New Citysearch + Google Maps

The Kelsey Group posted news today from Citysearch. iPhone has a new web browsing tool called Mapmash that combines Google Maps and the business profiles found on Citysearch.

The tool can be found at: http://mapmash.googlepages.com/citysearch.htm

It works much the same as many IYPs in that you type in a location, a category, and narrow down to the type of service you are looking for. You will then see a map with location points, which click through directly to the Citysearch business profile.

This service would only work for paid advertisers on Citysearch as free listings do not utilize the business profile.

Yellowpages.com Speech Recognition

MacRumors posted news that AT&T is testing the first speech recognition application on the iPhone. For example, on Yellowpages.com, you would say the city and state and the category of service you are looking for to retrieve your results instead of typing it in. It is definitely a great feature that would get you faster results. The only drawback is that you still need to hit navigational buttons so it is not completely hands free. Though it’s a great start!

New Products and State Advertising Options on Dexknows.com

Dex has recently unveiled new advertising options for 14 states in the Eastern and Midwestern US, including Nevada, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

The following new products are now available for ALL 28 states: Enhanced Package and Starter Package.

The Starter Package includes

• Placement above basic alphabetical listings
• A business profile that includes: website link, email link, tag line, and business description
• A replica of your Yellow Pages print ad

Enhanced Package includes

• Placement above Starter Package listings
• A business profile that includes: website link, email link, tag line, and business description
• A replica of your Yellow Pages print ad

The following products are available for the original 14 states (highlighted in Yellow): Priority Placement, Featured advertiser, enhanced package (new), starter package (new), trademark logo and video.

Priority Listing on Citysearch

Priority Listings appear in the first listing under a category search. The listing includes 1 category, a logo (this is the only product with a logo on the main listings results page), tagline, and URL.

There is only one PL available per category, and the product was just opened up to the Restaurants, Bars & Clubs, Hotels, Shopping, Spa & Beauty, Movies, and Events categories.

I have been reading Groundswell by Forrester Research (Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff). In this book, they define 6 levels of online consumer groups according to their activity on the internet:

• Creators - create blog postings, videos, etc
• Critics - comment on the writings/postings of others in the form of writing reviews or editing articles on Wikipedia
• Collectors - utilize RSS feeds, add tags to photos or websites they find
• Joiners - connect with other people via Facebook or other social networks
• Spectators - these people do not contribute, but they read ratings and reviews, listen to podcasts, watch videos, etc.
• Inactives - no participation with social technologies

For example, in the example from Amazon, they have 2 visible types of contributors: creators and critics. Creators are able to write reviews and the critics can rate how useful the review was. Amazon sorts the reviews by the comment that was rated the most helpful.

Consumers can Adapt their Social Technographic Behavior for each Buying Stage and Situation

In Groundswell, they describe how a company should build a social technographic profile of their clients before developing a social marketing strategy.

I think it’s important to do the research specific to your own products and services rather than using a general guide for a specific age group or gender.

Looking at my own behavior online, there are times when I am a creator and times when I am just a spectator. It depends on the subject and the type of people who are already Creating on the site.

If I am researching the best Christmas present for my nephew, for example, I am more likely to be a spectator or a collector. I will read the reviews of certain toys on Target and Toys R Us, save the best products to my favorites, and go back to make the final decision later. You want to know what others are saying, but you don’t have the experience yet to really contribute to the conversation. However, if you are a frequent user of the product, you may be more likely to write reviews or add to another person’s review.

Of course there may be products out there where the average consumer would need to ask a lot of questions, find out who else is buying the product, and why they should buy it. instead of talking to a sales person, they want to hear from others and get specific answers to their questions.

Therefore, in setting up a social marketing tool on your website, I think it’s important to know what activity level your current customers are and what level your potential customers are, and allow them to interact with each other if your goal is to create new business.

Do you know the social profile of your customers? How would you utilize this information to develop a new social marketing strategy?

This may sound crazy, but I think the answer to the airline crisis is to follow the advertising model of Nascar.

My husband travels frequently and he is always happy to talk about the types of jets from the Northwest fleet that he’s flown on: whether it’s a Boeing 727, an Airbus, or a DC-9 (oh yea, I looked those up!).

So what if Northwest created an interactive website that profiled the planes and the pilots that fly them? And allowed sponsors to put their logo on the planes?

