eLocal Listing continues to grow even in these challenging economic times.  In gratitude to all of our loyal customers and dedicated employees, we are pleased to announce that it’s Senior Management Team will donate $1 to feed the children on behalf of each new follower we have to our new eLocal Rocks Twitter account .. follow us at @elocalrocks, just say “feed the children for me!”

Tim Judd, CEO and President comments,

Feed the Children is doing terrific work both overseas and right here in the US. It’s amazing and really quite depressing that a country as rich and powerful as ours has millions of children who are under nourished or just plain starving. Their approach is very practical, they feed many thousands of kids every day and are often first on the scene when disaster strikes. eLocal Listing is proud to support their excellent efforts.

Check back at the end of August and we will let you know how much we have donated on behalf of our Twitter followers.

**eLocal Listing is not affiliated with or endorsed by Feed the Children.

Searching for sales, traffic and branding.

Below is a great article that was recently posted on emarketer.com.

According to a joint study by Econsultancy and search engine optimization (SEO) firm Guava, online marketers around the globe (particularly in the UK) are increasingly turning to search marketing tactics.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said they planned to raise spending on SEO, and 45% said the same of paid search.

In addition, 31% of SEO and 32% of paid search users said they intended to maintain their budgets.

Savvy search marketers use paid search and SEO to accomplish different tasks, however.

In 2008, marketers said that the main objectives of paid search were (in order) to capture online sales, generate sales leads, drive Website traffic and enhance the brand. As for SEO, most marketers said its primary purpose was to drive traffic, create leads, generate sales and brand.

In 2009, marketers’ perceptions are in similar (but lower) proportions across the board.

With the global economy faltering, and money in short supply, search marketing is often the tool that marketers rely on to attract new customers.

“Search marketing is the best customer acquisition tool in the online space,” said eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman.

In addition, SEO offers pluses over paid search—though its advantages must be built up over time, which some marketers have little of in today’s economy.

“SEO improves organic listings, which Internet users prefer over paid search, and it is cost-effective,” said Mr. Hallerman. “Furthermore, optimization works across all search engines, and an optimized site does not drop off the first results page even when marketer spending slows or stops—as it can with paid search.”

I was reading a book on the merits (or lack thereof) of cold calling and came across some poignant points that made me stop and pause for a moment to reflect on the difference between more traditional (ok, some will say old fashioned) methods of selling and newer methods fueled by the Internet, the power of Search, and the influence of the consumer.

I will paraphrase a few of these concepts from a book written by Frank Rumbauskas …

“A certain percentage of the market is predisposed, ready, and willing to buy your product [or use your service]. Instead of wasting time [reaching out to] a bunch of people who will NEVER buy your product, you need to find and perfect ways and means of attracting the people who WANT to buy your product before they call your competitors and buy from them instead.”

That is what Search offers small businesses; a perfect way of attracting the people who WANT your product or services.  With Online Search, consumers actively search for businesses who can solve their problem or provide a service or product.   They Search for you – imagine how effective this type of advertising and marketing actually is.  You place your business in front of customers searching for you.  Local Search is even more targeted and effective since consumers are looking for a product or service in a specific location (city/town/zip code).

The secret to sales success is no longer in television, classifieds, radio, or direct mail, (although I really believe that online mixed with traditional advertising is a great way to grow businesses and I will blog on it in another post) instead the secret is to “create and enact systems to uncover people who WANT to buy your product” or service.

Online search marketing does just that .. a way to reach interested, qualified, and motivated customers searching for YOU!

I actually thought I had missread the story when I received the alert in my email this morning. I was skimming stories at the airport headed to Silicon Valley, and when I mentioned it in passing to a steely eyed VC type today he leapt gazelle like to his Blackberry and indeed confirmed that the mighty Idearc had filled for chapter 11. I’m a huge audio book fan, I get to fly a lot and I fill in the spots where my laptop is out of juice with the spoken word. When the narrator starts a section with “Chapter Eleven” a shiver runs down my spine. I wish the good folks at Idearc nothing but the very best, they are a very smart hard working bunch and we are already working with them successfully on several projects. I look forwards to them emerging stronger moving forwards.

What this story, and the pending possible restructuring of several other Yellow Pages giants, points to is the perfect storm of bad news which has swamped the decks of many fine companies. The economy is famously bad, sales are down, the Yellow Page print product has been hemorrhaging cash for years and the increasing stampede of local advertisers from print yellow pages to online offerings which generate track-able local results is becoming overwhelming.

