Newsflash from #SMX Advanced Seattle, 2011! There’s more to Local SEO than claiming your business page on Google. Local SEO pros David Mihm, President, GetListed.org, Mike Ramsey, President, Nifty Marketing, and Will Scott, President, Search Influence know this, and they geared up for the final session at SMX Advanced to share Hardcore Local SEO Tactics of their own.

Under the lead of moderator Matt McGee, Executive News Editor, Search Engine Land, & Rhea Drysdale, Co-Founder & CEO, Outspoken Media, Inc. on Q&A, this one a must-attend event for businesses looking to beef up their local SEO. Let’s take a look at the full effect, eh?

Matt McGee welcomed the speakers, and then the first up-at-bat, Mike Ramsey, took to the podium. Mike started off by confessing that he loves Twitter profile pictures. Above all, he loves, why… Matt McGee’s! Why does he love it? The color contrast- black against [pale] white; the (one) eye follows you everywhere; that knock-ya-out smile. What does this have to do with local SEO? Absolutely nothing.

So, without further adieu, it was onto Mike’s presentation… A.K.A…

The Nifty Report: 2011
This report was a deep dive into data of local search results his team had recently conducted, examining four different search phrases across four different locations, all pertaining to dentist listings. Interestingly enough, the results all integrated o-pack results (not 7-pack results). Bear in mind, there are two different algorithms that determine 0-pack results vs 7-pack results. Mike looked at the listings for those links that ranked 1-7, then 50-56.They wanted the wide gap to observe obvious differences in high vs. low ranking sites. Essentially, the findings we looked at spanned 28 high ranking listings vs 28 lower ranking listings.

Right-o. Onward!

Places Page Data

• The first thing on the SERPs are claimed listings.
• Typically, claiming your listing is a rule of thumb SEO tactic – but the data shows it might not be the biggest deal regarding improved rankings.
• Claiming listing gives you control over how listing appears (that’s good!)
• But it does not necessarily affect ranking
• Some of the highest ranking listings in this study were actually NOT claimed. Interesting.

• The ones that are really doing poorly… 20 of the 28 listings were claimed. Very interesting…

Exact Category Matches

• Google lets you define specific categories for your places pages.
• If your category is “personal injury lawyer,” “personal injury lawyer chicago,” is considered an exact match.
• 20 of the high ranking sites had exact categories, 14 did not.
• It’s considered the third most important factor in the study.

Google Reviews, Citations, & Other Offsite Factors

• It’s hard to say that general reviews have a cause of rankings, but they do count as citations.
• Google has shown less & less citations on places page over the years. Once, they had a tab on a given places page chock-full of citations. Now… not so much.
• Average citations for top ranked listings is only 36, which is very low, compared to the 100s that used to show.
• A lot of people are saying, “Citations are dead!”  but when you look at the data from Mike’s nifty study, it’s not entirely true.

“Citations can still say ‘I’m kinda a big deal’” – Mike Ramsey, Nifty Marketing

• Generally, offsite SEO factors are still incredibly important.
• OSE links- very important. How important? The 7th most important factor!
• Linking root domains are still very important, as well.
• OSE exact match anchors – only 2.8% avg across the links are exact match. Mike noted this is around where it should be (otherwise, shady).
• Overall KWs in links – majority of links pointing to website are branded. That’s good!

“If citations were the new links for local in 2009-10, then links are the new citations for local in 2011-12.” – Mike Ramsey, Nifty Marketing

On-Site Data

• Average page authority is important, of course- in fact, it’s the 10th most important ranking factor.
• Overall, domain authority is more important than authority of landing page. It’s the 2nd most important factor.
• Business name in title tag of landing page – also important. [Author's note: Ahhh that slide went by too fast for me to capture anything else.]
• Only 1 out of 56 listings had phone number or address in title tag. A.K.A.: Not that crucial.
• City keywords in title tag, also important factors; 22 of the high ranking sites featured them.
• Point at pages that have hot title tags (name, address, phone # [NAP]) – one site did this, and within in 15 min, moved up inthe SERPs dramatically. In. Fifteen. Minutes. Wow!

Takeaways: Focus on…

• Exactness in place (citations categories, content)
• Authority (quality links)
• Trust in views (CTR & UGC)

With that, Mike wrapped up his warp-speed awesome session. Next up was my friend (I think he’d let me call him that), Will Scott.

Tactics on the Agenda

• Community edits
• Alternative citation sources

Community Edits
If you work in local, you might see listings for your address that aren’t you. It’s not uncommon for there to be overlap between you, and people who used to occupy your business space, or people to claim your “address” if you work in an office building that houses multiple companies.

Google’s Map Maker, will says, is like the “Pay It Forward Mechanical Turk .”

Some workarounds: manually poke at the listing until it moves. (A.K.A. make edits until it moves from the top spot.) This isn’t easy, nor is it immediate. Here’s a look at two instances where Will’s team did this for clients.

Will’s advice: Consider building out your power map maker profile – establish yourself as a trusted maker of edits (think: Wikipedia edits).

Alternatives to Citation Sources

• Article engines - When you publish articles into article engines (hush hush, somewhat shady ), you can include your location in the article.
  • Remember to include your NAP! (And remember, NAP = name, address, phone number.) That way, your NAP ends up in SERPs under the links from article engines. (ALSO, remember, any mention of your full NAP is a citation.)
• Facebook - Another citation source, showing up with great regularity. FB reviews are showing up, too. Neat!
  • Sidenote: If you have a FB page for your business, but dont have a well structured address associated with it, slap yourself. (The “slap yourself” part was from the author. Will said something less rude. I think.)
• “Other” – Citations can also be in the form of reviews that include phone numbers near links.

• “All the World’s a Citation!” Leverage city forums, mama forums, association websites, etc.

Will wrapped up nicely, and then David Mihm took the stage to round out the session.

Agenda:

• Opportunities
• Blended SERPs
• Multi-location tips
• What matters in competitive markets

[Author's note: Please allow me to preface this by noting that David Mihm is one of the speediest presenters I've ever encountered. I did my best to capture all of the awesome data he shared with us.]

Opportunities

1. What phrases are you behind your competition in? Look at local as a way to get additional page views.
2. When does the map / blended results show up?
3. How many businesses are listed when they show up?
4. Geo-targeted vs. generic queries? Check out Google Insights to glean what generic phrases are getting the volume. This can help you understand where it’s worth putting in effort.

Got a boss who isn’t convinced of investing in Local? Do this now:

Pre-Website Conversion Tidbit- If all you track is the number of people who come to your location page, you’re missing a whole ton of business. People are acting right on the place page – not necessarily visiting your site to get your NAP (provided it’s in the snippet ).

(This is the point during the presentation where I freaked out a little.)

David recommends we check out a number of resources, but literally, the only one I captured was seobook.com/localization by Aaron Wall.

• Localized Product search is where it’s at – Google is getting into offline purchasing based on online searches. You can search Google products by zip code. That’s rad!

