And they don’t just go online for information, but also to shop. According to Google, 53% of users make purchases as a result of smartphone searches.

To help you capitalize on the vast opportunities presented by the local market, here are five of the most meaningful local marketing trends for 2012:

1.  Paid Search Still Packs a Powerful Punch

Regardless of your local marketing mix, you need to test the opportunities provided to you through paid search marketing. The Kelsey Group reports that 74% of Internet users perform local searches. Additionally, according to the Pew Research study mentioned above, 53% of survey respondents used Search to find local restaurant, bar and club information, and 35% searched for information on other types of local businesses. Google states that a full 20% of searches, or more than 2 billion monthly Google searches, are local in nature.

2.  Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

With more than 320 million mobile subscriptions in the U.S., there is no denying that the country is mobile. That includes your local neighborhood. According to Microsoft Tag, mobile internet usage will overtake desktop internet usage by 2014. Google states that 40% of mobile queries are related to location and that 70% of smartphone users use their device while shopping in-store.

Whether you run a real estate agency, hotel, restaurant, retail store or contracting business, you need to think mobile to effectively reach your customers and prospects. The most popular ways to get involved in mobile local marketing in 2012 will include:

• Search
• Display advertising
• Video (YouTube mobile gets 400 million views a day.)
• Apps
• Coupons
• QR Codes

3.  Deals, Deals, Deals

Deals have grown in popularity in recent years, and 2012 will be no different. Groupon boasts more than 50 million subscribers and is the fastest growing company ever. That’s right, EVER!

In addition to the wildly popular Groupon site, Living Social, Google and even Amazon are offering enticing deals, promotions and incentives. With the daily deals market projected to double in size in 2011, and with so much investment being made in this space, expect a great deal of innovation in 2012.

4.  Location-Awareness

Users of location-based apps are twice as likely to share product information with others, according to Forrester Research, and therefore are a valued audience. From augmented reality, check-in platforms, dynamic map-based services, meetup apps, and geo-triggered promotions, expect location awareness to elevate to the next level in 2012. Juniper Research expects revenue for mobile location-based services to reach $13 billion by 2014.

Another side of this coin is location-awareness enabling technologies. Expect 2012 to be a year filled with new companies arising to help marketers build location-awareness into their solutions.

5.  Localization Will Trump Local

Local marketing has been a hot topic for several years. However, what will set the ultimate winners apart from the pack in the local market in 2012 is “localization,” or customization of your marketing for each specific geographic target.

Take hotels, for example. Various national chains run generic local ads across the country, but one Boston hotel management firm increased its reservation phone calls from the web by 508% in their first month after moving to a localized strategy. Local has been the rage, but the more meaningful trend in 2012 will be localization.

Summary

Get ready for 2012 by capitalizing on the local mobile trends. Whether you’re leveraging Search, mobile, deals, location-awareness or localization – or a combination of these tactics – there are plenty of local marketing opportunities that will help your business drive growth in the coming year.

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Matt Booth, SVP and Program Director of their Interactive Local Media section, states that, “Local search ad revenues hit an all-time high last year, driven primarily by better product integration across search engines, especially Google. Revenues will continue to grow as better targeting, increased mobile usage, and improving integration drive up local search activity.” In fact, BIA/Kelsey expects that by 2015, 30% of all search volume will be local in nature.

This isn’t necessarily anything new, nor is the news that ad revenues from local search are expected to continue to increase. Each quarter sees improvement in available hardware (smartphones, tablets, etc.) that make it easier for people to involve technology in their everyday activities and explosive growth in the number and type of apps available on those platforms. Since much of this activity involves real-time interaction, and an increasing percentage of it involves the use of browsers on these platforms, it is understandably more local in nature. Studies show that at least one-third of mobile users are browsing the Internet with their smartphones and tablets.