Newspapers have been beset by many of the same issues, my own local Metro the mighty Boston Globe may stop publishing in the near future. Both the Yellow Pages and newspapers have been unable to completely replace the revenue lost from the high priced print products sold by humans on a face to face basis with much lower cost online products sold online or over the phone.

In the old days the purveyors of print ad products never had to prove that their products delivered value for money….over a hundred years or so they emerged as part of the landscape…a must have for any local business. Indeed in many, perhaps all cases the “dead tree products” proved highly effective as a way to deliver customers to advertisers. There is an advertising truism that “half of all advertising is wasted…the problem is nobody can tell which half.” Since the late 90’s print advertising products have been pecked away at by the pure play verticals. When was the last time you sold an exercise bike, bought a car or found a soul mate through a print product? Of course it still happens but it happens less often than it used to.

Even given those changes some sections have remained robust print advertisers. However increasingly local advertisers have an alternative to print products across all segments; they can count the clicks and measure the calls generated by their online advertising and those ad products don’t have to be bought on an annual basis.

Here at eLocal we see the impact of these changes every day. Our advertisers are looking to get on the front page of search results and they count every click, lead and call which we generate. They rightly hold us to a very high “what have you done for me lately” standard. If we aren’t effective we apply more effort to get them to where they need to be. The print equivalent would be a yellow pages company delivering more and more books, burying entire city blocks in paper, until each advertiser was satisfied with their results. It’s a tough standard and we are happy to deliver against it every day.

You can read the entire story here.

Found a great read about the ongoing battle between Google, and the newspaper industry.

Reports out of the Newspaper Association of America’s annual convention this week focused on the perceived drama between newspaper publishers and Google. Observers have been fixed on the rifts between the search firm and newspaper publishers, which some say suffer because of search engine-facilitated distribution of their content. However, the NAA itself at the San Diego event promoted search engine marketing as a potential revenue stream for its member publishers.

During a presentation Monday, the NAA’s SVP Business Development Randy Bennett, along with VP Advertising Mort Goldstrom, suggested a variety of ways newspaper firms can enhance their digital ad offerings. Among their recommendations: search engine marketing services.

Read the complete article here

Our very own Steve Espinosa had some some interesting thoughts on how Twitter could monetize it’s traffic.

Over the last couple months we have heard many different ideas on how Twitter can successfully monetize their surge in popularity, growing user base, and overall traffic. The ideas range from charging for an account, charging for premium accounts, simply adding AdSense, and the list goes on. What we haven’t heard is how Twitter could add local search into their business model, monetize it successfully, and create more user generated content.
When you think about it almost everything that is on Twitter is inherently local. The simple question “What are you doing?” implies that because, unless you are at home watching TV, you are doing something that is local, whether that is local to you or to someone else. The obvious example of this is when you go out to a restaurant and write about that on Twitter, whether you say “Going out to [insert name here] with @stevemcstud” or “Just had a great dinner with @stevemcstud at [insert name here]“. If you simply perform a search on Twitter for “restaurant in”, the point being to see how many people tweet “I am going to restaurant in [insert city]” or “Anybody know of a good restaurant in [insert city name]?” you can see that with just that one phrasing there are tons of results of people talking about local restaurants.

Read This Article in it’s entirety here

Stumbled across a good read over at MediaPost…

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) can improve query rankings, but companies also need to give consumers easy-to-use Web sites to boost conversion rates and close the sale. More visitors to the site is great, but if the price of average orders drop, marketers should rethink strategies, according to panelists on a Webinar Tuesday.

Search Engine Land Executive Editor Chris Sherman moderated the Search Marketing Now Webinar, “SEO and Conversion Rates: Hand-in-hand,” sponsored by Range Online Media. Herndon Hasty, senior SEO evangelist, Range; and Chris Knoch, principal search engine marketing (SEM) consultant at Omniture, presented and fielded questions. [READ MORE]

Most experienced sales persons know this adage:

“It is easier to sell them what they want…then to make them want what you are selling…”

Imagine this scenario:

You are working the counter at a convenience store and a client walks up and asks for a Coke.

“I understand that you would like a Coke, but how about a nice Sprite?”

NO thanks just a Coke please…

“I certainly understand your need for a refreshing drink, but how about if I take 20% off the price of the Sprite?”

NO thanks just a Coke please…

“The citrus flavor of a Sprite would be more thirst quenching wouldn’t you agree?”

NO thanks just a Coke…

OR

I would like a Coke please…

“One Coke coming up…here you go…”

Every person has a personal desire or want that they have already bought off on and are fully prepared to invest in.  They will take immediate action if they believe that your product or service will provide and/or add leverage to their ability to acquire their need.

