Category: News (page 12 of 1505)

SEATTLE, Jan 24, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) —
Marchex, Inc.


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, today announced the results of a study to
assess the outcome of calls received and the effectiveness of using
calls to generate leads through the use of digital call advertising. The
study was based on an analysis of hundreds of thousands of consumer
calls to small and medium-sized businesses generated from Marchex’s call
advertising services.

In the study, Marchex found:

—
60% of all calls from digital advertising are product and service
discussions, and 80% of calls longer than one minute are product and
service discussions.(1)

—
Most of the other calls generated by digital advertising are not
answered by the business, suggesting that one of the best things that
businesses can do to improve their bottom line is to do a better job
of answering the phone!

—
A simple Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is effective at
qualifying calls.

Instant, one-click calling capabilities of mobile phones and desktop
VoIP services have started to significantly change the digital
advertising landscape. Advertisers who may have been initially uncertain
about mobile advertising should now incorporate click-to-call, bid per
call and Pay For Call advertising into their existing digital
advertising campaigns or risk losing significant lead traffic.

Marchex and comScore will co-host a free, open-to-the-public webinar on
Thursday, January 26 to cover the results of the study and provide
attendees with key information on developing and executing successful
digital call advertising campaigns for national advertisers and small
businesses.

John Busby, Vice President of the Marchex Institute, and Kirby Winfield,
Senior Vice President at comScore, will help webinar attendees gain an
understanding of how measurement and verification can make or break
digital advertising campaigns, how the growth of smart phones is
creating new opportunities in performance advertising and why
understanding and managing the quality of a Pay For Call or Google
click-to-call campaign is essential to drive performance.

Interested parties can register at:

http://bit.ly/getcalls

About Marchex:

Marchex’s mission is to unlock local commerce globally by helping
advertisers reach customers through the phone when they are ready to buy.

Our performance-based call advertising products, Marchex Call Connect
and Marchex Call Analytics, are reinventing how businesses acquire and
upsell new customers through phone calls. Our award-winning Small
Business Solutions products empower businesses to efficiently acquire
new customers. Every day, our products support hundreds of thousands of
advertisers and partners, ranging from global enterprises to local
businesses.

For more information about Marchex


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, please visit
www.marchex.com .

(1) Findings derived from sampling set of calls.

SOURCE: Marchex, Inc.

        
        Marchex Corporate Communications 
        Tamara Colagrossi, 206-331-3631 
        Email: tcolagrossi(at)marchex.com
        

Copyright Business Wire 2012

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Unlike most startups, Yext makes money. After launching in 2009, the New York-based company soon sacked an already lucrative pay-per-call and pay-per-action business to build its Power Listings product, which allows businesses to update and alter listings across multiple sites – among others, Super Pages, Yelp, City Search, Map Quest, and Yahoo Local  — through a single portal. In July, Yext raised $10 Million in series D funding to power the new venture and has since amassed a massive customer base, onboarding over 40,000 paying subscribers in a little over a year after the launch. In December, the company updated its listings sync tool with new multi-media capabilities as well as new partnerships with a handful of hyperlocal publishers, including foursquare, EZLocal, and AOL’s Patch.

Street Fight caught up with the company’s CEO, Howard Lerman, to take a deep dive into the business of local information and to talk about which hyperlocal companies he sees coming out on top.

What has been the biggest story in the listings, and broader local information space since we last spoke in August?
One thing that we’ve seen is continued fragmentation. What I mean is that there is a movement by consumers to approach local discovery through a range of different kinds of apps and devices. Needless to say, mobile is constantly reinventing the local information space. In 2011, I believe, we’ve seen 30 percent year-over-year growth in mobile traffic, with even higher growth in certain verticals.

The debut of foursquare’s Explore feature for the web marked a big shift in the balance of power for local search. As companies increasingly hoard datasets, how do you see the basic name-address-phone number data fitting in to the mix?
I think there are two kinds of local content. What we deal with at Yext is the objective local content — namely, name, address, phone number, categories, and business hours. Users shouldn’t be able to vote on businesses contact information or rate businesses hours of operations. This is information for which the businesses themselves will be the authoritative voice. Objective information should be widely available to every search source and businesses should be in control of their own information. That’s our whole vision for the local information ecosystem.