What is surprising, however, is the anticipated volume of that growth. There will continue to be a lot of interesting twists and turns in the tale of local search and mobile platforms, not the least of which will be how small to mid-sized businesses adapt to advertising on the mobile platform. Many are just beginning to feel comfortable with local advertising on the conventional browser platform — advertising on the mobile browser environment is similar in some ways, but different in many others. Will most leave this arena to the big brands who can afford the huge spend needed to produce mobile ads that render well in all possible platforms and give up the advantage they may have competitively on a local playing field? Can Joe’s Burgers compete with McDonald’s in drawing in the hungry patron walking down the street browsing for a local burger place?

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In his article, “Get Local and Get Results,” Tom Shapiro looks at the local search landscape from the point of view of the local merchant. He discusses different ways in which businesses with a physical presence can leverage opportunities in local search, including the major search engine programs, using localized marketing, local directories, click-to-call, and ways to structure your AdWords account to take advantage of local targeting.

For those who still are delaying their move into using online capabilities for their local brick-and-mortar setup, Tom’s article is a good start for uncovering the basic arenas of involvement, together with a collection of tips and suggestions for specific actions.

The complete article follows …

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The complete interview with Court, where we chat about local online advertising, follows …

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As we head into 2011, what will be important to pursue with local search?

Andrew Bernero of Relevancy Media — “Make sure your business locations are added to Google Tags and Places to help maximize exposure.”

Bill Slawski of SEOByTheSea – “The first step is recognizing that the focus of local search isn’t ranking web pages based upon locations, but rather businesses to locations. The three primary ranking factors in local search are (1) how relevant a business is to a query, (2) how prominent that business is within that location – focusing upon mentions of the business that include references to the location of that business (not links to the business website), and (3) the distance of a business to a center point on the map shown for a particular query.”

Guy Hill of DroidINDUSTRIES — “I think “local” is still a mysterious, vague concept. If it means “targeting” (at the state/city/zip level), fine. Beyond that, some local search advertising vehicles should be tested… but local means nothing to me on its own. Local is part of targeting, and that’s a part of good search marketing in particular.  If you’re marketing brick-n-motor local business, you might have different experiences. I mostly work with national/international clients … they make local sales, target local sales, but as a part of a comprehensive plan.”

Hallie Janssen of Anvil Media, Inc. –

• Mobile search will continue to dovetail with local, becoming increasingly important in 2011
• Google Places will continue to expand both in usage and complexity, and optimizing Places listings should be a top priority
• Constantly monitor reviews and encourage customers to review your property

Magnus Nilsson of BraveNewMe — “The combination of the engines giving local results higher prominence with the uptake of smart phones for mobile search is proving that physical outfits need to seriously consider their local SEO efforts in 2011. Sites should also be mobile friendly to capitalize on this traffic.”

Patrick Hare of Web.com Search Agency — “Aside from claiming local listings in Google and Bing, it will also be important to consider visibility on location-based apps and GPS listings. Many Internet Yellow Page (IYP) submission services are already touting their connections to GPS tools.”

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Watch for next week’s entry which covers what is ahead for online marketers in 2011 as far as email marketing is concerned.

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It can be hard for the small business to get a foothold in the regular natural listings top 10 and even harder to compete with nationally recognized brands on a one-to-one basis. If you do score a page-one listing, you may not even be able to service all of the orders that are generated by this visibility due to an inability to provide a service in other states or the unfeasibly high cost of shipping product to the other end of the country. Google Places, however, gives you the chance to be a big fish in a small pond with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your efforts are being targeted at exactly the right demographic.

1. Claim Your Place

The first step to connecting with local customers searching for your business, products and services is to create your Places page. This gives business address, hours of operation, pictures and types of payment accepted — all contained within a free Google Maps marker. A Places listing is just as appropriate for a business with one store as it is for a business with several offices either locally or nationwide. You can claim your place for each physical location and manage listings from a single account, so be sure to include all locations for maximum Places exposure.

