Today Marchex launched an analytics tool to better capture what it quantifies as a $4 billion opportunity for call-based mobile advertising. Call Analytics for Search is the newest addition to its mobile ad measurement product suite, and it targets enterprise-level advertisers.

The feature set (from today’s press release) includes:

— 100% keyword attribution from all phone calls driven from mobile search.
— Real-time conversion data using Marchex Call DNA technology to identify those calls that are most likely to convert into sales.
— Automated setup and synchronization with leading bid-management platforms, such as DoubleClick, Kenshoo and Marin, which allows search marketers to measure and improve campaigns accurately in real time.

This all comes back to the growth in consumer-initiated phone calls from mobile search.  BIA/Kelsey’s forecasts phone calls  from mobile search to reach 72 billion annually by 2018 — largely driven by smartphone penetration and evolving mobile user behavior.

“Click-to-call ads from search results has become a massive driver of incoming phone calls from mobile consumers to local and national businesses,” John Busby, Marchex SVP of Consumer Insights told us.

But there’s still a gap for tracking the source and quality of most of these calls. By applying technology to fix that blind spot, the idea is to give phone leads better attribution metrics.  And as call volume continues to increase, marketers will be more compelled to rely analytics to make sense of it all.

“In conservatively looking at our own data and the broader industry, we came to the surprising realization that while there’s now $4 billion being spent by marketers on click-to-call, there was not a solution for full measurement and attribution,” said Busby.

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BIA/Kelsey analyst Mike Boland, who co-wrote this post, will be a guest speaker on a webinar with Marchex at 1PM EST today.

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On Monday, BuildZoom announced it has raised $2.2 million. With the latest round of infusion, we asked the Co-Founder, Jiyan Wei, where the company is headed next.

“Our goal is to bring transparency to consumers who are shopping for a home improvement contractors. There is a knowledge gap that exists in hiring contractors. We want to bring transparency to pricing and duration of the project — we have the data.”

The Buildzoom platform is designed to help consumers look for home improvement contract work by matching them with the best-fitting professionals for the job. Buildzoom takes a far different approach than just relying on relying on customer reviews and other info. Buildzoom applies a Big Data method and analyzes more than 50 million construction permits, 3 million contractor profiles, and other third party data sources. The company’s Big Data approach is based on assorted information from state licensing boards and Better Business Bureaus; crowd sourcing via social media sites; insurance and bonding status; and self-provided information. A five star rating is just one piece of the puzzle — mitigating the risk of infrequent ratings.

“What distinguishes us from an Angie’s list is our unique focus on the regulated marketplace,” Jiyan Wei said. Buildzoom has created a two-sided marketplace — one for customers to get recommendations on contractors and the other for home improvement service providers to be listed for prospective projects.

The company will use its funds for hiring and growth. BuildZoom was founded in 2012 by Jiyan Wei and David Petersen and is based in San Francisco. The company previously raised a first seed round of $1.4 million.

The post Big Data for Big Renovations: A Conversation with BuildZoom appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey launched Future Stars several years ago, with the idea of highlighting startup companies in the local space that needed a little boost to hit the big time. Future Stars get to participate in Future Stars Alley at our events; receive reviews from expert judges; and qualify for some stage time.

A great group of Future Stars is set for our SMB Digital Marketing event, which is Sept. 22-24 in New Orleans. The panel takes the stage at the end of Day 2. Come and cheer them on.

When one of the Future Stars breaks through with funding, major alliances or other success metrics, of course, it is very welcome news for us. We take a lot of pride in it. Today, our friends at Seva Call — a Washington D.C.-based service leads company founded in 2012 — announced that it raised a new round of $2.6 million. This is on top of $1.3 Million previously raised.

It has also recently celebrated its one millionth call to local businesses in 46 categories; and rebranded as TalkLocal. It is also expected to launch nationally in the near future, and roll out a mobile app. Co-founder Manpreet Singh tells us that BIA/Kelsey “has certainly been a big part of our progress.” (thanks Manpreet).

Future Star Manpreet Singh, Co-Founder,Talk Local (on right) with Albert Bitton of the Canadian Deals and Coupon Association

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The “Big Data” revolution has hit every strata of the economy, providing insights into users and customers for everything from B2B materials to entertainment and travel.

But what’s the impact of Big Data on marketing to small businesses? The use of Big Data is very important, and highly applicable to SMBs, suggests Radius VP of Marketing Darren Waddell. If properly applied, it lends itself to market segmentation and more focused leads — something that is critical for sales and marketing organizations as they contend with an unwieldy list of leads.