The Impact of Blended

• Top slot is REALLY important
• Photos are REALLY important
• Understand that local requires a different mindset from traditional SEO
  • Traditional SEO is about optimizing websites
  • Local SEO is about optimizing locations
• Submit your contact page as your places URL, NOT your homepage

Muti-Location Tips

• Implement flat site architecture, give each site own page, make it unique, indexable
• Cross-link nearby locations with geo-related anchor text
• **CREATE A KML SITEMAP!**
  • Check out: geositemapgenerator.com

General(ally) Hard(er) Tips

• Consistency – most important feature.
  • Make sure your NAP is IDENTICAL EVERYWHERE on the web.
• Get the citations from sites Google sees, relevant sites
• Claim your listings in a Corporate Google Account
  • Make sure email matches the URL of the places you are submitting!
• Whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder – check that out for citations priorities @davidmihm
• Getting reviews can be hard for big brands with many locations.
  • Leverage email campaigns
    • Segment customers by email address type
      • Google email address? Send them to a Google Review page – they don’t have to log in… because clearly… they already… are…
      • Consider the people who don’t have Gmail… leverage services such as Avvo, Citysearch, Facebook, etc. (“Everyone and their mother is on Facebook.” – Will Scott)
• Consider the syndication value of your review sources… for example, Citysearch vs. Yelp. (Citysearch = better, FYI.)
• POS followup – really important.
  • Feedback should be a part of yoru every day business profession. Review velocity!
  • Caveats
    • Know the rules for incentives.
    • Don’t fish with dynamite.
    • Review threshold
    • Orders of magnitude
• Get buy-in from customers & store managers (i.e. franchise stores).
  • Get BOTH buy in on the importance of reviews.
  • Educate store managers about value in reviews & what they can do to improve.
  • Potentially take the up-front risk of SEO campaign.
  • Work with store mngrs and custom-messaging teams so you’re all on the same page.

Competitive Markets Tips

• -Get the bulk feed verified!
• Clean up / consolidate old / duplicate listings
• Implement geographic inbound anchor text
• Use custom categories for high-volume, high-conversion KWs, for example…
  • “hotel with free wi-fi,” “pet friendly hotel,” “cool coffee shop”
• Get strong industry-relevant review column (this is the order of magnitude)
  • Google looks at quality of review
  • E.g.: A suburban shop that wants to rank for “downtown” needs a ton more reviews than actual downtown places.
• Geo-social media – leverage services like Panoramio, Flickr – get pics of your places out there!
• Get a REALLY high quality citation. Even just one can tip the needle for you in a very competitive market.

Fun Tidbit Tips

• Wikitravel, not owned by Wikipedia, has a high trust level from Google. Add a listing, get on there!
• Wikipedia – you CAN add geo-coordinates for historical buildings. Do you work in one? Add your NAP! Totally legit!

Biggest Takeaway:

• NAP CONSISTENCY! Super important. Remember that. Make sure Google knows it.

—

Word on the street (according to Matt McGee) is there’s never been a Local SEO session at SMX Advanced. All I can say, after attending this puppy, is that there sure as h3ll better be more. This one was truly amazing. Well friends, that about does it for aimClear’s coverage of #SMX Advanced. Stick around later this week for a full round-up of session takeaways and links to all of our blog posts. Until then, cheers!

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SMX Advanced!

As well it should be! The term was only recently coined by Kleiner Perkins internet visionary, Mary Meeker. She’s already begun referring to the next five years as the era of “SoLoMo,” or Social, Mobile, and Local for you n00bz out there (present company included…), and she’s not alone. This powerful intersection represents a serious market revolution to some, a natural evolution of the industry to others. Regardless of the perceived degree of influence, it is noteworthy statistic that for the first time ever, smartphones and tablets are outselling personal computers, emphasizing the fact that people want to be online now, instantly, without lugging themselves over to the other side of the room to boot up the ole’ family PC.

A stacked panel consisting of Kelly Gillease, VP Marketing, Viator, Jennifer Grappone, Partner, Gravity Search Marketing, Daniel Lemin, Founder & Principal, Social Studio, Mac Ling, Director, Mobile, iCrossing, and Nicola Smith, VP, Business Development, Performics, not to mention moderators Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence and Michael Martin, Senior SEO Strategist, Covario, Inc. were ready to examine this behemoth trend as well as the opportunities and impact it carries for marketers.  Read on for an in-depth look.

Nicola, up first, began by discussing the evolution of purchases from purely transactional to transactional and greatly conversational:

Purchases Have Become Conversations | Statistics

• 42% of 18-34 year olds connect or enjoy sharing their purchases via social media
• Services are popping up, like Blippy & Swipely, that sync up bank accounts with social profiles, and allow users to share records of their purchases online
• 400% increase in the number of searches via mobile in the last year
• 74% of people use their mobile phones to search while running errands
• 63% of people use mobile search before purchasing offline
• 59% of people use content to share content with a family member or friend while shopping

Local, mobile, and social as a combined entity offer a really amazing benefit to brands: hyper-targeting of your potential customers, i.e.: you can reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time. This is different from any other medium we‘ve ever used. An additional benefit of using SoMoLo – it’s changing the face of marketing metrics and brand currency.

Traditionally, marketers have paid mind to awareness- offline media and attention; with the advent of social media, we started looking at participation and engagement – the number of tweets, blogs, comments, etc. Now we’re looking at proximity, and ways to track it. Being able to track and measure loyalty is the holy grail for marketers.

How can you start to build loyalty around a brand using SoLoMo?

1) Expand the Check-In! Consider the variety of check-in services:

• Location based check-ins, such as Foursquare and Gowalla
• Content focused check-ins, such as Miso and Filo (you can “check in” to a song… whoa)
• Brand / Product Conversation, such as “Chicken” (a German-based service), allows users to check into a conversation about a brand or product

Takeaway: The check-in phenomenon is evolving and expanding well beyond location-specific check-ins.

2) Combat Fragmentation. There are tons upon tons of social channels out there. Consider leveraging Local Response, which aggregates check-ins across services and allows the brand to respond via Twitter.

3) Simplify the Process. Sometimes, even logging into a service to manually check-in is too time-consuming. Consider leveraging ShopKick, a service that offers a reader which registers when users enter a store – when you know a person is physically in their store, grant them points (Kick Bucks) at the register. Kick Bucks can be redeemed for discounts, or even transferred for Facebook credits. Whoa. Different forms of digital currency transferred across digital platforms.

4) Instigate Repeat Purchases. Groupon is hot, right? Sure, but their model is geared towards getting people in the store for one purchase. After that, they’re rarely seen again. Level Up, brought to you by the same folks who developed Scavenger, is like Groupon on steroids.

• Level 1 – Same deal as Groupon, pay $10 for $20 worth of goods. But with Level Up, as soon as you achieve level 1, you… level up… to…
• Level 2 – $10 for $30 worth of goods. Then, level up… to…
• Level 3 – $10 for $40 worth of goods. Neat!

The value in a model like this is you get someone in your store multiple times –hopefully by the third time, they’re a brand advocate, i.e.: repeat customer. Another perk – you don’t pay for level 1, so if people don’t level up, i.e. don’t show signs of becoming a repeat customers, it’s no harm on your wallet.

5) Make it Fun! Location is about more than just place. Consider this case study: eBay teamed up with Shazam, and now, every time a user searches Shazam for a song, for example, eBay will make product suggestions that align with that song, artist, mood, etc. They call is Inspiration Shopping.

Takeaways:

• Loyalty + Proximity = Currency. The value of currency is currently undefined.
• Purchases have become conversations
• Think beyond the location based check-in
• Combat fragmentation – helps in regards to investment dollars
• Simplify the process; the easier you can make it for a user, the more likely they are to engage
• Instigate repeat purchases
• Make it fun!
• Explore content other than offers and deals!

Next up was Kelly, set to tackle the paid side of social media & mobile marketing .

A Look At Facebook

• Targeted paid ads, not just for external sites, but to grow fans on Facebook.
• Amazing targeting: interests, affinities, demographics, associations and more.

BUT…

• On the social side, growing fans and likes via paid marketing is a massive, largely untapped opportunity.
• “Like” building is a contact list for email, building fans on FB grows an audience for important launches, offers, messages, etc.

Social necessitates a shift in content delivery behavior – companies need to provide content where their audience wants to be; don’t rely on them to visit your site.

• Ads for external sites have mixed results, but ads to grow fans, or sponsored story ads involving fans, are largely positive.