2. Add Address

In order for the Places marker to position you on Google Maps, you’ll need to input the full address of your business location including zip or postal code. Include as much information as possible – including the name of the business or industrial park if applicable and street name. Your address is sometimes used to send a verification request to – your Places listing won’t go live until this is verified.

3. Choose Your Categories

Google will provide suggestions from its own master list of relevant categories. Choose at least two of these before adding your own category descriptions in the remaining fields. In these fields, use keywords so your directory listing is triggered by real users searching for your product or service. There is no need to add a geographical element to the category field as your address will already be used to determine regional relevancy (e.g., Dry Cleaners rather than Dry Cleaners Los Angeles).

4. Describe, Describe, Describe

The description field is your chance to sell your product or service to the search user, beating out the other local listings also appearing. Think about your USP (Unique Selling Point/Proposition), include references to the things you’re best known for, detail the depth of product lines, or include calls to action such as free shipping, complimentary gift wrapping or old appliance removal. The description field should also contain relevant keywords used in the body of the text.

5. Pictures Speak a Thousand Words

Google provides ample space for uploading images and video to your Google Places listing. If you don’t have a dedicated website for your business, adding multimedia to your listing is an excellent way to create a professional-looking page at no cost. These fields can be updated at a later date, but there is no need to wait until you have professional images or broadcast worthy video. Simply take a digital camera and create your own.

6. Tie In With Your Website

Having regional landing pages on your website will help your Places profile enormously. You can even use this page in the website field when completing your listing. If you don’t yet have a specific locality landing page, create one at the same time you do your Places listing. The URL should reflect the locality (e.g.,/dry-cleaners-los-angeles) and the information on the page be optimized for that particular search term. If you are struggling for content to go on this new page, consider detailing the facilities at that location and a little of the history such as when the store or office opened, how large the team is, if parking is available, etc.

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Small Businesses Learn About Cost Per Lead

It hard to say exactly when “cost per lead” became a common understanding among small businesses, but I started to notice in 2008 that small business advertisers started to question the value of a “click.” For the early adopters, the local search product had been sending “clicks” to their website for several years and in general there was a boost in sales that could be attributed to the “click” product.  But sooner or later, small businesses began to wonder, “What is the value of a click?” and “Are some clicks more value than other clicks?”  When clicks were “guaranteed,” no one seemed to really ask this question, but now that there was a fixed media budget, call tracking, and a reporting dashboard, some small businesses started to add up the costs to determine how much was each lead costing them? Even the definition of a “lead” was somewhat questionable.

The most common approach to determining how much a lead costs a small business was to consider only actual direct contact with the business as a lead, which usually included: (1) a phone call to the business, (2) an email to the business, or (3) walk-in traffic, assuming the business had a retail location.   So a small business would add up all of the “leads” for a month and then divide that into the monthly cost of their local search product.

For example, if your business spends a $1000 per month on local search advertising and you determined that your business received 15 leads during that month, your average cost per lead (CPL) would be approximately $67 per lead.  Is $67 per lead expensive – well that depends?  Generally that depends on two factors: (1) who many leads do you need as a business before you can generate a sale and (2) what is your average sale revenue per transaction.  For example, if it take on average, three leads (3x $67) to generate a sale and the average sale revenue per transaction is $500, then your net sales proceeds would equal $500 – (3x$67) = $299. Assuming your remaining costs were less than your net proceeds of $299, $67 per lead could be considered a fair price for a sales lead.

As small businesses started to get more involved with their online advertising, they were able to make better business decisions because they had more information about their advertising.  Additionally, information also opened the eyes of some small business managers to the fact that they had essentially been paying out money for years and yielding little return on their investment.  Sometimes this was the fault of the online advertising product and sometimes the small business just did not understand how to convert a lead into a sale.  Either way, many small businesses started getting smarter about their online advertising investments and as a result better local search products were demanded by small businesses.

The Contemporary Local Search Product – MerchEngines Platform Review

Watch for a discussion of contemporary local search products and the “MerchEngines Platform Review” in the concluding post in this series.

