Looking at Facebook pages specifically, acquiring customers is the main objective for SMBs. Unfortunately, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, only 21.8 percent of consumers use a company’s Facebook page regularly for local shopping. Not only that, but according to an infographic by Lab42, 46 percent of consumers who like a brand on Facebook have no intention of buying from them.

While a plurality of SMBs still view Facebook as a lead generator, they seem to be inching in the direction of using social more as an engagement platform. In last year’s LCM, 42.7 percent of SMBs said the primary purpose of their Facebook page was to acquire customers as opposed to this year’s 38.1 percent.

Despite not necessarily intending to buy, consumers clearly do want to engage with SMBs on social media. According to the Consumer Commerce Monitor, the average consumer has become a “fan” of, “liked”, “followed”, etc. a local business four times in the last six months.

Given that consumers are looking to engage, SMBs should shift their focus from acquiring customers to building community and awareness. Several companies are experts in assisting SMBs to achieve this, including Main Street Hub, Yodle, and Hootsuite.

The post A Shift in Focus is Necessary for SMB’s Social Media Sites appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Looking at Facebook pages specifically, acquiring customers is the main objective for SMBs. Unfortunately, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor?, only 21.8 percent of consumers use a company’s Facebook page regularly for local shopping. Not only that, but according to an infographic by Lab42, 46 percent of consumers who like a brand on Facebook have no intention of buying from them.

While a plurality of SMBs still view Facebook as a lead generator, they seem to be inching in the direction of using social more as an engagement platform. In last year’s LCM, 42.7 percent of SMBs said the primary purpose of their Facebook page was to acquire customers as opposed to this year’s 38.1 percent.

Despite not necessarily intending to buy, consumers clearly do want to engage with SMBs on social media. According to the Consumer Commerce Monitor, the average consumer has become a “fan” of, “liked”, “followed”, etc. a local business four times in the last six months.

Given that consumers are looking to engage, SMBs should shift their focus from acquiring customers to building community and awareness. Several companies are experts in assisting SMBs to achieve this, including Main Street Hub, Yodle, and Hootsuite.

The post A Shift in Focus is Necessary for SMB's Social Media Sites appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

During the first half of Local Media Association‘s Native Advertising Summit the obvious and frequently asked question of how exactly to define native advertising was the first topic to be addressed.

Native advertising sets itself apart from other types of advertising because it is “naturally embedded into a site’s content stream and, while clearly marked as an advertisement, is found to be more impactful than banner ads,” says Ron Josey, summit key note speaker and Managing Director at JMP Securities.  Or as Todd Handy from Deseret Digital Media put it, “it is in the content, engaging, and highly shareable.”

Once the “what” was established, next came the “how.” How does one participate in native advertising effectively? According to David Arkin, VP of Content at GateHouse Media, there are three overarching content goals when it comes to native advertising: it needs to make readers smarter, connect with them emotionally or offer them a solution for a problem.

So how do we accomplish these goals? Arkin answered this question with another list, First you need to establish a focus for your brand (articles, social posts, their site, your site, etc.). Then it is essential for the content to meet the standards of your newsroom. Quality is key. It is also important to produce interesting content that goes beyond the business profile and Q&A — it is not an advertorial. Finally, you need to work with a great company to help you accomplish all of this.

Now that we understand what native advertising is and have a pretty good idea of how to do it, the big question is, why do it? To put it bluntly: because it is effective. “Native ads have ten times the click through rate of traditional display ads,” says Josey, and “32 percent of native ads are shared as opposed to only 19 percent of banner ads.”

With stats like that native advertising is likely to explode in the future.

To learn more about native advertising and content marketing in general, check out BIA/Kelsey‘s latest insight paper Content Marketing: The New SMB Paradigm.

The post Native Advertising Summit: The What, How and Why of Native Advertising appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The most notable similarity is that both genders make the majority of local purchases in person. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, 66.6 percent of men and 65.2 percent of women purchase products and services in person from local sources.

Because consumers make most purchases at physical locations, reaching them at or near those locations is a good bet; enter mobile marketing. How to reach them on mobile devices, however, is where we see differences by gender.

Women are socially engaged, so social advertising is essential. According to Nielsen, the majority of mobile social network users are female, so it’s understood that a lot of their social network usage is done via mobile device.

Because Facebook is the most used social media site for local shopping by women, it is important for local businesses to establish a Facebook page and form relationships with female consumers. This could include promotional opportunities on Facebook pages that female consumers can redeem at physical business locations.

Men, as we’ve discussed, are more engaged with mobile devices. They also interact more with traditional media than women do. TV in fact is men’s most used source for local shopping (women’s is online search), according to Consumer Commerce Monitor.

To effectively reach men, local businesses should therefore maintain advertising through traditional media. But when doing so, traditional media can be used to drive traffic towards digital opportunities. This is especially true for mobile, given that the data indicate men are highly engaged there.

CCM data also indicate that local businesses can benefit from mobile advertising and innovation at their physical locations. This includes smartphone scan loyalty programs.

