Sunday, August 26, 2007

Local Business: Promote Your Sale or Special Event

So you have a local business and you're busy. Real busy. But you still need to pay attention to the online local marketing options available to you. Yeh, sure, of course.

But did you realize you can also promote your special events and sales? For free.

Even better news: those options are growing every day.

This is one of those simple, smart, free local "real marketing" opportunities that is easy and helps you reach a new and different audience.

It only takes minutes to post your sale or event on Yelp, zvents, and Upcoming.

And while you're at it, you should check out Look Who's Talking, (Subhead: It's tempting to dismiss online reviews of your business. Tempting, but not smart.) by RIVA RICHMOND. This article is in the free content of the Wall Street Journal and it is about small business management of an online reputation.

Check it out.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Pay Per Call Stats

eStara recently held a webinar, Delivering Quality Leads to Platform Neutral Advertisers, which I missed. But the Praized blog printed stats from the webinar which are interesting if you follow pay-per-call as an ad medium for local businesses.


Praized credits Robyn Rose, Vice President of Marketing for Superpages.com (Robyn's actual title is Vice President of Internet Marketing, Idearc Media Corp.) with five case studies of pay-per-call users and the following data from a florist, satellite TV provider, locksmith, personal injury lawyer, & laser eye surgeon :

  • Average monthly spend went from $300 (locksmith) to $2500 (satellite TV)

  • Average cost per call was spread between $3.70 (laser surgery) to $35.00 (locksmith)

  • The estimated conversion rate went from 30% (lawyer) to 82% (florist)

  • Average sales were between $64 (florist) and $1992 (laser surgery)

I'm a big believer in pay-per-call as a practical way for a local business to monitor advertising and results. Right now, however, there's a lot of clutter and chatter in the field and it's hard to know what's really working for businesses. Real data such as the above is always helpful and if you see other examples, please send them to me.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Political Ads Move to the Grocery Aisles

Marketing agency Urban Tiger Marketing (UTM) signed a deal with Gigante USA, a Mexico-based supermarket chain with nine Southern California stores, that allows UTM to place political advertising on carts inside Gigante USA stores.

Roger Stewart, president of Urban Tiger, said he believes this to be the first retailer willing to accept this type of advertising, and told me that deals are in the works right now to add about 500 more stores to what he hopes will an east coast/west coast network of grocery carts ready for the upcoming presidential campaign.

According to Stewart, grocers have shied away from any type of "sticky" situations such as political ads, but "Where we are right now in the country, [it's time for] a good, honest dialogue."
The ads are open to anyone, but so far have been offered to the major presidential candidates as well as the Democratic and Republican National parties. The ad network will allow for a four month buy (copy can be changed out) in either English or Spanish. Cost is based on a per-store basis.

With blogs and videos, and an emphasis on grass-roots advertising, this seems like a guerilla marketing activity whose time has come.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

For Small Businesses - Easier PR, A New Local Directory Model, and More

**There's a new channel for small busines PR. I can't vouch for them, but it's a good pitch. I quote right from their Web site:
Welcome to PRNewsChannel: The first and only news distribution channel created by journalists with small businesses in mind. PRNewsChannel offers unparalleled customer service at a reasonable price... And we offer FREE Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your press release.


**Peter Krasilovsky has a blog post about the local 411 partnership between Say Hello and the Florida Times Union. This is a potentially mighty model, with its strong local promotion, local identity, plus built-in local sales and content.It has all the elements that Google and Yahoo -- and every other national dot com -- work so hard to line up with their local products. Definitely worth checking out Peter's post and watching the product to see where it launches next.

**Ken Doctor has a blog post about the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and the gutting of an integrated local presence in the name of economics. It is an intelligent presentation of what is happening with local newspapers, and one that everyone involved in local marketing should care about.

**Saw a press release from Orange Soda saying they are "a marketing and technology company that empowers businesses with smaller advertising budgets to maximize their online presence." Awful copywriting but I figured, hmmm, agency that specializes in small budgets....and I emailed and asked if they had a blog. They do have one, and it looks like a treasure of information: http://blog.onlineinlocal.com/


**The new Veronis Suhler Stevenson research on media is in, and more info is available here.

Some of their conculusions: 1) consumer media usage will level off; 2) there are strong gains in alternative advertising, marketing, and institutional spending; 3) consumer media usage dipped but institutional time spent with media increased 4) overall communications spending is projected to grow 6.4% in 2007, exceed $1 trillion in 2008, and Internet advertising is expected to become the largest ad segment in 2011, surpassing newspapers.


The bit about surpassing newspapers grabbed most of the headlines, but the other info is important for local marketers also.