The second type of local data is subjective stuff — ratings, reviews, and obviously users should be the ones generating that — and this is where most sites generate their unique angles.

For the more subjective local data, which companies do you see coming out on top?
What differentiate hyperlocal publishers like Yelp and foursquare are the communities developed around generating information and the user activity surrounding these features. As far as the next 6-8 months are concerned, Yelp and foursquare are in the best position to succeed because they have a unique angle and a real community.

There is so much crap out there that’s being sold, and it’s complicating the ecosystem. It’s extremely confusing for small businesses to differentiate what works and what’s not a good investment.

Many pundits have credited Groupon with bringing a vast amount of small and medium-size businesses (SMB) online. Have you seen a change in the attitude towards online marketing from the broader SMB population?
We’re actually seeing growing skepticism from SMB’s — maybe, more so then when we launched our business a few years ago. There is so much crap out there that’s being sold, and it’s complicating the ecosystem. It’s extremely confusing for small businesses to differentiate what works and what’s not a good investment. There are a lot of clueless middlemen and bad products out there, which are muddling the proposition and mystifying the experience for local merchants.

In building Power Listings, what pain points did you work around to ensure scalable SMB adoption?
With Power Listings, we focused on building a product that was sold self-serve, so a giant in-house sales force was not necessary. I believe Power Listings might be the only local marketing product that is sold completely self-serve. I think it’s a case of the simplicity of the product. For some of the more complicated local marketing tools, it would be much too difficult to sell online without a fairly large support staff. In understanding that we wanted a self-serve product, we intentionally built a product that could be sold with little to no explanation.

Last month, ATT Interactive began selling its local ad space through Super Media, a fairly well established sales organization. Do you see the space segmenting in a similar manner as the credit card industry, with providers selling products through independent sales organizations (ISO)?
I think the ISOs have no chance. You need your own sales forces — it’s a huge strategic asset. Take a look at the companies that have been successful: they all have built and maintained an in-house sales force. And since many of the products are so similar, there is no real incentive for an ISO to push your product instead of someone else’s. Sure, it’s possible to build a successful business based off of an ISO but if we’re looking at a company with the scale of a Groupon, there’s no chance you get there without your own force. I guess it’s about your definition of success but I’m confident that we’re not going to see any companies IPO on the back of an ISO.

What will be the biggest story in the local marketing space over the next 6-8 months?
I think we’re going to see fairly intense consolidation. As the products become more complex, companies will need an in-house sales force to gain traction, which will make it increasingly difficult for new entrants to pop up. Working off that, we’re going to see even more deal sites close, and a couple of leaders emerge from the pact – we’ve obviously seen that start to happen. In addition to the deals space, consolidation will also start occurring around local marketing agency companies as well. The successful companies will be the ones that choose to focus on one thing, rather than the all-in-one approach.

The deals space is already experiencing pretty intense consolidation. Some believe that daily deals are going to be absorbed into the larger local advertising ecosystem, with a few big companies surviving as pure play providers. What’s your take on the future of the deals space?
The first thing you have to remember is that daily deals are a consumer product. Groupon and Living Social are consumer brands. It’s not an advertising product. It’s a consumer media property — more along the lines of a publishing effort than anything else. Fundamentally, it’s a product for consumers rather than an ad product sold to businesses.

Steven Jacobs is an associate editor at Street Fight

Search Marketing Now will host two webcasts this week. On Wednesday, January 25, Jill Whalen of High Rankings and Horst Joepen of Searchmetrics present will present “Measuring Social Media Marketing Success Using Analytics Tools.”

They’ll look at emerging social media analytics methods and some tools available to measure ROI and performance of social media activities.

On Thursday, January 26, John Busby of Marchex and Kirby Winfield of comScore present “How to Successfully Generate Phone Calls through Mobile Advertising.”