Here is how the plan would work:

Pilots: Show us pictures of the pilots, how many seasons they’ve had, interesting statistics like how many miles they go a day and how many places they have flown to (like the “where I’ve been” application on Facebook), and details for the ladies like are they single. Image the teenagers and kids looking at these pages with admiration!

Planes: Show us the funniest moments on the plane, special features of the plane, the crew, and where it’s going next. Allow travelers to find the plane they traveled on and enter their own stories or upload a video.

Sponsors: Advertisers could offer free samples, ask travelers to fill out surveys, have them try out your product, etc. You have people engaged, just sitting in a seat for hours, why not!

Benefits:

• Northwest can generate revenue from the advertisers to balance out what they are losing on fuel costs
• Travelers will be excited to see who their pilot is, the plane number, and main sponsor of the plane

Possible problems are obviously security concerns. We would also need to know how often planes are repainted.

In response to Seth Godin’s blog yesterday “Let me see,” in which he created a list of ways marketers could make the consumer’s life easier - not necessarily good for the company - I would like to expand his list to ways search engines could make search easier and more productive for searchers:

1. Show ecommerce websites by the number of people who purchased products and let me sort by number of returns, frequency of customer visits, and standard shipping rates.
2. Let consumers rate 1-5 stars next to the search results for how closely the site/landing page matches with common search terms. Filter out sites with many 1 ratings.
3. Let me sort websites that advertise the least/most.
4. I want to know how highly the company is ranked within their industry amongst industry leaders (bloggers, commentators, etc.).
5. I want to know what price points their products are at - should I expect high quality at a low price, low quality at a low price, etc.
6. I want to be able to sort the websites by informational content, transactional pages, and navigational pages (pages that simply link to other pages) results.
7. Establish relationships with sites that allow me to compare products and only allow these quality sites to place sponsored links.
8. Sort websites by the number of friends they have on Facebook or similar social media sites.
9. Show me how many informational webinars are sponsored by the company and their next event.

Is your website currently set up to help move us in this direction?

Local Search is the focus of this upcoming Webinar, hosted by TMP Directional Marketing. I hope you can attend!

National Brands Marketing Local
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
- 1:00 PM EDT (10:00 AM PDT)

Speaker: Greg Sterling, Sterling Market Intelligence and Search Engine Land

The majority of consumer transactions take place offline, yet the Internet influences more of them every day. This is the true opportunity for “local search”: tying consumer Internet research to offline conversions.

In this webcast, Greg Sterling will discuss the latest developments in the Local Search landscape and how brand marketers — of any size — can take advantage of this evolving channel.

The implication for marketers is significant: how do you track offline conversions that began in an online search? How does a large, national brand take advantage of search at the local level? As consumers become more adept at searching online, how do marketers keep up with the shifting behavior? Are Internet Yellow pages the way to go - or should you consider a combination of print and online advertising to maximize your offline sales?

Other questions I hope will be addressed:

• How do website businesses (pure ecommerce) target local consumers?
• Besides print and Internet Yellow Pages, what other methods can be used to target locally?
• If given the choice to do a national yellow pages ad to cover every geography vs many local ads, which has the better CPA and how do you go about choosing those local geographies to cover?

Do you have any other questions?
To register please click on the following link: https://www.etouches.com/2481?reference=TMP

Update: to view the webinar recording, go to: http://searchmarketingnow.com/

Great Ideas for interactive websites:

• LL Bean - used to have a person you could create on their website with your measurements. You could try clothes on your virtual person to see how they fit. I haven’t seen this feature on their site recently.
• Toys R Us - the book Groundswell (Li, Bernoff 200 recommends tools that would help parents choose the best toys for their kids, write reviews of the toys, and save toys to a favorites list. What about a tool that helps you plug in types of activities your kid enjoys or something you want them to learn, and Toys R Us recommends the best toys for you.
• Lowes has a garden planner that allows you to put flowers, trees, and shubs in any location on your lot, plus see plants that are only available for your area: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=pg&p=Down_to_Earth%2FGardenPlanner%2Fgarden_planner_launch.html. The problem is you have to know measurements and it is not very user friendly unless you are an engineer. What about a landscape designer that has large sections of landscape designs in various shapes and you can then switch out certain plants if desired and place these large sections on your lawn. A great quality Lowes’ tool has is a shopping list for when you finish your design.

A recent article from The Kelsey Group (okay, it was in May & I’m a little behind) discussed reasons why the Yellow Pages should develop “a platform for niche social networks since directories covers such a broad array of topics and content that can be related to highly conversational topics such as travel, music, legal, weddings, new mothers, retirement, interior design, home improvement, etc.”