• • Sponsored Stories – an ad endorsed by a friend. Pick a page like or a page post or a post like to promote, will target friends of connections
  • Page Like – when people like your page, their friends see a story about it
  • Page Post – when you post an update on your page, your fans sees a story about it
  • Page Post Like – when people like your page post their friends see a story
  • Great for contests, sales, but also growing fans
• Facebook sweepstakes with Wildfire
  • For example, an iPad 2 giveaway – you can grow fan base (“Like us to win!).
  • Several advertisers have tripled fans with a sweepstakes such as this

A Look At Twitter

• Promoted accounts & promoted tweets
  • Promoted Accounts – paid placements to promote a twitter account with the goal of gaining followers
  • Promoted Tweets- select a tweet to promote to drive engagement, retweets, followers
  • Promoted Trends – promote a trending topic. When clicked, shows a promoted tweet from advertiser. Very expensive.
• Don’t forget the opportunity to include a video.
  • This is something Kelly doesn’t see too often, but it’s really great. In the new Twitter UI, you can view the video in-screen, don’t hve to navigate away to YouTube, etc.

How to Value a Follower or a Fan?

• Track direct revenue from FB & Twitter for both paid and unpaid placements
• Track paid placements with campaign codes, then subtract from overall Facebook or Twitter as referral source for unpaid
• Track followers and fan totals – then, calculate per follower and fan values based on total sales and total followers or fans
• Example: Twitter follower value / Total twitter revenue / # of Twitter followers
• Very basic, but valuations are higher than you might suspect
• Can skew with campaigns to quickly scale fans or followers (like a wildfire contest)
• Valuation aids in allocating appropriate spend for paid media in these channels
• Click to call ads – if you’re not participating in mobile search, you should be!

Paid Ads for Mobile Apps

• Support mobile app launched with paid campaigns on mobile networks
• iAd – Apple only, mainly iPhone, iPad in beta
• AdMob
• JumpTap
• m.youtube Takeover – must schedule far in advance

Facebook and Twitter Takeaway: A coordinated effort with unpaid channels is key for success to achieve higher rankings at initial launch, coordinate email, PR and site side promotion.

Next up was Daniel Lemin, who introduced his 3 SoLoMo concepts:

• Point of engagement – brand awareness, affinity
• Point of sales – local and mobile
• Convergent metrics

The SoLoMo Purchase / Conversion funnel:

• Awareness / familiarity / opinion = social
• Consideration / one make model intention = mobile
• Shopping / purchase = local

Point of Engagement

• The dinner party analogy
• WOM rules the air
• People are just casually talking about products, not driving sales
• Infiltrate these conversations by way of social technologies, get in there, might help lead people into a more serious look at your product leveraging mobile and local
• Driving awareness, testimonials, recommendations, interactions

Local and mobile have a beautiful link to POE!

• Direct line to purchase
• Drive loyalty, incremental sales
• Improve margins

Consider this M&Ms case study. M&Ms hosted a Find Red campaign in Canada. The objective was to help the M&Ms find the Red M&M, who was lost somewhere in cyberspace. This campaign leveraged a trifecta of SoLoMo technologies, mostly offline.  Interesting. Leveraged Google Maps API, QR codes, and other offline technologies that helped give users clues to where Red was. KPI was engagement, not purchases.

Point of Sales
Many companies struggle with social and struggle to understand why they’re putting money into it. This grey area can become black & white when you leverage SoLoMo, and help create a direct line to purchase.

What are some metrics to consider?

• Business metrics – margin, COGS, acquisition cost, lifetime value
• Convergent analytics – engagement rate, sentiment, conversion funnel analysis, events / conversions
• Platform metrics – Twitter influence, page views, check-ins, interactions
• By its nature, SoLoMo is convergent. Therefore, so must the analytics.

What are some advocacy metrics?

• Loyal customers spend more
• Better connections with core customers
• SEO implications
• Intangibles, press and awards

Jennifer was up next. She spent a fair amount of time on a Justin Beiber case study, which I morally could not capture. So. Onto the case study about ice cream.

Coolhaus started very small, one ice cream truck, one city. Cool factor they had/have going from them, no pun intended, was they offered/offer a fantastic product… ice cream. Yum! Also, they were/are rocking a pretty righteous SoLoMo marketing effort.

SEO sidenotes: The Coolhaus site isn’t/wasn’t very usable, not well optimized in a traditional sense. But that’s okay, because the life of the brand’s marketing activities take place in social channels, not on their site.

Photo Share = Success

Jennifer shares an example of one customer sharing a photo of his/her yummy ice cream experience. You’d think Coolhaus would spend a lot of money encouraging people to continue to share photos – but mostly, people just do it on their own. Coolhaus is of limited resources, so they decide to spend their funds trying to get things to happen that might not happen automatically, such as customer loyalty, getting on front of new customers, etc.

Typical day in the life of Coolhaus

• Share location information
• Share coupon codes
• Localized strategies

Geotargeted Flattery
Coolhaus doesn’t have swagger everywhere. So they turn to the people who do. A few days before they pull up in a city, they do research of who’s there, and reach out to the social influencer in the local area. “Hey, @LocalInfluencer, your name is our coupon code for today! Please spread the word!” (Author’s note: Incredibly smart. Vanity baiting IRL.)

Co-Marketing with Competitors
Coolhaus doesn’t have a problem with tweeting at @BigGayIceCream. Lesson: don’t be afraid to tweet with your direct competitors to build a sense of commodity

Takeaways:

• SoLoMo is not magic
• Make it easy to share
• Cross-sell with your competitors
• Open your mind to breaking SEO rules
• Know your audience

Next up, Mac Ling. Topic of discussion: SoLoMo Business – Today and Tomorrow. So… we know there is an intersection between social, mobile & local… now, what do we do with it?

The Spectrum of Online Communication
From group messaging to Twitter to invite-only discussions to photo sharing and location sharing—the technology of online communication is nothing new. For the younger generation, though, privacy has become a ticket to the experience. If you walk into Facebook, your willingness to share info about yourself is the ticket into the doorway of this community. As you give more information about yourself, you’re able to participate more in these communities. This is where the shift is.

What we’re doing now is creating groups that have social aspects to them. Smartphones are the cornerstones of what make this possible. It’s a freakin’ PC in your pocket. Longevity and engagement provide deeper insight into customers and these groups.  Parse info from the streams, connect the dots between what you’re trying to sell and what someone else is in need of.

This connection is the Holy Grail (apparently another one) we all search for – we all have more information than ever before to be able to make that connection happen

However – relevance has a shelf-life, so we have to be nimble enough to communicate to consumers in the decision stage of the purchase funnel.

What do we have?

• Group with shared interests
• Location info
• Contextual info
• Immediacy of fulfilling a need
• AKA: A qualified lead!

How do we use this?

• Provide targeting offer to pod
• Future group buying deals
• Merchants can bid for this groups patronage

Is this the SoLoMo revolution?
Not as much of a revolution as an evolution of the tools. We’re now starting to see, as with the Internet we have a new medium, a new way of talking to customers. We’re using the same fundamental marketing concepts with new tools to achieve similar goals. It’s simply the next iteration of the marketer’s toolbox.

Top Takeaways from the Panelists:

• Mac just spoke, so he passed.
• “Have a mobile website. Make sure it’s optimized.”  - Kelly
• “Know who your audience is, what they’re using, what they like.”  -Jennifer
• “Experiment – this is a constantly evolving space, if you’re not prepared to take a little bit of a chance, you’ll be behind the curve. Always.” –Nicole
• “Don’t look at SoLoMo as a massive thing – just try it. There’s very little incremental cost with tools, if it doesn’t work, at least you know.” – Daniel

That wraps up the SoLoMo session, which, all the while, I’ve wanted to call “Slow-Mo.” But that’s probably because my brains have practically turned to mush. Yes, this truly is an… advanced conference. More coverage coming at you right here in aimClear blog & via my tired fingers @beebow. Until then, cheers!

photo credit: ianwedlock

credit: zenobia_joy

In yesterday’s post, guest blogger and CEO of BlitzLocal.com, Dennis Yu, tackled some important concepts of the local ad firm- specifically the fact that it is sure to kick the bucket in 2010 if industry professionals don’t take proactive steps as soon as possible. Part two of this story will address changes the future has in store for local ad agency fiscal models and a closer look at the crucial dynamics of this evolution.