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Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found here and here.

“Guaranteed Budget” and the Evolution of Local Search

As the “guaranteed” clicks traffic product became more difficult to deliver, local search companies looked to change their business model with the introduction of the “guaranteed” budget product. The primary change was a shift in risk from the local search company to the business customer. In the “guaranteed” clicks traffic model, the local search company assumed the risk of click price fluctuation but under a “guaranteed” budget model, the local search company had the flexibility to buy clicks at higher price points without losing money on the product.

The hard sell to the advertiser in this situation is that as click prices rise and the media budget stays fixed, the advertiser will receive fewer clicks. They are no longer guaranteed a fixed number of clicks.

A “guaranteed” budget search product consists of a “fixed” budget that is agreed upon by both the local search company and the business customer (advertiser). The local search company uses the fixed media budget, often in monthly increments, to fund the pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. If the click prices rise, fewer clicks will be sent to the advertiser, although if click prices go down, more clicks can be generated.

In addition to the media budget costs, advertisers are also subject to management and administrative fees that are added on as supplementary charges by the local search company. Though small businesses assumed greater risk, they also achieved greater transparency into the actual cost of their advertising products.

Initially, the business customers were lukewarm to the product offering because in their mind they were going to receive fewer clicks for essentially the same amount of money, and this was more or less true. To overcome this perception, the “budget-based” click product had additional value-added services bundled with it.

The most common value-added service was a call tracking number that provided additional validation that the click traffic was indeed converting into sales leads. Call tracking services, which had been in use for years in print advertising, were special phone numbers that when placed on a website and called by prospective clients, redirected the call to the advertiser (customer) while saving the call information. The call-tracking information was generally then imported into an online reporting facility (or dashboard) that allowed advertisers to view and track their clicks and calls.

After a slow start, the “guaranteed” budget product started to gain wider acceptance and is now more popular than guaranteed click traffic products.

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A discussion of how small businesses learned about cost per lead will be forthcoming in Part 4 of this article.

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For something that is so easy to set up, few consider the optimization opportunities or take the time to really better their listings which is a shame when you consider that Google must give quite a lot of importance on their Places tool. Consider the prime real estate it occupies at the top of the organic search results and the fact that often, a block of as many as seven local business listings will run alongside a map, taking up a significant chunk of the coveted top of page position.

A Places listing is made up of a number of factors, not just the information the web site owner inputs into the local business listing form. Google pulls data from sources such as Yellow Pages and other third party providers, although it does give the majority weighting to the Places info provided by the page owner. So, an easy first step to making sure your Places listing is really pulling its weight and working to drive relevant traffic is to keep any other local business listings up to date.

Google has recently introduced an ‘areas served’ option to its Places portfolio. This allows you to specific whether all clients come to you at your location or, if you provide services at the client’s location. If services can be provided outside of your business address, it’s also possible to specify how far outside of your verified address you’re willing to travel and which areas in particular the service applies to. So if you’re based in Manhattan but can provide a service to clients throughout New York State, you may want to specify places such as Buffalo or give a list of relevant Zip Codes. Or, if you work within a strict mile / km radius, you can now specify the limit of that area, through distance from your location.

This new feature is great for businesses (particular service businesses) trying to extend the scale of their reach. By specifying the locales to which your Places pages is relevant, you increase coverage prospects because you’re not fixed to the area around your Zip or store address as was previously the case. This new tool is also a lot quicker and more efficient that trying to optimize your web site to appear for keyword + name of town in all locations within the desired coverage radius.

The more information you provide in your listing, the more likely is it to rank higher. As with any kind of optimization implementation, the greater the data the search engine has to sift through, the better its understanding of how and when to rank you. If you’re guilty of completing only the required fields when setting up your listing, go back and complete all fields. Particularly useful are the brands carried field as this lends itself well to the use of keyword rich text, at least one video and a selection of relevant images.