(Click image to expand)

The post Men vs. Women: How to Reach Local Shoppers Based on Gender appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Not only do consumers use these devices for shopping locally, but they do so frequently. Thirty-three percent of tablet users and 40.3 percent of smartphone users use them once a day or more for shopping locally.

There is an apparent disconnect between consumer’s heavy use of smartphones and tablets to shop and SMBs adoption of advertising with these devices. SMBs are devoting just 5 percent of their total ad spend to mobile advertising, according to BIA/Kelsey‘s Local Commerce Monitor™. That 5 percent is spread among SMS, search, display, and other forms of advertising on smartphones and tablets.

Looking just at apps we see that 17.1 percent of consumer use apps regularly for local shopping and 3 percent make purchases based on apps. Only 9 percent of SMBs are tapping into this market and use apps for advertising.

While only a small portion of SMB budgets are going towards advertising through smartphones and tablets, its is providing big returns. Four of the top 10 media, based on ROI, are related to advertising through these devices. Mobile deals, mobile apps, mobile banners and location aware mobile ads all were felt to have provided SMBs with between 10 and over 20 times the return on spending by at least 40 percent of SMBs who utilize them.

Not only are SMBs who participate in advertising with smartphones and tablets seeing big results, the consumer base for use of these devices when shopping locally is expected to grow. Fourteen percent of those who do not currently use a tablet or smartphone for shopping locally say they plan to do so in the next six months. So for all of the SMBs out there who are not capitalizing on the mobile advertising opportunity, it is definitely a move that would be wise to make.

The post Major Disconnect Between Consumers and SMBs When it Comes to Mobile Advertising appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The LCM data shows that advertisers with bigger budgets tend to be the ones still advertising in printed directories. This makes sense given that print Yellow Pages generally performs better for businesses willing and able to make the investment in a larger ad.

SMBs that purchase print directory advertising had an average advertising budget of $52,675. By contrast, non print directory advertisers had an average total ad budget of only $29,220. Forty-six percent of SMBs who advertise with print directories also indicated they would increase their overall advertising spending over the next twelve months.

The SMBs that use print Yellow Pages take a very inclusive approach to advertising. When looking at the ad spend distribution of SMBs who advertise in print directories, we can see that ad dollars are split 60/40 between traditional and digital media advertising. Given that digital advertising is typically less expensive (in absolute terms) than traditional media, the spending enables the SMB to have holistic advertising approach.

Digital and online spending for these SMBs is also expected to increase by 11.1 percent in the next twelve months. The most likely target for this digital spend is developing a mobile website- 27.2 percent of SMBs that advertise with print directories expect to add one in the next twelve months. Other online properties on these SMBs’ wish lists included a local page on Yahoo, enhanced listing or profile in a mobile app or directory, a LinkedIn page for their business and a Pinterest account.

The post Print Directories Still Considered Necessary for Holistic Reach of Local Consumers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

When it comes to local shopping, female consumers interact much more on social media than their male counterparts. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, 49.1% of females interact with or use social media regarding local purchases compared to only 37% of males. Seventy-one percent of women cite Facebook as their preferred social media site for local shopping. Women also strongly value the opinions of the Facebook Friends with 51.9% considering them to be a trustworthy or very trustworthy source of information for local products and services. Men were not as quick to trust their Facebook Friends with only 44% considering them to be a trustworthy or very trust worthy source.

Women are also heavy general users of social media sites. Approximately 77.4% of women actively use Facebook while only 63.3% of men do the same. Pinterest is dominated by females with three times more women actively using it then men.

Social media is not the only way for local businesses to to reach female consumers.  Women are also active on their mobile devices. In my previous blog post I discussed that men were more engaged than women on their mobile devices and are more willing to try the new and exciting technology that is emerging on the local front, but more women use their mobile devices for local shopping more than men in general. About 39.1% of women use smartphones when shopping locally while only 34.8% of men do the same. Women are also using their mobile devices on the go much more than men. Approximately 74.8% of women use smartphones in store as opposed to 58.8% of men, 72% of women use them in public as opposed to 64% of men, and 66.1%  of women use them in transit as opposed to 51.5% of men.

To learn more about women and their shopping habits check out BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor page.

The post Women and Social Media Go Hand-in-Hand When Shopping Locally appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

For the ladies who attended BIA/Kesley’s Women Leading In Local session at our December 2013 conference in San Francisco, you may remember that one of our speakers was Jayla Siciliano, CEO of Bon Affair. Jayla is the young, ambitious entrepreneur who dropped everything to run with her idea to create Bon Affair, the wine spritzer company created by women, for women.

Bon Affair had been picking up some serious momentum in California and now she will be taking the next step with her idea this Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC’s hit show Shark Tank.

Jayla is a woman who is looking to make her idea a success and that is what lead to her decision to try to get on the show. “I figured I should go for every opportunity out there,” said Jayla. “Once I started doing research on the show and realizing what a great platform it is for exposure and potentially partnering with an amazing investor I was really hoping I would get on.”

