Local Search Not for Mom and Pop: "It seems like everyone's rolling out local search."
"Local merchants have just started to think about online advertising in the past six months, according to Dean Polnerow, president and CEO of Switchboard -- and, according to him, they're not ready for keywords. "Small shops don't have the time or inclination to sit down at a PC and go through some complicated interface and bid for keywords," he said...
the local search offerings from Overture and Google really up to speed, according to Peter Hershberg, managing partner in search engine marketing agency Reprise Media of New York City. "For any organization or search engine targeting by location, there are definite challenges that need to be addressed," he said. "For example, we know that Google can't differentiate between an AOL user in Florida and California. They all appear to be in Virginia."
Herscberg said that until consumers are educated about the existence of local search, and begin to use it, it won't deliver good results to advertisers. He said while that a localized ad among search results might attract consumers to whom it's relevant, "I don't know if they're going to just start searching locally." He pointed out that online Yellow Pages already offer exhaustive lists of nearby stores...
the company has changed its sales message to appeal to mom and pop businesses. A new pay-for-performance model makes sense to them, he said, because leads are something they understand a lot better than impressions. Instead of buying keywords, advertisers can decide how many leads they want and how much they want to spend for them, and Citysearch technology makes it happen...
understanding what small businesses' needs are," Ferguson said. While they're no longer skeptical about whether the Web is worth their investment, he said, "They want to focus on how to make the business better. A restaurant is more concerned about the freshness of ingredients than the ROI calculation on the marketing spend."
posted by Jen @ 9:04 AM
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