The growth in smart phones has opened up huge opportunities for performance-based pay per call advertising campaigns. Learn more about performance-based digital call advertising, and how to verify and measure the quality of these campaigns.

Both webcasts begin at 1 PM EST, last about 45-50 minutes, and are free. Register at Search Marketing Now.

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

Related Topics: SMX SMN Alerts

About The Author: Claire Schoen is director of Third Door Media’s Search Marketing Now webcast series. Claire has held senior marketing and operations positions in publishing for nearly thirty years. See more articles by Claire Schoen

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One of the most important aspects of running a small business is being able to bring in new clients.

In a hyper-competitive marketplace, the company that fills its funnel full of opportunities is the one that manages its lead generation strategies most effectively.

If you want to make the most of your efforts to find new clients, here are five marketing moves to generate quality leads.

Spend on tactics that produce an ROI

You need to ask what your return on investment will be for every strategy you employ.

When it comes to lead generation, I see a lot of businesses go the route of image advertising on billboards or in magazines – without any call to action or direct-response mechanism.

Those who do it say it’s to build awareness – but awareness is so vague, it’s almost impossible to measure.

Money spent on general awareness tactics could be better spent on tactics that connect more intimately with your marketplace or give you an opportunity to start a relationship with them.

Rather than stick up an image advertisement, focus on tactics where you can offer direction to participants and kick-start relationships. Such tactics could include direct-response advertising, special events, seminars or webinars.

How can you tell if a marketing effort produced an ROI? You have to test it.

Test your marketing

The cause of great failure in marketing is speculation. Don’t rely on conjecture. Getting great at lead generation is all about testing the different variables that go out into the marketplace to determine what it best responds to.

Take, for example, a pay-per-click ad on Google. You could try it two ways. Take out an ad that directs people to two Web pages. One would tell the visitor to call a sales person today to get a 30-day free trial. The other would tell the visitor to download a top 10 guide. That guide would teach your reader about your product or service, and offer a link to another Web page to download a 30-day free trial.

Collect data on each effort. That data should be used as a benchmark against other marketing tactics or campaigns to determine which approach works best to achieve your objectives. Whichever achieves the best result will become your new benchmark moving forward.

Use many tactics

On the battlefield, a number of different weapons are used, from aircraft to fighting ships to remote-controlled weaponry.

What if a large-scale war was fought using just one tactic? Chances are it would not be very successful. The same is true in marketing.

Many people often gravitate to what they feel comfortable with and what feels easiest, rather than what will garner the best results.

It’s far easier to send one direct mailer instead of sending one in combination with a telephone follow-up. It’s far easier to send one or two e-mails than it is to create an e-mail campaign, sending two or three different e-mails directing someone to a website page and testing to see which one fares best.

It’s extremely rare to see any great results from just one communication. To increase leads, you must combine your efforts and “touch” your targets more than once from a variety of different angles to win the battle.

Always issue a call to action

It’s far too common to see an advertisement, Web page, white paper, webinar, direct mailer, article or e-mail come from a small business without any call to action in it. But a call to action is your gateway to a new client, directing the prospect who is reading, listening or viewing a piece of your marketing to take immediate action.

Such a call to action could be to sign up for a newsletter, subscribe for a free trial or download some content.

Does your New Year’s resolution include increasing mindshare for your managed service business? The answer might be as close as your PC. Here, Shapero, founder of ClikCloud, a digital marketing firm, offers suggestions on how to get the biggest bank for your marketing buck.—Jennifer Bosavage, editor

So you are trying to get off on the right foot for the new year. You quit smoking, swore off gin and decided you were going to be more disciplined about marketing your IT Managed Services practice. One way to crank up the lead generation quickly is to turn on your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad accounts. Have you tried Google Adwords? If not, here are 10 tips to help you get the most out of your PPC budget.

Tip #1 – Consider Google Adwords. Why should you care about Google Adwords? For starters, it is fast, easy, targeted and you only pay for results. On top of that, you can track all the results and measure performance of every dollar spent.

