Local businesses are finding customers in lots of new ways with the expanding reach of social media and transaction capabilities. On the final day at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media in San Francisco, a panel on “the new world of leads” with executives from Airbnb, Thumbtack and Lucky Oyster explored some of the opportunities.

Airbnb, of course, is one of the real breakouts in the space with ten million “guests” in 192 countries now participating in its apartment — as — hotel rental services. The company’s Joe Zadeh said the key to its “shared economy” service was understanding its clients. “People want to have more experiences, and they want to step away from having so many things,” he said. People don’t necessarily want to be an Uber driver after getting a ride, but they do want to become Airbnb hosts.

The company has been building its solutions based on need. For instance, it has developed a freelance photographer program because hosts need good pictures of their apartments. It is also working on providing “speed matches.” Guests “don’t want to wait six hours to get a response,” he said.

Lucky Oyster’s Matthew Berk, a longtime local industry executive and analyst, said that a key part of the new leads order is to provide a “structured” word of mouth platform about actual experience. It has been a ten year journey to provide digital word of mouth. For a local business, it will never be based on a tremendous volume of leads or reviews, he said. But you want to track it, promote it and bump it. The opportunity for innovation is in the form of discovering the right lead, he said.

Thumbtack’s Marco Zappacosta said leads for services have their own special criteria. The long term goal is to become a transactional marketplace, and the most convenient way for a seller to conduct his or her business. But “a lot of price discovery happens after the point of introduction,” he said, noting that Thumbtack now has a list of 30,000 contractors, and sends $200 million of business their way. His challenge: get more contractors. There is plenty of business, but a supply constraint.

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: The New World of Leads appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

At Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco, we are presenting 50 of local’s top players. Want some homework? We’ve pulled recent coverage of some of our speakers from our Local Media Watch blog. There’s plenty of great reading here, and you’ll experience — first hand — how fast things have been changing.

Patrick Barry, GM, Intuit/DemandForce
Intuit Acquires Online Scheduler

Matthew Berk, CEO, Lucky Oyster
Matthew Berk Rethinks WOM via Lucky Oyster

Brian Boland, VP, Facebook
Facebook/Google Vertical Wars: Facebook Grabs a Google Auto Exec

Suzanne Cooper, Managing Editor, SF Chronicle
SF Chronicle’s Cooper: The Fight to Save Journalism

Jeremy Geiger, CEO, Retailigence
Closed Loop Mobile Local Shopping: A Conversation with Retailigence

Dan Hight, SVP, xAd
XAd and Posterscope: Retargeting For The Real World

Ziad Ismail, SVP, Marchex
Marchex Maps Call Monetization Genome

Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot
BIA-Kelsey Briefing: Hubspot Points to a New Way of Selling

Chris Schroeder, Author , Startup Rising
Bookshelf: Christopher Schroeder’s Startup Rising

Sean Smyth, VP, Groupon
A Look at Groupon’s New Partner Network

Eckart Walther, CEO, CardSpring
Merchants Drive Their Own Transaction Marketing via Cardspring Connect

The post Reading List: Recent Blog Coverage of LIL: ILM Speakers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Over the past decade, one of the leading lights in local search and leveraging local content has been Matthew Berk: first as an analyst at Jupiter anticipating key trends, then with his startup , OpenList, which was purchased by Marchex, where he later served as EVP and developed Open View, a local and vertical directory that collected and semantically sorted information for thousands of contextual categories from all over the Web.

Berk’s new project, Lucky Oyster, goes back to his roots in helping people find local information and services – this time by capturing word of mouth reviews. And keeping them top of mind. Berk notes that there has been a rise in popularity in user generated reviews and ratings on the Web. The number one source of reviews is still word of mouth – and it isn’t really supported by technology.

“People receive recommendations all the time,” he says. “But they forget them. And if they ask for recommendations in Facebook, they don’t even see the reply.” Lucky Oyster, a mobile app, has been in development for less than a year.

Based in Seattle, it has been developed to allow people to set up “pearls” of wisdom that can be categorized by apps, categories and by person. Berk notes that the system has been developed as a reminder system as much as a recommendations service – people don’t always remember what they’ve done or seen. The viral effect is already clear in some ways. Berk notes a local Yoga studio in Seattle picked up 20 new students after a strong recommendation by a new student.

Berk is appearing on the ‘New Leads’ session with AirBnB‘s Joe Zadeh and Thumbtack‘s Marco Zappacosta at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media in San Francisco Dec. 10-12.

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Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, BIA/Kelsey’s flagship show, is now set for San Francisco Dec. 10-12 and we couldn’t be more excited. This year’s edition hosts a totally fresh, new slate of industry leaders.

The show opens with BIA/Kelsey research and the dynamic duo of Joanne Bradford and Kara Swisher. Bradford, of course, has pushed local into new realms during her tenures with Microsoft, Yahoo and Demand Media. Now she is applying her knowledge as President of Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle. And Swisher remains the fearless interrogator that has dominated tech journalism for over 20 years – the last eight spent as cofounder of All Things D, along with Walt Mossberg. Nobody cuts through the hype like she does.

Other top speakers represent our idea of real innovation (and real fun, too.) Startup Rising Author and former Washington Post Digital and Health Central leader Chris Schroeder lends a global perspective to what works with startups. In the same light, Intel senior researcher Lama Nachman – yes, Discovery Channel’s “Curiosity Expert” – talks about developing the next generation of mobile technologies.

Other initial speakers include DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry, talking about the next wave of one stop local platforms; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge, going deep on sales organization effectiveness; Weather.com VP Denise Chudhy, talking why weather is the true model for national local; Five Stars CEO Victor Ho on the emergence of Transaction Marketing and Point of Sale integration; Groupon VP Sean Smyth on how Groupon leverages its millions of users in new directions; Telmetrics CEO Bill Dinan on how the new metrics are changing local; and Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on new ways to leverage directory models for leads.

Indeed, a lot of things have happened in local in 2013. The rise of collaborative consumption via AirBnB, Uber and other companies combining listings, social media and purchase capabilities might be the biggest thing to have hit the industry. As Interactive Local Media, we’re going deep on collaborative consumption with Airbnb director Joe Zadeh, Lucky Oyster CEO Matthew Berk, and two more great names that we can’t announce yet.

Other superforums will focus on mobile wallets and the rise of digital agencies. In the end, we’ll end up with 40+, hand-picked speakers.

Here’s an initial list:

Joanne Bradford, President, SF Chronicle
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, AllThingsD
Chris Schroeder, Author, Startup Rising
Victor Ho, CEO, FiveStars
Patrick Barry, CMO, DemandForce (Intuit)
Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot
Denise Chudhy, VP, Weather.com
Lama Nachman, Sr. Staff Researcher, Intel
Sean Smyth, VP, Partnerships, Groupon
Marco Zappacosta, CEO, Thumbtack
Joe Zadeh, Director, Airbnb
Matthew Berk, CEO, Lucky Oyster
Bill Dinan, CEO, Telmetrics

We’ve extended our Early DIscount rates through October 2. Please register here to save.

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