How will the financial model of local adapt over time?

Firms can take a 50% margin until the market gets smart. Consider the current VC-funded, growth-oriented approach of a pretend composite company… we’ll call it SuperLocal, Inc.

Let’s break it down:

• SuperLocal has 250 employees and 5,000 clients that spend $1,000 a month.
• Assume that 150 of these 250 employees are in sales and each agent is able to manage 33 clients.
• That amounts to $400,000 in annual revenue per employee (33 clients that spend $12k per year, ignoring churn).
• If we assume that the firms allocates 50% of the client’s budget to actual spend, that’s $200,000 per gross margin per year per employee.
• However, the firm must also cover sales commissions at 15% ($60,000) and operations at 20% ($80,000), general overhead at 10% ($40,000)- leaving 5% as a profit margin.

Although this is a skinny profit margin, it is partially offset by scale and other efficiencies. Let’s examine each one in detail to see what the most efficient model could look like:

Economies of scale
The cost of operating a PPC platform should decrease as the number of clients you have in the system increases, as you can allocate over a larger user base. We can assume that operations, which consists of software expense (internally engineered or licensed technology), client support, credit card processing charges, and product development is perhaps 60% variable and 40% fixed costs. Thus, economies of scale will lower operations from 20% to a threshold of 12% (60% multiplied by 20%) at high volume.

Sales expense
Eliminating high-pressure sales tactics and having a greater reliance on word of mouth causes several cascading effects. The influx of ex-Yellow Pages salespeople who are making $100k+ a year is helping current firms achieve their acquisition targets, but at high per sale expense and high churn. Assuming an industry average tenure of five months (50% of clients stay for five months) for SuperLocal, Inc., the revenue per client is five months multiplied by $1,000- or $5,000. A 15% commission on that is $750. Should SuperLocal be able to deliver upon the product, it would seem quite feasible to double average lifetime value.

Thus, you could pay the sales agent half the commission rate while keeping their earnings the same. In fact, if you paid the agent based on retention and allowed them to interact beyond the initial sale, you would give them incentive to keep the client longer. Let’s assume that via product improvements, we can safely drop the commission to 10%.

Platform improvements
Even if we hold the percentage of spend constant at 50%, improvements in how campaigns are built, optimized, and automated should be able to squeeze out 50-70% percent improvements at the same budgets. This is based on our experience with clients that have come to us having been unsatisfied with larger market players. The secondary effect of automation and efficiency improvements is that the average employee can handle more clients.

SuperLocal employees should be able to handle triple the number of clients, given that they are not calling to complain as often; we are educating them on our processes, we are transparent in our reporting, and we set up alerts to notify them of performance improvements we’ve achieved. A 3x improvement may seem drastic until you consider what share of current client interaction stems from unhappy client calls.

The positive spiral effect of platform improvements is that the cost per sale decreases due to tenure improvements (clients stay longer), analyst coverage ratios (they can handle more clients), and automation of non-PPC functions not currently offered. Given higher performance, the company can now service clients who, at $500 a month, were previously not serviceable. Further, existing clients will spend more per month when they have greater ROI. Let’s assume that cuts operational expense in our model from 12% to 10% of gross spend.

Greater client satisfaction
One unnoticed side effect is that clients are less likely to go out of business. The current players are putting small businesses out of business, as these firms are unknowingly putting their last dollar on the roulette wheel and hoping for the best. Cigarette companies face the same issue with potentially killing their customers when they overuse the product. But great client satisfaction will not only help clients stay in business in a tough economy… it will encourage word of mouth effects. Consider Amazon.com- they don’t do any advertising—instead, they offer product marketing via free shipping and other consumer incentives.

Local lead gen companies can eliminate sales expense altogether when the leads come in from happy clients. If you conservatively assume that half of SuperLocal’s clients could come through referrals, we cut sales expenses from 10% to 5%. We can also lower operating costs if we create a social gaming system such that anybody is able to set up clients on the platform, thereby creating a local army of resellers.

The resulting new model is local lead gen

Let’s review what these implemented efficiencies do for SuperLocal and how it changes the model:

Holding media spend constant at 50%, we cut sales expense to 5% and operations to 10%. Even holding overhead fixed at 10%- we allow SuperLocal to inflate executive salaries and buy a shiny office tower– the firm’s gross margin still grows to 25%.

Further, since client tenure (how many months they stay on average) has doubled, the revenue per client is $10,000. The existing sales staff of 150 can now handle 15,000 clients, which is a three-fold improvement over the existing 5,000- this is due to operational improvements and no longer losing customers as fast as we gain them.

The company now has annual gross revenues of $180MM with only 250 employees, just about what ReachLocal has with 900 employees and just above MarchEx. We can even assume that as the company has expanded, they’ve been able to reach down to service lower price points, so let’s drop the average monthly spend to $750. And then assume that they increase percent of spend from 50% to 60%-  effectively sharing back part of the efficiency with their client base.

The gross revenue is reduced to $135MM and net margins fall to $20.25MM… still respectable.

The decrease in price points with automation and efficiency improvements is something our team at Yahoo! predicted 4 years ago- since initially, an improvement in efficiency will decrease spend, as clients are getting the same number of leads for less money. When advertisers are getting ROI, they tend to shift budgets into online channels after 3-5 months. Thus, spend follows a U-shaped curve when we implement efficiency improvements.

Finally, SuperLocal, Inc., has switched their pricing model to cost per call based on a ratecard of geography and category. This has caused them not to gain share from competitors- as there are no dominant players in local yet- but to grow awareness in the market, shed light on unethical business practices, and help force the bad actors out. When that happens, local lead generation will become safe, transparent, and effective- and the overall market will be able to grow healthily.

Transparency in the marketplace is something local online advertising companies should embrace now, rather than wait for the economic realities to force it upon them.

If there were a “Local Bill of Rights,”  this one would be ideal:

• Devote 70 cents of every dollar from clients to buying traffic.
• Show clients the same reports you see.
• Don’t have a direct sales force that hands off to an operations call center; your clients should talk to a trained analyst before and after the sale for greater efficiency and better service.
• Drive measurable performance—calls you can see and even listen to recordings of—as well as organic rankings you measure each month.
• Treat client’s money like it’s your money- so everyone in the company is paid based on client retention and feedback from your rating system.
• Grow the company with your own money- not venture capital- so you can grow at the proper pace and focus on the product, not sales growth.

Transparency leads to efficiency, which leads to the accrual of value in the hands of local resellers and maximum percentage ad spend for the client. The pending convergence of local, social, and mobile will create powerful products for local businesses that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily aimClear.

Borrell Research released a report on the Economics of Search Marketing for firms catering to local—ReachLocal, Yodle, MarchEx, WebVisible, and others.  Companies in this space churn up to 90% of their clients every 6 months, meaning that they lose clients as fast as they can gain them.  The Kelsey Group confirmed this trend last year, citing the inability of these companies to deliver leads.

Clients will stay on a few months in good faith, giving the lead gen’ company time to make the phone ring.  At a certain point, pleas to allow the system more time to “optimize” and concessions not to leave break down, leading to more churn.

The first segment of this two part blog will tackle burning questions local ad firms must understand and address, namely why their industry is in jeopardy of going down the tubes, how they can fix their current situation, and where their market will be headed in the future.