Once her decision to try to be on the show was made, the actual process of getting on was her next challenge. “I applied by sending an email in February 2013. Four months later I got a call saying I made it to the next round (I had actually forgotten that I applied at that point) and now I’m getting to air almost a year and a half after initially applying. It’s definitely a lot of jumping through hoops but over all I had a really positive experience.”

To prepare for her actual presentation on the show, Jayla tackled it like it was a college final. “I studied everything there was to study about the show. I was waking up at 4am watching episodes and taking notes on the questions asked, the pitches, the valuations and researching each of the sharks. I practiced my pitch until I was saying it in my sleep and I did a lot of yoga and visualization the week before to stay calm and confident before going in there.”

Jayla is an inspiration for all entrepreneurs out there and to all those who are thinking of taking their idea to Shark Tank. Jayla says: “Go for it! Life is short and business can be a grind. It’s a great platform for exposure and all of the research I did on the ‘sharks’ made me realize they are all really great people who are there to help entrepreneurs. Just know it’s a long process and can be torture at times but if you get to go in and pitch to the sharks try to have fun with it.”

Big things are expected for Bon Affair in the future and it will be exciting to see where this little wine spritzer company goes. To read more on Bon Affair and Jayla, check out my blog post about our Women Leading in Local session in San Francisco where we heard about Jayla’s inspiration for her company.

The post Women Leading in Local Speaker Jayla Siciliano to be on ABC's Shark Tank appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

For the ladies who attended BIA/Kesley’s Women Leading In Local session at our December 2013 conference in San Francisco, you may remember that one of our speakers was Jayla Siciliano, CEO of Bon Affair. Jayla is the young, ambitious entrepreneur who dropped everything to run with her idea to create Bon Affair, the wine spritzer company created by women, for women.

Bon Affair had been picking up some serious momentum in California and now she will be taking the next step with her idea this Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC’s hit show Shark Tank.

Jayla is a woman who is looking to make her idea a success and that is what lead to her decision to try to get on the show. “I figured I should go for every opportunity out there,” said Jayla. “Once I started doing research on the show and realizing what a great platform it is for exposure and potentially partnering with an amazing investor I was really hoping I would get on.”

Once her decision to try to be on the show was made, the actual process of getting on was her next challenge. “I applied by sending an email in February 2013. Four months later I got a call saying I made it to the next round (I had actually forgotten that I applied at that point) and now I’m getting to air almost a year and a half after initially applying. It’s definitely a lot of jumping through hoops but over all I had a really positive experience.”

To prepare for her actual presentation on the show, Jayla tackled it like it was a college final. “I studied everything there was to study about the show. I was waking up at 4am watching episodes and taking notes on the questions asked, the pitches, the valuations and researching each of the sharks. I practiced my pitch until I was saying it in my sleep and I did a lot of yoga and visualization the week before to stay calm and confident before going in there.”

Jayla is an inspiration for all entrepreneurs out there and to all those who are thinking of taking their idea to Shark Tank. Jayla says: “Go for it! Life is short and business can be a grind. It’s a great platform for exposure and all of the research I did on the ‘sharks’ made me realize they are all really great people who are there to help entrepreneurs. Just know it’s a long process and can be torture at times but if you get to go in and pitch to the sharks try to have fun with it.”

Big things are expected for Bon Affair in the future and it will be exciting to see where this little wine spritzer company goes. To read more on Bon Affair and Jayla, check out my blog post about our Women Leading in Local session in San Francisco where we heard about Jayla’s inspiration for her company.

The post Women Leading in Local Speaker Jayla Siciliano to be on ABC’s Shark Tank appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Recently I have found that talks about “professional brand” have been coming up a lot. Here at BIA/Kelsey we define professional brand as “a promise of the value you’ll deliver” aka your professional reputation. It can also describe your potential to clients and those you work with.

This topic can be fairly controversial, especially among female professionals. Women constantly struggle with how they want to be identified in the workplace and for everyone of them their professional brand is different. This controversy makes it it a perfect topic to be discussed at next week’s Women Leading in Local session at our LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact conference in Atlanta.

The session will consist of a panel of five different speakers from the media industry with very different professional brands and with them very different opinions. Kimberli Lewis, CEO and Founder of Global Business Therapy will be coming to Atlanta from Europe and discussing her experience as a woman in the industry there and her thoughts on whether or not she even agrees with the term “professional brand.”

We will also hear from Beth Bowers and Jaleigh Long from Cox Media Group about their brand as a team. They will highlight the idea of working alongside other women in the office as opposed to competing against them.

Wendy Hurwitz from Clipper Magazine will be sharing her professional brand and what it means to her in the professional environment. Finally, Kelly Thomas Nojaim from Bing will talk about her years of experience in the search industry and how her own brand has been built.

To hear the discussion come to the Women Leading In Local session at the LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact conference next week in Atlanta on May 7 from 4:30-5:30. If you are not already registered to attend please click here to do so.

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