Facebook today announced the relaunch of Atlas, an ad network that connects online campaigns to offline purchases across multiple devices. Atlas isn’t a new company but instead has been rebuilt since been being acquired from Microsoft last year. This announcement follow’s Facebook’s announcement of an ambitious program to match sales related data from a variety of sources to show ROI at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing event in New Orleans.

The platform will utilize Facebook data to track users between devices and connect online campaigns to offline results. This is an effort Facebook has been working on with its Custom Audience Tool. A Datalogix study showed that 89 percent of people who saw a Facebook ad and then bought a product in the store did not click on the ad. This uncovers an important behavioral trend for local advertisers who are increasingly critical of ROAS (return on ad spend).

Atlas doesn’t only link consumers to their Facebook accounts but with their interactions on other websites and apps.  Facebook is already equipped with a deep social data trove with 1.32 billion MAUs. This positions it to launch Atlas across both desktop and mobile and to compete more closely with Google’s Ad Sense network. Along with the Atlas’ relaunch, Facebook announced Ommicon has signed on as the first major agency partner.

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This week in Boston’s seaport district the inaugural “Martech” event (aka “the marketing technology conference”) is taking place bringing together a range of brands, ad tech, martech, analysts, authors and developers into sort of an avant garde cultural exchange. Technology, data science and consumer adoption of new patterns are fundamentally changing the marketplace and they way advertising and marketing need to work. Essentially, marketers need to get agile, get relevant or get lost.

Probably the key message from this event is that marketing has to be first and foremost centered around creating an enhanced and personalized customer experience. Technology, storytelling, big data, cross-channel media executions, creativity and a compelling, timely and targeted message are essential ingredients. The event sold-out.

Conference organizers addressed these five questions in the program:

1. What are the innovative technologies impacting marketing today – and tomorrow?
2. How do we support new marketing strategies with the right technology strategies?
3. How can technology transform our marketing operations and customer experiences?
4. What management practices do we need to govern this new breed of marketing?
5. How do we develop talent and culture to leverage marketing technology investments?

One thing marketing is successfully adopting from the software world is the practice of agile development methodology. There is a whole practice area around agile that BIA/Kelsey has been incorporating into its more recent client work. It makes a difference. For more information about agile marketing, see The Agile Marketing Manifesto which provides provides the core value statements and principles as well as a set of resources around this methodology.

Ultimately, it is not really about the technology it is about people and how we use technology to embrace and enhance the customer experience. On this point, I tweeted out one of my favorite quotes from this event when Gartner’s Laura McLellan (famous for her prediction that, “by 2017 the CMO will have a bigger tech budget than the CIO”) said that though she sees a huge future for martech, “until algorithms & avatars get better we’ll still need people.”

Speaker decks when posted are available here.

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Are you making marketing decisions based solely on clicks and web conversions?

Marketers who aren’t including phone call conversions may be missing key data points that can help optimize search campaigns, more accurately measure ROI and justify budgets. For example, did you know that half of paid searches convert offline, mostly from inbound calls? Research is illustrating how paid search, coupled with inbound call tracking, can empower companies to generate better leads, produce higher conversions, all while being very “smart” about spending.

Discover how to maximize your paid search efforts and close the loop with call-based lead tracking.

Join us this Wednesday, April 2 at 2:00 PM Eastern / 11 AM Pacific, for a rapid fire discussion on how the best optimized search marketing campaigns include intelligent inbound call tracking to drive higher quality leads and increased ROI.

You will learn:

— The current state of the paid search landscape

— The importance of combining paid search campaigns with inbound call channels to maximize marketing ROI

— The synergy between online search and offline call conversions for B2B and B2C sales

Speakers include:

— Abid Chaudhry, Senior Director of Industry Strategy & Insight, BIA/Kelsey

— Eric Holmen, CMO, Invoca

— Janelle Laguette, Digital Marketing and eCommerce Consultant

We’ll be tweeting during the webinar, so join in on the discussion by tagging questions and comments with a #PaidSearchGap hashtag.