Why are local search marketing companies failing?

• Low media spend: These firms allocate 30 to 50 cents of the client’s dollar on buying clicks, given the 15-20% sales commissions they must pay, plus a fat profit margin.  MarchEx reports a 55% gross margin. Thus, how much is left to actually spend on Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and other sources? For obvious reasons, these firms will not tell you how much of your dollar is actually going towards spend versus commissions and profits.
• An uneducated client base: “Get found on Google” is a great sales pitch and most small businesses know they have to do something about their web presence.  However, how likely is the local dentist, cosmetic surgeon, roofer, or personal injury attorney going to ask, “So what percent of spend are you allocating to my campaigns?  And how exactly do you manage my paid and organic campaigns?”  Managing a web presence themselves is daunting and agencies play into that fear.
• The need to grow: Fueled by venture capital, these firms are forced to shoot for billion dollar exits.  Venture capital looks for a 10-to-1 return on their money and an exit within several years. This often leads to imprudent growth, aggressive sales tactics, and “overheating” of the company’s engines. Yodle.com reports having 5,000 customers at the end of 2008, but was on track to hit 50,000 customers by the end of 2009.  ReachLocal in their December 2009 S1 filing discloses 15,000 customers.
• Lack of technology: The game is about sales—hire more salespeople and sell more accounts, as opposed to cautious growth, hiring experienced search professionals who have hands-on search experience, and optimizing the process of delivering efficient and effective campaigns.  To engineer a platform to build high quality paid search campaigns, create websites that organically rank on important keywords, and properly train staff is a major undertaking.  Canned search campaigns driving traffic to canned landing pages is not.  We also need scalable process and technology.
• A “winner take all” mindset: Firms choose to “floor it” instead of taking time to work on the engine in the shop before going up to the starting line.  They are counting on sidestepping the performance issue by mention of “proprietary” technology— enough to satisfy unwitting investors and customers.  Behind the façade, many agencies have low wage staff offshore manually configuring search campaigns.

Clients are stuck between a rock and a hard place—low fee packages that are self-serve versus packages that do provide service but are out of their budget. And it’s not just the direct sellers that are churning customers, the $10 a month fee guys are, too, as indicated in this Kelsey report.

What will it take to fix the current environment?

• A shift to transparency. Local search marketing firms should voluntarily adopt a code of ethics, which includes:
  • Transparency: Clients should have the right to inspect their PPC accounts to know what keywords are being purchased and at what price.  Consider how the FDA requires food companies to disclosure how many calories and how much sugar their products have.
  • Campaign portability: Wireless mobile providers have been forced to allow customers to take their phone numbers to other carriers.  The same should be true with search agencies.  Should the client choose to leave their current provider, they should be able to take their campaigns with them.  Current practice is to hold the client hostage—if the client leaves, they lose their campaigns as well as landing pages.
  • Open disclosure of advertising methods employed: While the agency may be driving leads, the client’s own site has not developed organic search power.  Traffic has been sent to a subdomain owned by the agency—not the client’s site.  Should clients leave, they are left with nothing; this dependency makes the decision to switch agencies extra difficult for the wrong reasons.
  • No long-term contracts: 12 month contracts are common, as agencies seek to lock in the client in anticipation of them wanting to leave preemptively.  Yellow page publishers have one year contracts because they print the book once per year; as this theme does not carry over to search, agencies should allow clients to leave if they are losing money with their current provider.
  • Sales compensation models: A common complaint among clients is that once they sign a contract, they never hear from the rep again. That rep is already on to the next prospect, ready to sell, sell, sell—hit the aggressive quota or be terminated.  To our knowledge, no other company in the industry pays their people according to retention and client satisfaction.  Agencies should agree to compensate staff based on client performance, else we face a repeat of the long distance telecom switching battles witnessed in the 1980’s. The social gaming model will potentially transform the Farmville players into an army of local resellers.
  • Guaranteed service levels: When a client logs a ticket, they should expect a timely response.  For example, general inquiries should be answered within 72 hours.  If their site is down, they should expect a response within 3 hours. Clients don’t know who to talk to when they aren’t getting leads—the agency’s outsourced call center agents in India are unaware of how to service the issue, while the overeager sales rep is nowhere to be found.
  • Industry certifications: In the wild west of local advertising, anyone can claim expertise.  We recently met an agency claiming to be the only certified agency to do search in all of Asia— no such certifications exist.  The closest to having standards in the industry are SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) and Search Engine College. But these standards are not yet formed nor are they adopted by a wide enough audience to be deemed legitimate.

Where is the market eventually headed?

Pay for Performance
As the client base becomes more educated, the current sales tactics will no longer fly. Over the last five years, the market has evolved from CPM (cost per thousand impressions) to CPC (cost per click) to CPA (cost per acquisition).  New agencies will emerge that will charge based not on long-term contracts of fixed dollar amounts, but Cost Per Call, such as Yext.  As a dentist, imagine being able to pay only for calls, as opposed to a fixed monthly advertising figure. This reduces the client’s risk—yet this model requires that the agency actually be able to perform instead of sell.  This increases transparency, but not to the levels needed.

Performance Reporting
As a corollary to the Cost Per Call model, clients will be able to log in to view exactly what the agency is doing with the campaigns—how their company is being marketed, what types of traffic is being purchased, what is being spent, and how many leads are coming.  Current agencies seemingly show some of this reporting, but build their fees into the reported figures, so that clients are unaware of what is actually being spent on what keywords.

Robust Service Offerings
Pay Per Click campaigns driving traffic to canned landing pages is the “quick fix” to show immediate results.  However, the longer-term, more effective approach is to help the client rank organically in search results, as opposed to having to pay for every single inbound click.  Ranking organically requires:

• a comprehensive process to list the client in Google Local Business center and other directories
• helping the client place content on their website that reflects their unique selling proposition
• setting up email auto-responder campaigns (so that leads to the client’s site can be nurtured into paying customers)
• systematic training of the client (so that they can easily manage the site from a non-technical standpoint

This robust service offering goes far beyond what current vendors are offering, yet will soon be offered in the marketplace at significantly lower cost than the PPC only players who have been first on the scene.

Part two will be published tomorrow, so stay tuned for more on how the financial model of local will adapt over time.

photo credit: dvs

Mobile and Local are tied at the hip, but up until recently the tools weren’t up to the task. But with advent of the iPhone however, all that is changing.

Besides making iPhone a great productivity tool (not to mention GORGEOUS eye candy), Apple has opened up third party application development.

This SES San Jose session demo-ed a few of the existing and up-and-coming applications taking advantage not only of local search, but also of the iPhone’s unique capabilities.

The panel was moderated by Michael Boland, Senior Analyst of the The Kelsey Group and the speakers were: Ethan Lowry, Co-founder, UrbanSpoon, Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow, Ryan Sarver, Director of Consumer Products, Skyhook Wireless, Siva V. Kumar, Founder & CEO, TheFind.com, Sonia McFarland & Head of Business Development, Yelp.

The iPhone is awesome.
I have been a Mac girl from way back in the 80s in high school and I’ve been an iPhone convert from the beginning.

The iPhone [in author's opinion] is THE best smart phone that exists, for several reasons – one of which is “true web browsing.” There’s no browser emulator – like Blazer on my old Sprint Treo. I’m a chronic Googler and after a few desperate attempts I never touched Blazer again. Now, with my iPhone there are days when I don’t even open my computer. I make constant use of Google maps to orient myself in my new home of New York.

I should note to users who may not be familiar with iPhone that there is a difference between using the iPhone to view a website that has been “optimized” for the iPhone, and downloading and using an iPhone app. For example, urbanspoon.com has an iPhone-optimized website if you view it using your iPhone. However, it lacks the cool iPhone-specific functionality I’ll talk about later if you don’t use the iPhone APPLICATION (which is free!)

