I am putting together a conference session for BIA Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media East show in Boston on March 21 and looking for a few in-house SEOs who work at big brands with a local focus (e.g. chain stores) to participate. If that’s you or you know of someone who fits the bill please ping me at localseo at localseoguide.com.
Liveblogging: Emily White, formerly of Google Local and now running Facebook Local, starting out with “it’s all about people”. How far we come – My Facebook profile is my true identity v. my original AIM screen name 10 years ago. If you’re not interacting online with your true identity, what are you trying to do? Probably up to something. The web is changing from a web of information to a social web. We used to get info from an anonymous…
Liveblogging Payam Zamani of Reply.com is talking about how service-based businesses are still struggling online. Search Engine and Display marketing are imprecise (intent of consumer and location are not precisely known), complicated (significant expertise and infrastructure required) and expensive (poor targeting = wasted $). Now showing the Reply.com solution of an “Enhanced Click”. We send consumer to a landing page which forces the consumer to define what they want (intent) and their location which makes them a more qualified lead…
Casey Squier of Geomentum talking at BIA/Kelsey #ILM10 about what advertisers are looking for in local: What does our media mix look like over the next few years? How do we migrate our offline media mix to online, specifically around local? Approximately 2,000 points of data for every zip code that agencies don’t want to deal with. Geomentum platform looks at everything from demographics to weather patterns. They match store level data (e.g. sales/foot traffic) and mash it up with…
Some highlights from Neal & Matt’s opening talk: $133B in local ad spend in 2010 Predicting flat local ad spend in 2011 but rising by about 3%/year over the next three years Interactive is 7% of local media revenues v. 8.3% for print yellow pages. TV will continue to be a big chunk with 19%. Local digital media = $20B in 2010 and will grow about 17%/year 2011 = “The Opportunity of Trust” driven by transparency. In 2009 32% of…
Well perhaps “clinic” is overstating it a bit. I am going to be at the BIA Kelsey Group’s ILM 2010 in Santa Clara next Tuesday and Wednesday (12/7 -8). If you want to learn more about how Google’s new Place Search has affected local search & local SEO, let me know. I’ll be running a free clinic (meaning I’ll meet with you when convenient to discuss – it’s not an actual clinic) for anyone who is interested during the show.…
The wifi at the show has finally been fixed so here’s a summary of my notes from Steve Marshall’s presentation on SMB advertising behavior from their survey of SMB advertisers from the end of 2009. Print Yellow Pages Took a Big Hit: In 2008, 32% of SMBs advertised in the print book v. only 25% in 2009 SMBs that use direct mail are relying on it much more as it’s easy to turn these campaigns on and off 77% of…
If you’d like to have a chat about SEO, Social Media or the whole Mosque/Quran thing, please come find me at the conference. And be sure to check out the local social media panel I am moderating, Social Media + Yellow Pages = A New Lease on Life? featuring: Paul Dawalibi, President and CEO, Praized Media Michael Francesconi, Director, Content and Community, CityGrid Media Zeev Gruber, VP Marketing and Business Development, Golden Pages Group
Jon is responsible for Local & Mapping at AOL (aol.?) aol. is looking as local as their big opportunity, particularly because it involves content, which is where aol. is putting a lot of investment. Patch is the cornerstone of aol.’s local strategy. They have created a “scalable” technology platform. They then hire a journalist and plop them into a community. Brod is now running through examples of stories that local Patch editors have broken. They seem to be focused on…
VCs from Canaan Partners (Warren Lee), Trinity Ventures (Patricia Nakache) & Comcast Ventures (Michael Yang): Patricia Nakache: no one has cracked local impulse purchases – mentions Groupon Warren Lee: Skeptical that growth will happen as fast as Kelsey predicts because access to venture capital is not as easy. Venture capital is going to contract by 20-30% and fragmented nature of local with big capital requirements makes it harder to fund. (sounds like a lot of VCs will be getting into…