It is part of a move towards automation, which since the Industrial Revolution, “has been the only way that companies survive,” says Waddell, whose company is working with SMB solution leaders such as Amex, The Home Depot and Gannett. Without such segmentation, economic realities force companies to engage in untargeted “spammy” outbound marketing.

“From a lead generation point of view, this is a massive shift,” adds Waddell. “As an industry, we need to get away from lead gen data providers from the likes of Dun & Bradstreet — which are leads without intelligence — and move towards a thoughtful, differentiated approach to SMB marketing.”

Excerpted from a new Brief for BIA/Kelsey clients: “Building a Better SMB Marketing Machine: Inside the Development of Radius.” Waddell is a featured Big Data speaker at Leading in Local: The National Impact, along with VSplash advisor Neal Polachek and Dstillery VP Lauren Moores.

The post ‘The Impact of Big Data on SMB Marketing': Briefing Excerpt appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The “Big Data” revolution has hit every strata of the economy, providing insights into users and customers for everything from B2B materials to entertainment and travel.

But what’s the impact of Big Data on marketing to small businesses? The use of Big Data is very important, and highly applicable to SMBs, suggests Radius VP of Marketing Darren Waddell. If properly applied, it lends itself to market segmentation and more focused leads — something that is critical for sales and marketing organizations as they contend with an unwieldy list of leads.

It is part of a move towards automation, which since the Industrial Revolution, “has been the only way that companies survive,” says Waddell, whose company is working with SMB solution leaders such as Amex, The Home Depot and Gannett. Without such segmentation, economic realities force companies to engage in untargeted “spammy” outbound marketing.

“From a lead generation point of view, this is a massive shift,” adds Waddell. “As an industry, we need to get away from lead gen data providers from the likes of Dun & Bradstreet — which are leads without intelligence — and move towards a thoughtful, differentiated approach to SMB marketing.”

Excerpted from a new Brief for BIA/Kelsey clients: “Building a Better SMB Marketing Machine: Inside the Development of Radius.” Waddell is a featured Big Data speaker at Leading in Local: The National Impact, along with VSplash advisor Neal Polachek and Dstillery VP Lauren Moores.

The post 'The Impact of Big Data on SMB Marketing': Briefing Excerpt appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

On Tuesday, March 25, BIA/Kelsey and Surefire Social are teaming up to host a live webcast on the booming opportunity, but inherent challenges, in national-local digital marketing for brands and multi-location enterprises.

BIA/Kelsey forecasts locally-targeted advertising and promotions spend by national businesses to approach $53 billion in the U.S. by 2017. As a result, brands are aggressively pursuing localized marketing initiatives to boost their visibility and drive both engagement and leads. In fact, BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ Wave 17 survey research indicates that digital media are three of the top five most widely-used channels by franchisees, with Facebook as the top choice. Meanwhile, they are also spending heavily on their online presence – more than $41,000 annually.

However, the question persists: How do adoption and spend translate into ROI-based success? In the webinar, we’ll probe the research more deeply to identify key opportunity/execution gaps. Then Surefire Social will share its point of view on best practices for conquering these challenges to drive real business results across local networks. Specifically, CEO Chris Marentis will look at how technology-enabled service can empower coordinated publishing, content marketing and lead generation strategy across all levels of an organization. Brand case study successes will also be shared.

Please sign up for the free webcast here.

The post Free Webcast: Succeeding in National-to-Local Marketing with a Networked Approach appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Day 2 of Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media conference opened with BIA/Kelsey’s VP and Chief Economist, Mark Fratrik, who shared some exciting pieces of information from BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad view. Media Ad View is BIA/Kelsey’s research product that offers a market by market view of the local media pie.

Fratrik stated, “Local media advertising revenues will climb to $151.5 billion in 2017.” He also communicated that BIA/Kelsey’s goal is to help clients leverage the real business opportunities inherent in this growth to solidify their leadership position.

“Our research-driven data, strategic analysis and competitive intelligence can help clients make the right decisions,” said Fratrik. Fratrik went out further to outline 7 steps that BIA/Kelsey does to help clients:

Step 1: Acquire reliable view of the local media landscape
Step 2: Size the current and future local market
Step 3: Profile the competition
Step 4: Track advertiser trends
Step 5: Understand the changing consumer
Step 6: Operate with reliable, actionable market insights
Step 7: Create a concise strategic roadmap

As the leading experts in cross-platform local advertising, BIA/Kelsey can help design a business strategy that drives new levels of success for media companies. BIA/Kelsey’s local media & advertising expertise helps clients understand the dynamics of their local marketplace, and identify, analyze and manage the competition. Media Ad View Plus delivers the media industry’s most reliable, comprehensive data and insights, Media Ad View is used by many of the largest media companies in the U.S. to evaluate market opportunities across multiple dimensions: market, media and business category.