The big plus of the iPhone is: it knows where it is. Once you know where you are, you have a reference point to find other things. Local stores want to tell your iPhone where they are. New applications are allowing them to do that.

But first, what is Geo-Location?
Geo-location is a fancy word for locating where you are on the planet.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that the new iPhone 3G came out in July. The big deal about it is that it is running on the 3G network, and has GPS functionality. Global Satellite Positioning = GPS. The iPhone talks to satellites to find out where it is. Now, other phones had had GPS before (Nokia), but the rest of the hardware wasn’t…well, it wasn’t the iPhone.

GPS is great, but unfortunately, it can be slow (can take a minute or more to “boot up”) and it doesn’t work everywhere (if you are in a dense urban location tall buildings make it hard to get a lock on you). Happily, the iPhone has dual mode functionality – where GPS doesn’t work, it uses wi-fi positioning, based on SkyHook technology. Ryan Sarver from SkyHook talked about the technology behind SkyHook.

SkyHook technology, around since 2005 does one thing: produces location latitude and longitude from wi-fi positioning.

Wi-fi positioning is analogous to GPS. Wi-fi positioning makes use of wireless access points for reference. You know when you turn on your computer and you now see all those wireless networks that are locked so you can’t hop onto them? SkyHook doesn’t need to get “on” to the wi-fit network – it just uses their presence to help triangulate your position. It’s faster than GPS (can locate in a quarter of a second) and it’s pretty darn accurate too (within 20-30 meters).

SkyHook employees are out in their cars finding wi-fi access points in the US, Europe, and Asia. There are about 56 million of them at present (and increasing all the time). Trouble is, SkyHook still needs density for the wi-fi positioning to work (how dense?) It works best in urban areas.  He then showed a map of Manhattan, with red dots showing every wi-fi access point they’d mapped. I swear it looked like a swarm of ants.

So wi-fi positioning works great for iPhone in urban areas, what about rural? Well, that’s where GPS comes in. GPS is great at finding you in wide-open areas. So, iPhone has you covered no matter where you are (and you don’t to know anything about this underlying technology either, iPhone uses whatever technology is the fastest to find itself). What do you do with all this power?

iPhone is first phone to offer true location-based services. Ryan went through the iPhone App Store and found that of the 1000 apps currently there, 30 of them are location-based.

____________________________________________

UrbanSpoon with Ethan Lowry

Urban Spoon – THE hot iPhone App of the Search Engine Strategies Conference!

It seems that someone at every SES session I went to was all foaming at the mouth about UrbanSpoon, so it was nice to see a proper demo of it! Ethan Lowry of Urban Spoon called Urban Spoon “the great discovery engine for local search.” Now, I’d of course narrow that to “discovery engine for food,” but who’s splitting hairs?

Urbanspoon is focused on helping people find a place to eat. They are have been around for a year and a half, they cover 70 cities, and they have a million unique visitors. They combine:

• location
• price
• city/neighborhood
• food type
• reviews (from bloggers, and restaurant critics!)

Take a Gamble On Your Meal

Here’s how it looks, and how it works.

1. You download the app to your iPhone.
2. You either let iPhone find the city you’re in, or you tell it where you are.
3. On the “slot machine” you can use three spinners to input info: neighborhood, food type, and price. You can lock any/all of those spinners to narrow your results.
4. Once you’ve set the sliders, SHAKE the iPhone (it uses the accelerometer). The spinners go just like a slot machine, and CLINK there’s your results!

Now, the result isn’t completely random. It skews to better-reviewed restaurants. Also, there’s’ only one result. If it’s not what you wanted, shake it again to get another suggestion. Obviously, if you want to be presented by a bunch of choices, this app is not for you (try YELP!) but if you like a little kinesthetic interaction when picking your meal (and cool sound effects too!), Urban Spoon is great fun.

When you get your result, all the info you need is there: phone number, map, hours, reviews.

There’s also a social networking component – you invite friends and compare recommendations.

I used it to find lunch today!

__________

NearbyNow Mall Navigation App/Is It Me? with Scott Dunlap

Ok, now we’re getting into the killer shopping app. There are sites on the web that will tell you where you can buy a product. There are sites that can tell you where you can buy it, and whether that product is in stock at the moment.

NearbyNow’s Mall Navigation application sucks down some steroids gives you an application that shows you a mall map, sales in every store in the mall, and a product search – what stores carry that product.

If you want that product, you can click “CHECK STORE INVENTORY and a CONCIERGE (!) will call that store to not only verify that it’s ACTUALLY in stock, but tell them to hold it for you! And then sends you a cute little email or text message that tells you he’s done so. Guess who pays for this service? If you answered, “me” you would be WRONG. You get to use this service for free. Merchants pay a nice chunk of change to get iPhone-addicted people like you to get led directly to their store/merchandise – because people who own iPhones on average have 40 to 50 times more disposable income!

(see this YouTube video to see the Mall Application in action).

This application will be killer come Christmas (it is slated to be released in September/October 2008).

Is It Me?

Oh dear. Now we’re getting into a seriously addictive application. Is It Me? is an iPhone application that lets you take full advantage of the iPhone time-wasting capabilities. Let’s say you’re in a mall, and you see an awesome dress. You want feedback from a friend as to how much they like it for you. Trouble is, you are all alone. What do you do? The 2006 answer would have been, “call them on the phone and describe it to them in a futile attempt to convey its essence.” In 2007, you would send a cell phone pic to them and wait for feedback. It’s 2008, and what you can do now is, using Is It Me?, take a picture with your iPhone, send it to a group of friends, and let them VOTE ON IT.  You can also enter information on where you saw the item (store list is supplied through geo-location). That way, your friend who is envious of your style sense, can go to her local mall and get the exact same thing!! Or, even order it online! Genius.

Note, this functionality isn’t just for clothes, I’m sure lots of folks are going to be using it for, “is this guy hot??”

Note that people you send these things to do not have to have iPhones (although there is more fun functionality to use on the iPhone – as seen in this screenshot.

Is it Me? Is another branded app from the NearByNow folks, available in the September/October 2008 timeframe.

_______________________

Thefind.com with Siva Kumar

Thefind.com is a shopping comparison site that also has customize content, much of it in the “lifestyle” category (i.e. fashion, etc.).

TheFind: Where to Shop is a “location aware” application that enables users to search for products they want to buy and then simply view relevant stores on interactive maps pinpointing local retail locations (identified by “store icons”) near their current physical locations (identified by a “location icon”). The location information is determined using GPS or other positioning methods of the iPhone platform.

Thefind.com is location-based shopping, showing users not only where a retailer is in the customer’s area, but also product availability price, and also cross-checking online pricing for items (!!). Then again, just because ebay has your item for a dollar cheaper isn’t likely to override your desire to have the item NOW. You can also reserve an item for in-store pickup.

Thefind.com has over 250 million products, and works with “big-box” retailers as well as small boutiques.

Thefind.com is live on the web now, and their iPhone app has been submitted to Apple for approval and will hopefully be available in September for download.

__________________________________________

YELP

YELP is another site I use myself. It’s a local review site with local content, provided by local users. It has a huge and loyal community network. I have friends who have their entire social calendar filled by YELP activities. Yelp is not just food (in fact, only 1/3 of their content is food-related).

Yelp already had an extremely strong website chock full of user-generated content, it was just a matter of figuring out which functions were the most important for users of the iPhone app.

The features that made it:

• Find: enter search terms (food, service, neighborhood)
• Near: Current location  (or enter it in)
• Filter criteria: distance from me, price, whether open now
• Map
• Restaurant/Service info (phone, address, hours)
• User Reviews

In the future, you will be able to write reviews on the iPhone, add pictures, and use more social info.