Bridge Report: Radio Advertising is Changing


Bridge Ratings/University of Massachusetts released a study this week about radio, its influence as a media, and its future. Primarily it is about Influencers or Influentials, a term for a group of very active consumers involved in "conversation marketing" (where word-of-mouth is significant in spreading dialog with customers ). It's a great read for anyone who cares about radio advertising or local advertising in general.
Among their findings:
Conversation marketing which keys in on these New Influentials requires a completely different set of skills ... It means throwing out the spreadsheets and mailing lists. It means that "reach", "frequency", "cume", "average quarter hour" and "impressions" no longer relate to the real world's consumer structure.

But it was MarketingBlurb that picked up on a data point that is especially interesting to marketers: People Don't Trust Advertisers. This, actually does surprise me. I always figure, "Why lie?" and except for skin creams and anything advertised as "New", "Better", or "Easier" I pretty much believe ads.









Monday, August 6, 2007

Saks CEO Gives Recipe for Retail Success

Stephen Sadove gives an interview to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in which he reveals the steps to advertising/marketing success for the prestigious Saks department stores:

Part of it is about the product, but part of it is also about having a bigger presence in the community and doing more outreach...
I think we have to do a lot better job and do more in local marketing...
Each of our stores is so different that is not about national advertising but about local advertising, marketing, outreach, initiatives, presence in the community and being involved in local events.


This is thinking that all local businesses should incorporate. And local newspapers, online local media and others should also take note about how they can help retailers accomplish it.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Online Newspapers - Lots of Good News

Local newspapers, and local online newspapers, have plenty to tout according to two reports published this July.

The Bivings Group released their 2007 study of the top 100 newspaper Web sites, and their conclusion is, "Overall, use of online features by newspapers improved across nearly all the categories when compared to last year's research..." Their study is chock full of interesting tidbits, including:
  • The use of RSS increased in 2007 by 21 percent since 2006. Now 96 of the papers we researched are using this technology. Within this group, 93 papers offer partial text feeds, while three offer full text RSS feeds. No papers have begun embedding advertisements in their RSS feeds.
  • Ninety-two percent of America’s top 100 papers now offer video on their websites. This represents a significant jump from 2006, where just 61 percent offered video. In this group, there is a mixture of local, Associated Press, and original content available on newspaper websites. Thirty-nine papers offer original content, 26 use AP video streams, 13 offer video content from local news outlets, four papers use all three technologies, and 10 papers use a mixture of two different types of video.
  • The number and quality of reporter blogs also improved in 2007. Now, 95 percent of papers offer at least one reporter blog. Ninety-three percent (88 papers) of these blogs allow comments. In 2006, 80 percent of the papers offered blogs, with 83 percent (67 papers) allowing comments.
  • The use of RSS increased in 2007 by 21 percent since 2006. Now 96 of the papers we researched are using this technology. Within this group, 93 papers offer partial text feeds, while three offer full text RSS feeds. No papers have begun embedding advertisements in their RSS feeds.
  • Ninety-two percent of America’s top 100 papers now offer video on their websites. This represents a significant jump from 2006, where just 61 percent offered video. In this group, there is a mixture of local, Associated Press, and original content available on newspaper websites. Thirty-nine papers offer original content, 26 use AP video streams, 13 offer video content from local news outlets, four papers use all three technologies, and 10 papers use a mixture of two different types of video.

This is just a sample - check it out.

Aaannd, on another note, the Newspaper Association of America has some new research out, and their conclusion is:


More than 59 million people (37.3 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites on average during the second quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 7.7 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to custom analysis provided by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America. In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated nearly 2.7 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared to slightly more than 2.5 billion during the same period last year. The second quarter figures are the highest for any quarter since NAA began tracking these numbers in 2004.

So when those online sales reps from the local newspaper show up at your business, pay attention.

New York Times Pairs With JetBlue

DM News reports on the partnership between JetBlue Airways Corp. and The New York Times to offer Times On Air, a new in-flight video magazine featuring content from the newspaper’s TimesTalks events, as well as original articles and multimedia from NYTimes.com.

The in-air exclusive programming is sponsored by the JetBlue Card from American Express, and JetBlue is in turn the official airline of TimesTalks events. The programming, which will be updated monthly, covers lifestyle topics such as travel, style, dining, arts, business and technology.

OK, this isn't strictly local marketing, but it is a great example of the type of promotion every business should be looking to implement. Peter Krasilovsky gave another good idea for cross promotion awhile back. Local marketing needs to be all about creativity.

Times On Air can be viewed at www.jetblue.com/timesonair.