Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle, recently published “Local Online Advertising for Dummies”, a book to help SMBs “plan and launch an effective local online advertising campaign”, “set up a Web site that draws local traffic” & “maximize your presence on top search engines”. I haven’t read the book yet, and I am sure it has plenty of good info in it, but I was just looking at the this 343-pager staring at me on my desk and my first thought…
Supermedia just announced that they will be licensing their Superguarantee shield logo to advertisers. From the press release: SuperMedia LLC recently launched ShieldPower, a new licensing program for SuperGuarantee businesses, making it even easier for consumers to spot the ‘Good Guys.’ Qualified businesses can now leverage the power of the SuperGuarantee Shield and use it on their Web sites, company vehicles, business cards, uniforms and more. From Sebastien Provencher:
Charles Laughlin and Neal Polachek of BIA Kelsey talking about their survey of Yellow Pages CEOs: Some quotes from CEOs on where we are today: “Conserving cash has replaced growth. Advertisers have reduced spending at a rate we’ve never seen before” “Print usage has dropped significantly. Nobody talked about usage in the past because sales were based on inclusion v. ROI” “There is an oversupply of classified ad options – too many books” Kelsey is forecasting that the industry is…
While everyone at the ILM conference is acknowledging that the economy generally blows, I am having a surprising number of conversations with local-oriented companies that are saying business is good. Case in point, Ben Saren, CEO of CitySquares.com, a Northeast-based IYP with reviews, just told me that he has seen a dramatic increase in inbound leads. He also noted that advertisers that were running online coupons were seeing an insane number of redemptions and actually had to put the coupon…
Sitting in on a Yellow Pages webinar organized by the YP Commando himself, Dick Larkin. Thought it might be interesting to post some of the data the presenters are discussing. I’ll keep updating this post as I see more interesting stuff. Borrell Associates predicts a 39% decline for annual print YP usage by 2013. It’s not all doom and gloom though. While print is not growing it still seems to out perform the Web in a lot of areas. Some musings…
Perhaps you recall my epic post – Spitzer, Emperors Club VIP & Local SEO – where I uncovered that the notorious escort service was still running a ppc campaign despite the fact that their site was down? Well today I uncovered another gem. And sometimes it’s worth repeating something over and over just to make sure the guy snoozing in the back of the class gets it. Today I was searching Google for “rug hangers” to hang up my Thai…
Has anyone else noticed that there are almost no ads on Google search results for local “weather”-related searches? For most “city”+”weather” searches I am seeing no or almost no advertising except for Google Mobile. Seems very strange.
Just when you were thinking that the world needed one more online yellow pages with customer reviews, Best of the Web beat you to the punch and launched BOTW Local. So what makes this different from all of the other local search guys out there? On its face, not much. However, in SEO circles BOTW is considered a tier 1 Web directory, which means that when your SEO guy is starting a linkbuilding campaign, there’s a good chance he starts…
The #1 indicator that a local business is likely to buy online marketing services is that he is already an advertiser. (In other words if you are an advertiser you are more likely to be an advertiser – mind blowing as usual Hanan)
From the NYT – Turn your head and cough for the camera please. Apparently doctors in the “luxury” category (lasik, botox, boob jobs, etc.) are getting pretty aggressive at getting patients to post videos of their procedures on YouTube. Docs are offering nice discounts, and in one case a lasik doc is paying patients $1 a pop to email their friends about him. My favorite deal was a free $800 injection of Jurvederm in exchange for promotion. …