_____________________

IPHONE DEVELOPMENT INFO

• How many people are using location-based services for iPhone? The Metrics are exploding since app store opened – but out of 1000 apps there are about 140 location-based apps.
• How easy is it to get iPhone app developed? The iPhone app approval process is rigorous. You HAVE TO adhere to their UI requirements or you will be rejected outright. For example, if you add an extra icon in a plae not usual for iPhone. And it will be harder next time to get something approved. But, if you follow all their rules and you get extremely lucky, approval process can be as short as 48 hours. Apple also prefers apps that take advantage of iPhone’s unique capabilities – for example, the accelerometer.
• How do you get things developed? Who are the famous iPhone developers? Answer: we don’t know, everyone wants to know. We do know: Objective C is the developer’s language iPhone uses, and it’s not the greatest.  (Charlene note: As someone shopping for an iPhone developer for some apps I have in my head, there are lots of rogue app developers, and from what I’ve heard – at least in New York – many of them are willing to work on projects where they take a cut of profits, and dont’ require being paid up front. Good news if that’s a model you’re comfortable with.)
• Where are your revenues coming from?
  • Skyhook: made a deal with Apple in Jan 2008
  • UrbanSpoon is an ad model, but iPhone app has no monetization right now
  • Nearbynow is 90% lead generation money – stores pay them to send customers to their stores – it’s the offline equivalent of Google clicks.
  • Find.com – CPC, CPA, CPM
  • YELP: ad-supported model, so no monetization on iPhone yet

And now the important stuff: the panel’s favorite iPhone apps:

• Michael Boland: COWBELL (I downloaded this – AWESOME!!)
• Ryan Seaver: URBANSPOON (and NOT from the UrbanSpoon guy!)
• Ethan Lowry: LABYRINTH
• Scott Dunlap: TEXAS HOLDEM
• Siva Kumar: MAPS
• Sonia McFarland: SHAZAM

_____________________________________

Charlene Jaszewski is head honcho over at Smartypants Group, and helps small business and technology play nicely together when she’s not writing articles like this one. She is also addicted to her iPhone and needs a support group pls thx.

Keynote speaker Michael Jones looked skyward and evangelized Google Earth’s mission of placing the world’s information in geographical context. Experts introduced many of us to terms like on/off deck, walled gardens, and dumb pipes.

The initial release of the iPhone was embryonic and we all knew it would change the world, in terms of mainstream expectations for mobile web page parsing quality. One year later, the LoMo promise is coming true and SMX Local Mobile has become an extremely serious search marketing conference.

The keynote address featuring Frazier Miller, General Manager, Yahoo! Local set the tone. These 2 days at the JW Marriott in San Francisco were not going to be hypothetical. As Miller talked about Yahoo!’s vision for weaving local information into users’ primary web starting point, I knew right away this conference was not just about theory. It was about search.

The tracks across 2 days were “The Big Picture,” “Local Search Tactics,” “Local Mobile Strategies & Tactics” and “Mostly Mobile.” Sessions like “Ranking Tactics For Local Search,” “Monetizing Local & Mobile: Who’s Making Money?,” “Targeting Locals in a Blended Search World,” Neogeography: Opportunities in Mapvertising” and “Cracking the Code: Inside the Black Boxes of Local & Mobile Search Algorithms” were incredibly relevant.

I found myself taking notes frenetically as Mary Bowling gave her presentation during the case studies panel I spoke on. The audience struck me as a very professional bunch and, when polled, revealed the depth of marketing experience in attendance. I’ll take this opportunity to thank Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Greg Sterling, Chris Elwell, Sean Moriarty, Karen DeWeese and Chris Silver Smith for including on this cool panel and putting on a hell of a show.

SMX Local Mobile has become a serious must-attend search marketing think tank for natural and paid search service providers. It was a pleasure to talk shop with folks like Mike Blumenthal, Owner and Local Marketing Expert, Blumenthals, Jordan Kasteler, Senior SEO Analyst, Overstock.com and make new friends like Will Scott, President, Search Influence LLC.

I’m surprised at the relative lack of coverage for, what amounts to be, one of the most important informational gatherings of 2008. As news of the essential tactics and techniques imparted spreads by word of mouth, next year’s edition of SMX Local Mobile will likely gain quite a bit more attention. Don’t miss it.

Ironically, the most appropriate “takeaway” is that very little is static in this arena. The revolution is still in its infancy, however it is clear that a marketing explosion of nuclear magnitude is imminent.

There is SO much money on the table. There are SO many fragmented channels, many of which are critically important to understand and master. Will your marketing campaign be left in the dust as the world changes?

The Internet itself loomed in the early 90’s and we marketers were told by pundits and sages to adapt or die. Then along came PPC which turned out to be just as radically important. Down came the user-generated hammer which cranked out changes of biblical proportions. YOU are Time Magazine’s person of the year. Here comes the giant global mashup of handsets, carriers, platforms, and the Internet itself. Hang on and giddy up Batman!

Here’s What We Do Know.
According to ABI Research (April 2007) mobile search marketers will spend $3 Billion this year and $11.35 billion by 2011. Worldwide there will be 3.3 billion mobile phone users, whereas there were only 2 billion in 2005. Currently there are 2.8 billion mobile phone subscribers. In the United States, there were 233 million mobile users which is over 76% of the population. Meanwhile it is estimated that 8% of the top 1000 US Brands offer mobile site versions.

Farewell from SMX Local & Mobile Denver 2007. We’ll be back in the office tomorrow with lots of client work on our plate. We look forward to SMX Social Media NYC 2007 in a couple of weeks. Thanks to our readers and subscribers.

Other Coverage We’re Aware Of from This Conference.
David Dalka

Mike The Internet Guy

SearchMarketingExpoBlog

RealitySEO

Search Marketing Standard

Greg Sterling

Marketing Pilgrim

Scott Clark

Flickr

What should we do first? Who are the players? This session explored the “tactical demands of running a successful local/mobile search marketing campaign.”

Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land , moderated and led off the discussion. Chris gave us the good news first, that “local and mobile campaigns have a lot in common with traditional search marketing. However, local mobile is much more fragmented with dozens or hundreds of factors to keep track of.”

Jenny Halasz, SEO Manager, Acronym Media was the next speaker to take the podium. First, she invited the audience to visit their corporate offices in the Empire State building, an offer I’m likely to take her up on.

Acronym Media’s concept gets back to tried and true keyword driven marketing to “harvest the power of user searches and provide relevant results.” She views planning for a local/mobile campaign as projecting possible progressions of a customer’s physical activity and gets granular. For instance, “Greg“ arrives in NYC with his iPhone, searches for luxury hotels, tourist attractions, the best pizza, gets drunk and lost which leads to map searches (to get directions to back to the hotel). The next day he Googles airport limousines, etc…

Here are Jenny’s recommended steps in planning the campaign and be realistic:

Determine available financial resources and use simulators to better understand how the site currently renders via mobile.

Always include links back to the main HTML website.

Determine Your Resources.
If the budget is low, implement high impact low cost changes which can be made to existing campaigns. Submit to local networks, create an RSS feed, put business address in a single line text (the maps index single lines better), and apply for Google News inclusion to “build on the hyper-local web.” Also submit to Goog411.

If you have a bigger budget, consider creating a mobile specific site (m.site.com), create local- specific content about cities, regions, metro areas, etc… Consider paid ads in local engines and networks.

Best Practices
Jenny stressed that our visitors ARE mobile users! Offer basic mobile interaction aids, use tel-tags on phone numbers, add the area code or tool free prefix on phone numbers, be XHTM compliant, provide clear navigation, all pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from homepage, minimize the use of flash and images, minimize file sizes, use CSS and JS in external files. She recommends always using CSS and DIV tags to put navigation below content in the code and use mobile site maps.

