Local Internet Marketing...Yada, Yada, Yada

Written for SearchIniatives.com by Jim Bonfield. Search Initiatives is fast becoming one of North America's premier providers of local search with enhanced listings on a self-service ad platform.

Internet marketing Yada, Yada, Yada:

Having spent many years in traditional media, and even more years now in Online/Interactive/New Media (whatever it's called these days), I now find myself responsible for building a bridge between them. I am now partnered with a traditional, 22-year old advertising agency and creating an in- house Interactive division- MeringCarson.com.

I can tell you, we “blended marketers” really do have a great story to tell when combining traditional “push” media with emerging interactive and search-based offerings. However, on the interactive local front, we may be confusing more advertisers than capturing them.

Many of us are not really all that clear on our own message, and the real value proposition in our approach.

We must begin to tell a simplified story, rooted in measurement and solid return on investment for these marketers, or they will continue to slip away into the increasingly fragmented media space – possibly to their detriment and certainly to our own.

Push it, push it real good.

Once upon a time ... our traditional media sales folks wanted to focus exclusively on penetration and "push" metrics. Reach and frequency were paramount. Advertisers would hear them talk (almost exclusively) about readership and impressions.

The selling of the Ad units placed in a ROP (as opposed to the shopping vertical sections such as classified, special advertising sections, inserts, etc.) were based on a traditional value assumption selling approach. Even though not requested by the reader, the ads would be expected to perform because there were so many readers that surely some of the readers would find value in the content and respond in some way that would deliver value to the particular business.

Despite undeniable market changes and some obvious flaws in those assumptive conclusions, much of that old story remains compelling and true. Regardless of all of the “audience slipping away stories”, the truth is that many daily newspapers and other traditional publishers still do enjoy tremendous market penetration.

For many local advertisers print may still represent a great advertising opportunity. But the interactive story has added some new and compelling chapters. These chapters can complement and complete the story of the local publisher if they are properly positioned to deliver the goods.

Pull My Message – The New Chapter

Local Search Marketing. Hmmmm? For the past many years this has meant for me, and much of the Interactive marketing community, the act of placing text based Ads on Google, Yahoo and MSN that appear in response to a search query done on one of these sites or any of their search network partner sites.

Many of us had come to define this space almost exclusively as search engine marketing. The technology to perform such high-end targeting was simply not available to any but the Google’s of the world. That has changed.

Enter Local Search Marketing as delivered by local publishers.

Now, local advertisers have the ability to reach readers of say a daily newspaper web site in a way that reaches far beyond the push-nature of a banner ad. Now, reaching a local reader searching for “Car”,or “Car dealer”, can (should) deliver a multitude of search result options – articles, classified Ads, text based search Ads, and even print Ad, that have been converted to online, all having a contextual value in a way that push can’t deliver.

Publishers now have an opportunity to deliver a complete solution - push and pull. Publishers can finally position their media company as a one-stop shop for local advertisers. Now that is the complete story and the story you should position your sales staff to tell.
Clarifying your position.

Thoughtful publishers sell marketing solutions, not inches or impressions. With the one- stop-shop approach, they can be uniquely positioned to solve a marketer’s angst over emerging technologies and the anxiety s/he feels over the possibility of missing out.
This positioning can empower your sales teams to step away from product push scenarios and to take a holistic solutions-based selling approach.

Speaking the advertiser’s language.

Remove the Internet geek-speak and the jargon and let the advertiser understand that you really do have a set of solutions that address multiple marketing needs.
You have traditional methods (ROP, direct mail, inserts, banners, email) that can help create a demand and awareness for his product. You can push any message to likely customers at any time through a number of channels.

You can also provide what the big search engines can provide – more of a Yellow Pages point-of-purchase marketing tool – local search. You can respond to local searchers who may be searching on a site not by company name but rather by topic or category. Most people with a busted water main are searching for a plumber not “John’s Plumbing.” “Furniture store Sacramento” is searched for many times more often than “abc furniture Sacramento.” You can deliver real customer leads through local search based on real- time client interest by category. That is powerful, measurable and valuable.

Most Local, Online Researchers Buy At Local Stores

The Kelsey Group (A research firm based in Princeton, N.J.) found that 61 percent of small and mid-sized business owners think the Internet is an important advertising medium, but that only 14 percent of those local advertisers had made online media buys in the last year.
The same survey found that some 27 percent of online searches conducted by U.S. consumers are aimed at finding local services or businesses.

Do you get the value of that?

It could be that one-in-three searches done by Internet users in your market are being done for local goods and services. Tell that story and have a product set positioned to deliver these leads.However...The reason Craig's list, Google and others continue to peel local search dollars from your market is exactly that --- market. They have the eyes. They have conditioned us to search for what we need with them.

Do you spend time educating readers that you are a source for local search? Just because you build it, does not mean they will come. Without traffic that uses you as a local search tool, you are not going to be able to do much for your advertisers even with a state of the art local search technology powering your site. You must tell this story too.

Fairy tale reporting is just not as popular as it once was. Be prepared to demonstrate the resulting value delivered. Churn will still happen if you can’t prove solid ROI.

Measure everything. What tracking do you have in place now in order to measure your existing advertising results? Can you tie all (traditional and interactive) Ad unit performance into one, easy to understand, report? What about call tracking? Can you tell how many calls their campaign generated?

If not, you better figure it out. Today’s advertisers are no longer content with assumptive reporting. You must be prepared to prove that what you provide is delivering the customers they seek.

Out of the box...

Consider this novel approach; install tracking software on the advertiser’s site. Google Analytics is very powerful, copy and paste installable and still free. Position yourself as a marketing and solutions partner--- know more about the advertiser’s online results than even they do, and share openly with them. Now that would be a story worth telling.

Jim Bonfield is the founder of EyeballFarm, a Sacramento, Calif. Internet advertising and local search engine marketing company that has recently partnered with Mering Carson Advertising to create MeringCarson Interactive. His monthly column can be found in Prosper Magazine and online at www.ProsperMag.com. For more information, visit meringcarson.com, or email him at jbonfield@meringcarson.com.