Local Search Primed for Growth
This news article discusses the importance of local searching in marketing and the older methods of the telephone book versus searching for local information online. Searching online is growing rapidly with search consisting of “36% of the U.S. online advertising and will grow 24% yearly in the next five years”.
This article includes statistics for the money spent on traditional advertising, online advertising, advertising usage, and the amount of online advertising that is specifically “search” advertising. “Search” advertising was previously a niche of the online yellow pages, but needs to be expanded to service a more local area.
The pay-per-click model has been used thus far, but it doesn’t service the needs of small businesses and entrepreneurs. The key is that all businesses may not have a website, but they all have a phone. Ingenio’s pay-per-click model is highlighted. In their system, the highest-bidding advertiser in each category is at the top of the search listings. The advertisement contains basic business information including a toll-free unique number of the advertiser. Advertisers pay only when a customer calls their toll-free phone number.
The overall sense of this article is that local advertisers highly value a phone call and want to integrate their traditional marketing efforts with online marketing efforts.