Local search providers Acronym calls on include InfoSpace, Switchboard, Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, LiveSearch YellowPages.com AT&T SuperPages, and AOL Local. Jenny stressed that we should remember to check out smaller local niche’ players. International is also a tremendous opportunity including Baidu, Voila, Yahoo! Singapore, and Google France.

Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts was up next. Chris suggested www.localsearchguide.org be the first stop for a guide of the top players in the local search field. The Local Search Guide is updated frequently to add new companies and reflect changes in the industry.

Status of the MarketPlace
Local and IYP are still strong. Their usage has been growing to some degree because they’ve expanded their utilities to include social media tools. Yahoo! Mobile search is growing, and we’re right on the cusp of matching Europe’s high usage. Local I.E. Yahoo Search now accounts for 24% of mobile Internet use. IYP users are closer to conversion in the buying process, 38% go on to make a purchase, are more targeted for the businesses they seek, and are more likely to have good income than users of general web media (100K+).

You Never Know Where Your Ad Might Show Up.
An idiosyncrasy of mobile search is that ads are often shared between platforms. Though mobile companies resist open platforms, tending to create “walled off gardens”, there is still some sharing as different providers feed into different mobile search providers. The trend is away from special mobile only display format to full webpage displays as a result of the iPhone. Usage and promotional potential is still lower than the regular internet but rapidly trending upward.

For small local businesses, getting a grip on this fragmentation is a consuming nightmare. For these businesses the key is to outsource the work to an agency or local search marketing firm to manage. For medium sized business with limited locations, moving some local search responsibilities in-house becomes possible, but he still recommends considering an agency. For large businesses with many locations it’s probably desirable to have full time employee(s) to manage the program, using various degrees of external agency involvement.

Chris reminds us to optimize for local search with traditional keyword research. Always make sure the “free-listing” level of placement is handled before staking out paid expenditures. Login and update/enhance your businesses listing with all of the local players like YellowPages.com, take ownership of your content and enhance it with as much extra as you can prior to paying.

Finally, he says to “approach mobile carefully” and “try to spread your promo efforts to as many places that have human eyes as possible without overwhelming your budget or ability to execute.”

Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing Red Door Interactive, gave a presentation that was so deep in fast moving (and amazing statistics) that we’ll reserve a more detailed summary for later writings. Here are a few of the points he made:

Mobile ad spending Worldwide is 3 billion now (Source ABI research April 2007).
Mobile is the coming Web3.0
Projections are $11.35 billion by 2011

Some pros of mobile search marketing include:
Twice as many cell phones as PC’s
Web searches on mobile devices will someday exceed PCs
Access to international consumers who cannot afford PCs
Location specific
High click-through rates
The telephone number is still the best unique identifier ever invented.
Build the BEST customer db, loyalty marketing and customer retention is great.
Generate buzz for products and services
Reach consumers while actively shopping socializing and making buying decisions.
Behavioral targeting
Personal device people take with them wherever they go
Marketers can develop relationships
Carriers have customer data and location

Possible Cons of Mobile Search Marketing:
WAP general intolerance of advertising
Inadequate bandwidth which discourages searching
Still walled garden
Scarcity of mobile websites

SMX Speakers Resources:
Interviews with Chris Sherman
TopRank Interview with Chris Sherman of Search Engine Land and SMX
SearchNewz Interview with Chris Sherman of Third Door Media
btobOnline, Spotlight on Search: Interview with Chris Sherman of Third Door

Blog posts:
Search Marketing Now webcasts combine the most authoritative and actionable education about search engine marketing issues with the convenience of attending online.
Search Engine Land
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Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts
W. Chris Silver Smith, Artist, Writer & Technologist
Natural Search Blog
Local SEO For Retail Store Locators
Comparing Mobile Ads In Google & Yahoo
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Jenny Halasz, SEO Manager, Acronym Media
LinkedIn Profile
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Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
LinkedIn Profile
Red Door Interactive
SEO Providers – Selecting a Reputable SEO Provider (Historical)
Selecting a Reputable SEO Provider

Michael discussed “The Future of Local Search, Google’s Strategic Vision”, which is all about the “broad for context” and the “minute for relevance”. He shared incredible Google-mapped big-screen examples including statistics and stories from the Darfur genocide (literally house to house and village to village). Other animated screen shots included regional, subway information, election results, restaurants, flood damage, and many other applications where geo-perspective provides context for information.

Google believes that most of human knowledge is “afforded perspective and clarity by providing geographic context.” “There’s information that belongs on the page. There’s other information that belongs on a map. Some data belongs in either place. Most of the world’s information can go on either one.”

Understand the Parallels: Hotel Concierge Services
He does not think that Google is best in the world at local search. With a wry smile he credits his inspiration to professional concierges in hotels, who must possess the following attributes for effectiveness. He sees these qualities as good examples of what search engines have to master for intuitive mobile and local search:

Discretion (information privacy)
Courteous (ask clarifying questions)
Empathic to unique needs (where he thinks Google “strikes out completely”)
Multi-lingual (translation)
Quick spirited (transactional-make the reservation!)
Must know their regions ranging from hyper-local to regional.
Have colleagues to reach out to for other answer-sources (universal search).

“In a world where the present is everything, concierges must get a feel for clients and their needs without fail and in a very short lapse of time.”

Potential Interaction Modalities
He referred to methods of interaction most users engage in when seeking local results along with the corresponding Google services. Users might type a question and receive a webpage of local results (Google), ask a question and receive a sequence of spoken local results (800-GOOG-411), SMS a question and receive an SMS stream of local results (SMS: GOOGL), or users might browse a location and receive a visual display of local results (Google Maps).

Michael explained that every place with a physical location is “local” data, and Google’s geo-mission is to geographically organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful to people and businesses. He looks to indexed books, photos, news, videos, blogs, weather, local transit, and many other verticals as emerging frontiers. All of these types of information can be “better communicated” when placed in geographical perspective on a map.

A Sense of Place
Jones made it clear that:

“It’s not about the map itself. It’s about the map as context for the word’s information. Sometimes you can accomplish this with an application like Google Earth. Sometimes it’s better on a webpage. Most of the time the information is viable in both places. Blending them into a hybrid display is the future when everything will be like the iPhone.”

Michael Jones is nearly evangelistic when he explains, “The context for our planet is very important. It’s all about giving you a sense of place. “

Speaker Resource
Interviews:
Geospatial Democracy GCN interview with Michael Jones, Google Earth Chief Technologist

Google Earth Blog Interview With Michael Jones – Google Earth Chief Technology Officer

SlashGeo Google Earth CTO Michael Jones on Place Search

MeFedia: My interview with Michael Jones, head of Google Earth

Google Earth Blog SERP querying “Michael Jones”

Michael Jones LinkedIn Profile

Local & Mobile are Huge.
Local and Mobile search encompass an immense search marketing frontier. Pundits forecast that ad-spends will skyrocket to $8 billion by 2010. Home on the range, it’s still the Wild West with platforms springing up practically every week. Leading edge technologies are evolving at scorching speeds, and it’s vital not to be buried in the ongoing avalanche of advancements.

These Folks Know What They’re Doing.
Sequenced by Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling, this small conference features a veritable who’s-who of local/mobile search marketing rock stars. Today’s program is made up of 2 tracks: “Industry Issues” and “Search Marketing.” After breakfast the show kicks off with the keynote address from Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local Search.

Hold on to your cowboy hats amigos (yes, the promotions for this event were western-themed). We’re going to kick up a little dust here. As a side note, we’ll be highlighting interviews with/blog posts from and about the speakers here at SMX. Look for the “Speakers Resources” at the bottom of each sessions coverage.