Businesses are confused by internet marketing – Can your business find the right product mix?

Posted: December 18, 2008

The Yellow Pages aren’t dead.

Small businesses are confused by search marketing.

Over 50% of small and midsize businesses fail to properly track successes (Source)

Who will empower reps to sell the full marketing package?

Will your company be the one that breaks the magic formula?

There are millions of dollars for both small agencies and large sales forces lying around just by helping small businesses.

Some Background

In 2005, I spoke at Pubcon on how search engines need to make changes to help local adoption. About half of my points have been implemented by the search engines. At that time, there wasn’t an ad display hierarchy system that examined the search intent (by keyword or property) to display ads. These suggestions were implemented:

Stop showing national ads over local ads on local search intent queries
Show local ads on local properties
Better tools for local advertisers

In 2006, I spoke at SES Local in Denver about SME campaigns. I had two points to make:

Fulfillment from aggregators had to be better: Most campaigns were being set up with 1 ad copy and 25 keywords due to technology and scale limitations (although, I’m proud to say LocalLaunch could do hundreds of ads and thousands of keywords for a single SME campaign).
Search Engines needed to empower agencies. A small business doesn’t have to understand the inner workings of search marketing; they just have to believe in the power of it. While part of this responsibility falls on the sales force – the rest falls on the search engines. There’s a reason both manufacturers and dealers run ads – they’re complimenting each other.

Both of these points have improved – but are definitely not solved.

In 2007, I spoke at Google on the network effect of searchers to publishers to advertisers. Along the way I made several suggestions; of which 90% have now come to pass (Thank you AdWords Team).

While the network effect works well for non-local queries; the process is still breaking down at the local level.

Yellow Pages + Internet Yellow Pages + Search Engine Marketing

Throughout those years, I worked with some very smart sales trainers on selling the “Triple Play”, which is a combination of Internet Yellow Pages, Yellow Pages, and Print advertising. It was RHD’s future strategy; and was so believed in that RHD acquired Business.com.

Why sell all 3?

There’s not enough search for all local businesses. The Yellow Pages are still highly used. One should never lean on just one source of leads for their business. IYPs have fantastic conversion rates. The list goes on.

However, just like one should not just buy AdWords or just rely on SEO for all of their traffic; advertisers should diversify their traffic sources.

While we were selling the Triple Play; that doesn’t mean you need to sell print. You need to sell a combination of advertising mediums that make up most (if not all) of a company’s leads.

A company’s position should be: When our clients think of advertising – they think of us first.

You should be the gateway between your clients and their leads.

Do you want to be part of the marketing mix or do you want to be the marketing mix?

Where does that leave us today?

Print and Search Engines are highly used to find local data:

You can also look at this and not think just YP and Search. It’s where eyeballs currently lie. If you can put a business in front of enough (and the correct) eyeballs, then you can be the marketing mix.

According to the study, the first sources used are Search Engines (31%), Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%), Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%) and Local Search Sites (11%). This represents a change from last year’s study, which ranked Print Yellow Pages first (33%), followed by Search Engines (30%).

Source

47% of consumers have used a search engine in the past 30 days, compared with 64% for print Yellow Pages

Teens are almost equally likely to have used a search engine (52%) or the print Yellow Pages (47%) in the past 30 days

Search engines were deemed the “most useful” of the eight key platforms tested; they rated highest in satisfaction for being a free service, providing the right amount of information quickly, acting as a trusted resource, and providing relevant results

Source

Businesses are confused by search engine marketing.

Source: Opus Research, AllBusiness.com (2008)

The study revealed that 59 percent of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use paid search marketing, and of those, 90 percent have never even attempted it.

One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.

Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.

Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

Source

If we examine the numbers:

15% State lack of time. Translation – they need a 3rd party
19% State Internet not relevant. Translation – they haven’t heard an internet marketing product pitch that resonates with them, waiting for the proper 3rd party to come along.
7% Skeptical of effeteness. Translation – still waiting on the correct product to come along.
25% State Confusion. Translation – they need a 3rd party.

That means 66% of businesses which are confused by search engine marketing just need the right product and sales rep to come along.

Will your company be the one that breaks the magic formula?

The formula isn’t hard:

Create marketing products that:
- The business, executive team, and sales reps believe in.
- Bring ROI to the customer
  - Will produce excellent renewal rates
- Can be understood by the business
- Can be understood by the sales reps
- Can be measured to show tangible value
Train sales reps to:
- Use a need based analysis sales approach
  - Understand what the business needs
  - Determine which mix of products fits that need
  - Be able to sell multiple products if necessary. If you’re not a newspaper or Yellow Page company, you can still sell display, IYP, websites, local data inclusion, etc. While search marketing is sexy; all of the above venues can work for a company.
- Understand the product
- Believe in the products
- Explain the products in simple terms
- Training the sales reps is often undervalued – please make sure your reps have the proper training.
Train your analysts to:
- Understand search marketing
  - Understand other marketing avenues of your product (IYP, display, print, etc)
- Understand the product (sales and analyst alignment are crucial)
- Properly fulfill the product
- Don’t use the ‘set and forget’ mentality
Implement technology to:
- Scale your business
- Improve your product’s value
- Showcase your product’s value to your clients