The Coupons tab takes just a few minutes to use yet can actively encourage new business. Even small incentives such as 10% off or buy one get one half price can draw attention and clicks. Simply input a one or two line description and within a few hours, coupons for your company will start to appear.

The Post tool works in much the same way as the Coupons tab but is even quicker to implement. Again, this is a great place to get some keyword rich text in to the listing without appearing spammy. The Post option is almost like a diary or calendar when used correctly, in that you can quickly update your Places page with events, dates to remember or special offers. You may want to tell visitors that there is a book signing at your St Louis bookstore at 7.00pm for example or that anyone visiting your Boston electrical store before Sunday will receive a free travel adapter with their purchase.

Of course, you can also ask your existing clients to help you win new business through the Places interface. The stars displayed with your Maps listing are based on average ratings from independent reviews – that means you need to get in to the habit of asking clients to review your service or product either directly on your listing review link or, through a respected and relevant site. If you’re a hotel that may be via a site like Trip Advisor or, if you offer a service a site like Citysearch.   Of course no one likes to get bad reviews but, if you tackle them productively by attempting to resolve the dispute personally and professionally, you may find a second more positive review is added by that same client.

Finally, don’t forget to refresh your Places page as often as is needed. If you have new stills taken of your office or store front, log back in and add the best image. If your company logo changes, log back in and add the new logo. If you have a video from an event, log back in and upload. The more often you add information and content, the more likely your listing is to be seen within the first block of local business listings on Google.

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Birth of Local Search Marketing

Local media providers didn’t have the expertise to create and manage the pay-per-click campaigns in scale, so they turned to newly formed “local search” companies as partners. In the early days of local search, the predominant product was a “guaranteed” traffic product that consisted of a contractual agreement to send a minimum number of clicks a month to the customer’s website and also send the customer an email confirming the number of clicks generated. The “guaranteed” product was easy to sell because there was no apparent risk to the customer because they would always get at least the number of clicks that was promised. The customer was happy because they were getting “visitors” to their websites. Behind the scenes though, the local search companies were having a difficult time delivering on the product.

The “Guarantee” Gets Difficult

Most of the PPC campaigns up to this point were managed by individuals or agencies with the focus on fewer clients and more media spend. The local search approach was an economy of scale effort where media companies were acquiring large numbers of clients with smaller PPC campaigns. Additionally, many of the new SMB customers were not within the largest cities but rather in smaller cities and towns and this created some unique challenges. The “guaranteed” clicks product was based on a promise of a fixed click quota per month. From the click fulfillment perspective, there were a number of serious challenges.

The first challenge was that although the click quote was fixed, the click cost to the local search company was not. Click pricing, as is the situation today, is based on supply and demand. Click prices fall when demand is low and supply is high and rise when the demand is high and the supply is low. When the “guaranteed” clicks product was first offered, it predominantly attracted certain business segments like dentists, roofing contractors, attorneys and other businesses with high dollar sales transactions. Many of these SMBs operated their businesses in communities outside of the largest cities.

This is significant because search inventory, the total number of relevant searches performed by consumers, is finite, meaning that it is limited in quantity or supply. This limited supply of relevant clicks was also geographically constrained, which means that relevant search traffic for a dentist, for example, may only be the surrounding community (let’s say a five mile radius). The relevant search traffic inventory (think available clicks) may be less that the guaranteed clicks quota or, at the very least, create a supply and demand problem that increases the click price to a point where the click fulfillment provide is not profitable on the product.

Challenged with search inventory problems, some local search companies turned to second tier search engine traffic to satisfy their click quotas to SMBs. During that particular time period, second tier search traffic was perceived to be of lower quality and less likely to convert into a sale for the SMB client. All of these issues contributed to the decline of the guaranteed traffic product which gave rise to the guaranteed “budget” product.

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A discussion of the “Guaranteed Budget” product and the rise of contemporary Local Search Products will be forthcoming in Part 3 of this article.

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