It’s very easy to document that consumers are spending more time online before they go into a store to make a purchase. For durable goods it’s safe to say that 70% of consumers go online before going into a store. So, how do consumers rate the ads they see as they think about buying? Not […]
Recent surveys show that 82% of consumers use search engines to find local information and the trend has been growing for years as other media usage goes down as you can see from this chart. The power of advertising on search engines is so obvious to us that sometimes we forget to recognize what is […]
The straighter you make the path from your PPC ads to your desired customer action, the more likely your customers will not wander off that path.
Just a few day ago a client removed the Yellow Page functionality from its Adbuilder website for its dealers. That makes two that I know of since January. It’s not that the print yellow pages don’t have any readers. They still do, but it’s less and less each day. Yellow page spending continues to go down […]
Yahoo recently announced their new online ad builder for SMBs. They’re trying to make it easy for more SMBs to spend money online in their local market with Yahoo. Based on what we’re seeing in newspaper readership and profit it’s a good bet that small businesses are looking for someplace else to put their […]
Borrell Associates recently did a study on Local Search an developed this chart which shows the percentage of the advertising spend that goes to overhead and how much goes into buying the keywords when you use a reseller. It’s not clear in this chart whether or not the reseller also hosts, maintains and monitors the […]
As a former advertising agency person I understand how recessions really have an impact on an advertising business as advertising budgets dry up no matter how much we argued that a recession is the best time to advertise. What’s different about this recession is that it is masking a major shift in the way advertising […]
I don’t have to stare at the media spending reports too long before a striking conclusion hits me. Traditional (i.e expensive) media down; online media (not expensive) up. What will retailers and SMB’s do now that they don’t have to feel hostage to traditional media to promote their business? What will they do with all that […]
Here’s proof that you need a good bit of technology behind you if you want to keep your retailers using Local Search. The following chart from Borrell Associates shows the churn rate of retailers on systems with and without good software. Now, even with good software I think the churn rate is too high but […]
Borrell Associates has just released “Economics of Search Marketing” to specifically address the challenges of a scalable local online advertising model. The first important takeaway from this study is that local advertising is changing dramatically as small businesses in the next five years will move dollars from the old media (down 19%) to the new […]