The article goes on to explain that a Yellow Page owned social networking site has the power of a wide range of topics in any of their 5,000 headings, and could utilize its advertisers content as a source of adding revenue potential throughout each niche site.

The Kelsey Group says “the real benefit to Yellow Page owners would come in the form of increased traffic, narrow targeting opportunities for advertisers, additional revenue opportunities and leadership in the fast emerging social marketing space.”

So what would a yellow page niche social network site look like?

To really work, this needs to be a very innovative local networking site. It needs to get the local businesses involved in the content, and offer lots of applications for the users. It needs to be a mixture of twitter, squidoo, Ning, and facebook with a local business flair. Is that too much to ask for?

A local social networking site needs to have a minimum of the following features:

• mobile applications to upload posts and reviews
• user generated video & images
• pages that can be created by users
• the ability to allow users to create profile pages; the ability to save friends and certain posts as favorites
• many headings such as reviews, events, special offer commentary, where to get the best whatever, etc.
• allows the local businesses to add posts or have their own pages
• links in as an application with other social networking sites such as facebook, blogging sites, etc.
• rotating featured companies who have earned the right to get special attention through an innovative product or feature or community service, etc.

What other applications would you like to see on a local Yellow Page social networking site?

I read a post from Seth Godin a couple days ago about writing ad copy. He says that you need to write creative as if you were writing a classified ad. You have 30-50 characters to say what you need to say and draw people in. Once you start with a short phrase, you can carefully insert more words to get to the desired length you want. Godin says to “Gently and carefully add words until it’s as effective as possible, but as short as possible.”

With internet yellow pages or other online advertising placements, it seems that most times once a marketer decides to place an ad online, they throw the basics up - logo, business name, phone number, website - but no one pays any attention to creating the copy. On Superpages and Citysearch, you have 70 characters to state a promotional message and a reason for a customer to visit your site or give you a call. Here are some great examples of advertisers who have taken advantage of those 70 characters:

High Speed Internet Telephone-VOIP-No Contract. USA Cust Support.

Look Great, Feel Great. 25% off. Restylane, Sculptra. Free Consult.

The creative in these ads can stand alone. I didn’t include the title on purpose because you know from the creative what they do. They also make you a promise if you act.

Another thing to consider when writing creative is to tailor it to the channel you are placing advertising on, and by keyword or category. For example, if you are a maid service but you offer window cleaning and you also will wash the dinner dishes, you should have different creative for each. Someone who is looking for a dish washer after a big party is going to expect a different promise from you compared to someone who needs their windows washed.

As internet yellow page sites are expanding to mobile, tv, and other channels, I hope they will eventually consider allowing various types of creative for each outlet. Obviously someone who is driving in their car looking for a place to grab lunch has different needs than someone sitting on the couch ordering pizza.

To summarize: keep it short, make a promise, and tailor to your audience!

On Thursday I attended a Webinar from ZipLocal. On the call, our ZipLocal reps ran through their site, the products, and service areas.

ZipLocal is one of Canada’s largest local business search directories with over 1.3 million business listings across Canada.

Unique features of Ziplocal.com include:

• adding pre-populated, related keywords to your category searches
• BestPicks, which are generated by user voting that occurs on an on-going basis (rather than other sites who only update once per year)
• easy to view profiles of ZipPeople
• neighborhood & city search
• proximity search
• user reviews remain on for all advertisers. ZipLocal has not had major issues with negative reviews. Most people use reviews on their site as a way to promote the businesses they like.
• French bi-lingual site

ZipLocal Partners include: LavaLife, Astral Media, Urban Mapping, Careerbuilder, Sweetspot.ca, etc.

One comment that really got my attention - one of the ZipLocal reps commented that there is no tolerance for error in local search. ZipLocal prides itself on having the most relevant information. Their system searches the internet for any changes and quickly updates their site. I don’t know how many times I have found a business and drove to the store only to find nothing there, or called a number that was disconnected, etc. This is very frustrating and looks poorly on the business rather than the search tool.

Another comment I found interesting is that ZipLocal claims to have minimal duplication over major competitors. 98% of ZipLocal users do not visit Canpages.ca, over 70% of ZipLocal users do not visit Yellowpages.ca, and 55% do not use Google Maps to find local businesses. If you are a Canada business, and you’re not advertising on ZipLocal, there is a high chance you are missing potential customers.

When will ZipLocal start servicing the US?