Tip 2# – Review your site first. Before setting up your first ad, take a quick inventory of your Web site to make sure you have a targeted offer to use as a response to an ad. I like to create an optimized landing page that has a strong “call to action” to match the offer in your ad copy (e.g., “free PC Tune up”). Make sure there is a quick and easy form for the visitor to fill out that is visible without having to scroll down the page (i.e., “above the fold”).

#Tip 3 – Create a budget. Consider how much you want to spend before you set up your first ad. Google Adwords has the flexibility of allowing you to limit your spending by day and set a maximum amount you want to spend per site visitor. You may need to experiment with your first ad to determine your own success rate. For example, if 100 clicks from your Google ad generates 1 conversion (i.e., landing page form completions), that lead cost you $100 if your Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is $1. Note: Your mileage may vary.

Also, factor in how many leads it takes to get a customer (i.e. your close ratio). I have always relied on spending 10 percent of my revenue target on marketing. Pencil out what is right for your business and budget. Keep in mind you can pause your ads at any time.

Tip #4 – Sign up. If you feel your site is ready and you have your budget in mind, sign up with Google Adwords at google.com/adwords/. Congratulations — you have taken your first step in getting your digital marketing campaign going. You are minutes away from having your first campaign launched. Google Adwords will walk you through a campaign wizard to help you set up your first campaign.

Also, check in with your webmaster or digital marketing agency for freebies and promotional coupons. Chances are they will have some ad credits they can send your way to fund free clicks for your new account.

Tip #5 -Target ads to your service area. Most MSPs I have met seem to attract clients within a 1 hour travel distance or less. Let’s face it, occasionally you need to go onsite. If you need to travel farther than an hour drive, it will eat into your margins.

Google Adword Campaign has a cool map feature to target your ad within a 20 mile radius of your office. Google has an elaborate algorithm for serving ads that includes the geo location of the IP address where the search query originates.

Tip #6 – Target your ads to supported devices. This one is simple, if your website supports mobile devices (e.g. ipads, iphones) then consider turning on the mobile option(s). If your site doesn’t support these devices, then save your clicks.

Tip #7 – Write a compelling ad. Your challenge is writing a compelling ad with a limited numbers of words. The Google Adwords wizard helps you create a title and ad text that fits in the space. Consider including your location and your offer in your ad. It is also a good idea to include the keyword used in the search query string in the ad text as well (e.g. Denver’s best IT Support, specializing in computer repair. Free PC tune up. Sign up now!) .

Remember that landing page? Google will allow you to display a shorter version of your landing page (i.e. “YourWebsite.com” vs. “www.yourwebsite.com/offer”). Formatting your URL for readability will give your ad a clean and professional look.

Tip #8 – Target the right keywords. Chances are your ideal prospect won’t type “managed services” expecting to find you on Google. It is more likely your potential customers are looking for a new computer, advice on fixing their wireless network, struggling with their backup or antivirus updates etc. Try to come up with between 5 and 20 words per ad group (see tip 9 for “what’s an ad group”).

Tip #9 – Organize your ads within campaigns by ad group. Use ad groups as a way of organizing and managing targeted ads with their related keywords. For an MSP, that may mean an ad group for Remote Backup vs. PC Maintenance vs. Network Management. By grouping your ads and related keywords, you can manage your budgets and performance better. It will also make it easier to maintain the ads in the long run too.

Tip #10 – Track your ads’ performance. Google Adwords will provide reports on your ad Click-Through-Rates (CTR), CPC and other ad-centric information. Also, consider using Web site analytics and tracking to measure conversion rates. Google offers Google Analytics which integrates directly with adwords. To find more options, Google “web site statistics” and check out the range of vendors advertising on Google!

It’s fast and easy to get your Adwords account going. It is a great way to boost your Web leads and get your marketing off to a fast start. Keep in mind, like losing weight or quitting smoking, marketing takes discipline and realistic expectations. Stick with it over time, and your managed service practice will grow.

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