 Rule”.) You should continually stay in close touch.

- Use phone, mail, email and face-to-face

- Consider a structured rewards/loyalty program.

2. Chambers and networking groups are great. So hit the road.

a. Meet with other owners face to face at networking groups.

b. Put yourself out there – get beyond the shallow networking chat.

c. Be a hub – invite other owners to attend. Be a friend to your fellow networkers.

- You’ll be happier.

- Work will be more fun.

- And, by the way, you’ll probably have more of it.

3. Capture the buzz. Networking is great, but limiting since you can only be in one network meeting at a time.

Remember that while you’re chatting over coffee or adult beverages, your customers and neighbors are “out there” talking about you. And they’re doing this more and more on social media sites.

So multiply your efforts by connecting with your customers and your network on a social site

a. spend 15 minutes a day. Start slowly – it will get easier

b. Facebook is the most widely used social site

c. You might prefer Twitter – it compliments Facebook and makes it easy to find and follow more people you may want to connect with

d. Social media guidance is available

These steps cannot make your reputation. Your skills, enthusiasm and attention to your clients’ needs do that. But by employing these tactics you can allow your reputation to spread, increase word-of-mouth referrals and generate profitable new sales.

Word-of-Mom is the Best WOM. Here's why...

Wooing Women: It's A Head Game

Excerpted from MediaPost article by Maria Reitan

A few years ago Mel Gibson starred in a successfully romantic comedy, "What Women Want." He played a hard-charging advertising executive who thought he knew what women wanted until one day he woke up, and he could hear the actual musings inside women's heads. He was stunned to discover he was way off base.

Wouldn't it be easier if marketers could just read women's minds? Women with children control $1.6 trillion in household spending. Looking at those figures, if marketers are smart they have an opportunity to "get it right" and "get the girl."

Here are some tips for getting inside the head of the home's chief purchasing officer.

1. Time crunched
Mom purchases from companies that are relevant to her multi-tasking lifestyle. Your communications to her must be multi-dimensional as well: pricing, service, messages and actions all play a role.

2. The friend factor
If you can't reach a specific type of woman directly, tapping her friend may serve the same purpose. Seventy-five percent of mothers research a product before buying it, about the same rate as men do at 74%, but 90% of women prefer brands recommended by other moms. That's nearly double the average consumer. "Word-of-mom" marketing is a significant way to make an impression that lingers all the way to the check-out aisle.

3. Technology is "queen"
Women purchase $55 billion worth of technology every year. Sixty percent prefer to be reached via the Internet, but because they are so connected, you can reach mom through a variety of mediums. If you are marketing in the technology space, you should be selling DTM (direct-to-mom).

4. The mom-stage
The cookie-cutter mom doesn't exist. Marketers who connect with women through their shared experiences based on lifestyles and lifestages, no matter what their demographic, will make their products more relevant and believable.

Be relevant. Deliver on your promises. Create some buzz. Get your message in front of mom in many places and many ways. Don't treat all women the same. Follow these tips, and like Mel Gibson's character in the movie, you too can capture her heart (and her disposable income in the process).

My Take

Staggering stats. But not very surprising. Local businesses with tight ad budgets should pay close attention to the data cited by Maria.