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: Playing to Win: Building a Leading Interactive Local Sales Strategy appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Amidst all the talk at the second day of SMB Digital Marketing, challenges faced by small businesses and hard recommendations on the best practices for lead generation was offered by Chris Mancini, CMO of Reply.com. Citing the need for easier solutions for the smaller merchants, Chris provided some insight as to the nature of the problems being faced by these small businesses and how they are responding to them via lead generation techniques.

From a recent survey of Merchant Circle customers, Chris provided some interesting data points on the challenges that these small and medium businesses face when marketing their services:

• 59% of these small businesses cite as one of their biggest challenges the need to address all of their various marketing channels
• 59% get an unsatisfactory ROI form Google Ad Words
• 37% cite low quality leads, 47% say it is difficult to use
• 40% say they spend at least 5 hours a week on marketing their businesses
• Only 19% have developed a mobile web site
• 85% have not conducted a daily deal in the past six months.

In order to provide solutions for these challenges, Reply.com provides a marketplace for these SMBs to conduct lead generation programs. Lead generation allows these SMBs to pay form media that is most suitable for them. This performance based marketing can be outstanding for these small businesses as it allows them to accurately measure the ROI of these marketing expenses. According to Chris, the potential for lead generation has a long way to grow, especially in several different lines of businesses.

What the lead generating programs provide to these SMBs is just another method of these businesses to reach potential new and existing customers in a most efficient way. Reply.com is one of several companies that can help SMBs in this area.

The post SMB Digital Marketing: Best Practices for Lead Generation Detailed appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Fast, efficient service leads has been a goal of numerous companies since the commercialization of the Internet. Richard Rosen and his team at FastCall411 pioneered the space seven or eight years ago, although their service was initially limited to hiring car service. The first car service to respond to queries would win the job.

Several new entrants have jumped into the space. ReachLocal has launched ClubLocal, a service that automatically sends out service pros to customers that send in a query. The pros, who provide discounted service, are sent out based on price quotes, reviews and other criteria.

Another new entrant is SevaCall (i.e. save a call), a five person startup based in Potomac MD that sends out leads to service providers, who can then automatically respond to customers – hopefully, within a 90 second window. The service allows up to three service providers to call consumers, who can do their own price and service comparison, set a service window, and hire who they want.

President and COO Manpreet Singh says the service, which raised $1.3 Million in first round funding, is filtering its leads to find the ideal service providers. It eventually will use call management software to filer leads based on pricing, job types done, ratings and reviews, and even inflection points.

Some service pros are being sent leads for free as an introduction to the service, but Singh tells us that the average lead cost is now $13. It is offering services in more than 50 categories, including taxicabs, florists and accountants. More than 6,000 zipcodes are currently being served, including zips in Atlanta, Boston and Kansas City.

The post SevaCall: Qualified Service Leads in 90 Seconds appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Is email still the anchor for customer engagement, given the rise of mobile, social media, texting, websites and big data? With people joking that they don’t even know what email is, you have to wonder.

ExactTarget, which specializes in email marketing and other personalized marketing programs, argues that email is more central than ever before. And apparently, so would SalesForce.com, which agreed in early June to pay $2.5 Billion for the company.

Last week, at San Diego Interactive Day, ExactTarget’s Joel Book laid out the case for email, which he calls “the backbone of customer engagement.”

Email is still more widely used than any other channel, he argues. And the rapid spread of smart phones have greatly accelerated email’s capability. “Mobile is the new direct response,” he says. It is “all about marketing to the individual.”

Email also enables marketers to own their own audience. It’s a long way from 1976, when marketers used to “rent” an audience by buying SRDS books.

The challenge for marketers is to make sure that their email programs are well integrated into all their other programs, including social media, websites and mobile. Shoppers “want a seamless shopping experience,” says Book.

The best way for brands to respond to this need is to use direct response methods such as email to build “small, highly engaged communities.” Brands such as Scott’s Lawn Care have made a science of doing exactly that, tying personalized emails to entire programs for garden care.

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