Solving “Local” Challenges: Combating Bulk Calls

If you a) believe in the power of search—as a technology, as a consumer experience and as a business model, and b) believe in the economic promise of the “local” opportunity, then you need to commit to a simple axiom: the ultimate destiny of a local search is a phone call. Two relatively new macro trends [...]

Determining The Most Effective Local Advertising Strategy

In today’s rapidly changing media landscape, local businesses of every kind are tackling the same challenge: how do we determine which advertising platforms to incorporate into our marketing mixes? The race is on, it seems, to see who can reach the greatest audience by creating the largest presence across print, online and mobile. But while the [...]

Optimizing Facebook Status Updates For Local Marketing

Many small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) are awakening to the marketing potential found in Facebook’s massive audience, and have begun developing their Facebook pages to promote their companies. While posting status updates is a great way to engage with your customers, there are some ways to kick them up a notch to expand your promotional potential, and [...]

10 Great Local Search Tools That Don’t Exist Yet

Here’s a look at some fundamental local search features/tools that seem obvious, and that should be fully functional—but don’t exist, or don’t work. At least I think they don’t exist yet. Feel free to prove me wrong in comments, tweets, Molotov cocktails, etc. Change the name of your Facebook business page. Perhaps your business’ [...]

More People Go Mobile For Local

Since the beginning of the year, many of us have predicted that mobile will be the top driving force behind local search growth in 2010. A rapidly-increasing number of smartphone users — combined with faster mobile technology, better search offerings, and higher advertiser engagement  — suggests that consumers will be more likely than ever to [...]