Their WANT will usually stem from the need to fulfill one of the innate instincts:

• Personal Security
• Self Esteem
• Sex Relations
• Personal Relations
• Financial Security

Each prospect’s WANT will need to be identified, and then attached to the action potential of your product or service to tap into this natural state of urgent action. So therefore let me pose a powerful supposition:

What if you could read minds?

I mean what if you could actually know what each prospect’s personal need or desire was?  How would that affect your presentation?  Pay attention to the difference in these two leads:

Bob is an owner of a Tire Shop and spends $400 per month on advertising.
Bob is an owner of a Tire Shop and spends $400 per month on advertising
He is afraid of losing and not being good enough
Having more than enough money is his primary concern
He has trust issues with fast talkers
He wants organized plans that are backed with case studies to feel safe

Which lead would you prefer to have more of?  How would the additional information change the style of your presentation?  Would you change your rate of talk speed?  Would you suddenly find yourself quoting more statistics or bringing up support material for your cause?  How would your product or service help his business win, or safely bring more money to save?

If you could provide this information satisfactorily then he would lurch to buy from you.  He has already purchased these concepts.  There is no need to sell him what he already wants.  You simply need to demonstrate that you have his deepest desires ready and waiting.

Each one of us has primary personality profiles.  These are like an emotional thumb print. It has been described many times using all different types of labels:

Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, Phlegmatics
Type A, B, C, D personalities
Red, Blue, Green, Yellow

The list goes on.  So it doesn’t really matter what you call them, just bear in mind that each of us has a merge of several of these distinct emotional patterns and typically one dominant psychological accent.  These accents have base desires and you can read them through language, rate of speech speed, posture and general physical attributes.

Once you know these by heart and can both read and speak the various languages, you will not only be able to accurately identify their base needs, but you will better proffer trust and be able to create much more powerful discovery experiences.  Friends confide in friends and when you speak the matching language of another human they simply feel more comfortable opening up.

Type 1:  The controller
Base Need:  To Win-Control-To Conquer
Language pattern:  Power words, Contest, Get on with it, I’m in charge, Dominant
Language inflection: Strong, Clear, Interrupts, Repeats, Curt when agitated
Posture attributes:  Statement cars, Studies that art of war in all activities

Type 2:  The artist
Base Need:  To play-create-imagine have fun
Language pattern:  Playful Words, Game, Slang, It’s all good, Dude where’s my car
Language inflection: Joker, Cheerful, Fast Talker, Forgetful, Sensitive
Posture attributes:  Flashy or Original Cars, Studies social style and events, Flakey, Chameleon

Type 3:  The organizer
Base Need:  To have order-to prosper social trust through systems and process
Language pattern:  Process words, Flow Chart, Program, Case Studies, Meticulous
Language inflection: Precise, Clear, High Vocabulary, Slower rate of speech speed, Intense Listener
Posture attributes:  Sensible Cars, Studies that art of economics in all life patterns

Type 4:  The healer
Base Need:  To love and be loved
Language pattern:  Sensitive Words, Love One Another, I’ll help, I’m not in charge, Submissive
Language inflection: Mild, Helpful, Never Interrupts, Apologizes, Heals Quickly and Forgiving
Posture attributes:  Non-Descript cars, Studies that purpose driven activities

Your two step process towards effective mind reading is actually quite simple:

Step 1: Use your power of observation to determine the personality profile and match their speech and posture patterns to develop and prosper trust for honest intimate discovery sharing

Step 2: Dig into Discovery and identify the actual primary instinct that is most important to them as well as their primary WANT.  Sell to this WANT and instinct.  Translate your presentation to draw a clear picture. Paint the scenario plainly so that your Prospect can easily see that your product and/or service will deliver to their main WANT.

This is just a snap shot of the primary emotional patterns of the people in our community.  There is a great book I read a long time ago called:  Personalities Plus…It was a quick read and goes into depth on how to communicate to and relate with each type.  If you know that people are different in their base needs you will sense their needs more quickly in your meeting and you will find that they will share with you.  Once you have identified who they are and what they really want then you will be able to add real momentum to your sales process.

Read their minds…sell them what they want and you will sell more often!

I recently came across this article from eMarketer.

New data provided by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), based on research conducted by Radar Research, sheds light on how search marketing dollars are being spent.

In 2008, $13.5 billion was spent on search marketing. The space was mostly made up of paid placement and search engine optimization (SEO), with a sliver going to technology providers whose software assisted in the execution of search campaigns. Paid search ads saw 88% of the total pie, SEO only 11%.

The ratio of paid placement to SEO will change in the future.

To continue reading this article click here