About a month ago, I wrote a blog about the expected increase in local search advertising due in large part to the rise of Smartphone usage.  Since that blog post, I have seen some extensive research and statistics I would like to share that further support’s those expectations.

According to the latest report from the CDC’s Department of Health and Human Services, “More than one out of every six American homes (17.5%) had only wireless telephones during the first half of 2008, an increase of 1.7 percentage points since the second half of 2007. In addition, more than one out of every eight American homes (13.3%) received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones despite having a landline telephone in the home.”  Those are strong figures, but I am not surprised…I am included in the 13.3% because I do have a landline, but never use it.  All of my inbound and outbound calls are done from my Smartphone (the Motorola Q).  If it wasn’t for the fact that I need a landline for the Visitor’s gate to my development, I would be counted in the percentage of households who only have wireless phones.

Another strong indicator that local search advertising should be a critical aspect of a company’s online advertising strategy lies in the growing number of people using their mobile phones for accessing news and information.  According to a recent comScore report, “the number of people using their mobile device to access news and information on the Internet more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2009.  Among the audience of 63.2 million people who accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, 22.4 million (35 percent) did so daily; more than double the size of the audience last year.”

The Smartphone has made these activities easier than ever.  More and more people are relying on mobile phones inside their house and out.  So the next time you are allocating budgets and determining your optimum marketing mix, remember to include local search advertising.  The technology inherent in today’s mobile phones have made it easier than ever to access news and information.  Make it easy for your potential customers to find you with a presence in online local search directories like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and YellowPages.com.

When it comes to online marketing, generating visitors to your website is critical, however, long gone are the days when just getting a click to your website was enough. It’s not even close to sufficient anymore. With the current state of the economy, money is harder to come by than most of us have ever experienced (and hopefully will ever experience) in our lifetime. All marketers are being held accountable for where and how their advertising dollars are being spent. Therefore, the click you just paid for better be worth something!

So what did the click result in? Perhaps a whitepaper download? A brochure request? Maybe an inquiry about your product and service? Or, at best (in an ecommerce situation) an actual sale? If every click resulted in one or more of the above, online marketers would be elated. Unfortunately in some cases, it can take a whole lot of expensive clicks to generate a single “conversion”. You might be asking yourself, what exactly is a conversion? In a nutshell, a conversion equates to a favorable result that occurs when the desired action item on your site takes place.

Today, more than ever, measuring your online performance is no longer a luxury, it is an absolute necessity. Employing an analytics tool on your site to track your online advertising is the only way you will gain the knowledge to manage an effective online marketing initiative. MoreVisibility utilizes Google Analytics (GA) to track the performance of our clients’ online marketing initiatives. We were recently recognized and selected to be a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) and are quite proud of this honor. Google has only chosen a small number of agencies to hold this title:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewVendorListings?vendorId=1800

Our clients continue expressing an interest in learning more about GA and we have been assisting them for several years. Whether it is to code their site with the necessary java script, review their GA reports, walk them through the dashboard and interface, etc, we are here. Basically, if you have a website, you really should be tracking what’s happening on it. Where are your visitors coming from? How long are they staying once they get there? How many pages are they viewing? The list goes on and on. Money is precious and if you are being given the ability to measure and track your online performance, why wouldn’t you???

Would you want your doctor to unclog your sink pipe? Would you want your plumber to perform surgery on a clogged artery? I’m thinking most people would give a resounding no. Why? Because neither one is an expert in the other’s field.  Now, why would you want to take your advertising in-house when that’s not your area of expertise?

Everyone has an area of expertise and the best way to expound on that is to partner with other experts.  The purpose of working with an agency is to create a partnership where you work hand in hand to accomplish a goal. Let’s say for example that you are a college administrator looking to get more students to sign up for admissions. Working with students may be your strength, but you may be clueless on how to reach potential students and get them to sign up for your program via the internet. However, an internet ad agency would know how to reach those students via the internet. What most companies don’t realize is that the internet is always changing. There are always new sites coming out, new venues, and new ad strategies. A perfect example would be an article I read in Florida Trend about a site called affluence.org. A person can only join the site if they can prove they have an annual household income of $300,000. This would be a good niche site to advertise on if wealthy households are you target audience. To quote an article from Media Post’s Search Insider, “One of the biggest advantages an agency has over in-house teams is that we are exposed to a wide variety of accounts, which accelerates our learning in this rapidly changing industry.” It’s a simple concept, but it makes sense. Just like a clothing company keeps up with the recent fashions, advertisers keep up with the latest and greatest industry trends. If you tried to make your own clothes you might end up making a tie die shirt, and as far I’m aware, they went out of style awhile ago.  You might save a few dollars, but after a week or two you’d probably go back to buying clothes.

Speaking of money, some people think taking their advertising dollars in-house will save them money. However, that’s not usually the case. Number one, if you decide to pay someone to do the advertising in house their annual salary will likely be more expensive than paying an agency, especially if you hire someone with experience. If you decide to do it in-house, you may get distracted. Not only will you have to run your business, you’ll have to try to keep your campaigns in the engines up to date. A myth that some people believe is that campaigns run themselves. NOT!! Bids need to be updated constantly, ad copy checked, negatives added in and so much more. Managing a campaign isn’t something to be taken lightly.

The best way to get top performance for advertising dollars is to work with a qualified agency. Tell them your expertise and then they can match that with their expertise and together you can run successful campaigns. After all, you wouldn’t ask your doctor to fix the clog in your sink, would you?