Register Now to attend Bridging the Paid Search Gap webinar on April 2.

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One of the hottest trends in local marketing is “National Local,” which accounted for 32.1 percent or $42.5 billion of the $132.5 billion spent on local media advertising in 2012. BIA/Kelsey projects that national’s share of local ad spending is expected to grow to nearly $51 billion by 2017. While sometimes obscuring “local local” marketing efforts (i.e. SMBs), the rapid rise of Mobile, effective Geo Targeting and marketing automation has permitted local to scale in unprecedented ways for national brands, franchises and retailers.

Yodle, for one, has been really zeroing in on maximizing its national local opportunities. The company provides marketing services to 40,000 local businesses, including a wide swath of national providers, such as Merry Maids and Miracle-Ear.

Today, the company announced the formal launch of its Centermark suite for such national local players. The suite has been launched as part of The Yodle for Brand Network division — as of July, its revised name for national local services. “Not all brands are national, and many national organizations don’t view themselves as brands,” noted SVP Fred Voccola, in explaining the new name.

Centermark’s various features include local SEO, social, local mobile and scheduling services. It has been in beta for the past six months with 2,000 customers, including franchisors, manufacturers and multi-location operators.

Voccola explains that the company’s primary goal with Centermark is to provide a consistent local Web infrastructure that provides better SEO and ultimately, conversion rates and ‘actionable business intelligence.’ It is not just to understand what the revenue was. We’re interested in what lead sources were used,” and external factors that may have contributed to a sale or other type of engagement, including left field factors that defy conventional wisdom, such as interest rates or weather, he says.

More critically, the use of suites like Centermark can strengthen the bond between national brands and their local entities, says Voccola. At BIA/Kelsey, we have observed that weak online and mobile offerings from brands have caused many franchisees to take control of their own marketing activities, often with mixed results. That probably doesn’t serve anyone’s goals.

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ReachLocal announced today that it is moving away from its new ClubLocal business, which connects consumers with service providers. The publicly-owned company said that it is now considering a deal that would allow ClubLocal to be taken over by a “major” local entity along with a group that includes ex CEO Zorik Gordon and CSO Michael Kline. At the same time, ReachLocal would maintain a large investment in the business.

It is not a done deal. The company said it will “go shop,” or look at all options for the ClubLocal business until December 24.

ReachLocal’s move last Spring to develop “ClubLocal,” a consumer facing business to assign home repair jobs to vetted local services, met with some head-shaking within the industry. Reach has been seen primarily as a B2B service that did not appear to have the core competency or brand to work with consumers.

The service, however, went ahead and launched in Dallas and San Francisco, perhaps spending between $12 million and $15 million on the initial development and rollout. The main idea was that if Reach could provide SMBs with leads and actually process transactions for them, it would make for a much longer lasting relationship than simply relying on advertising solutions.

One of our BIA/Kelsey users of ClubLocal in Dallas reports that it provides excellent service. But there haven’t been extensive reports on its early business results. Soon after the launch, however, there may have been internal dissension about the company’s strategic direction.

CEO Zorik Gordon left the company, along with President Nathan Hanks. CSO Michel Kline had also announced plans to leave, although at the end of 2013. No explanations have been provided for any of the departures. Hanks is not part of the new group that will run ClubLocal if the proposed deal goes through.

In a discussion with BIA/Kelsey today, interim CEO David Carlick and CFO Ross Lansbaum wouldn’t comment on the executive departures, but noted that there is a search going on for a fulltime CEO; that Reach has become more of an enterprise business; and that B2C services such as ClubLocal are “not really our sweetspot.”

Carlick also noted that ReachLocal is going full speed ahead with its new ReachEdge product, a marketing automation and website project for SMBs. In fact, the company is accelerating deployment in Canada.

“Edge is the back part of ReachLocal – getting people to look at the local merchant Website and other offerings, and converting those visits into customer engagments,” said Carlick. “We have found the things that our clients tend to be worst at — like turning merchants into customers. We achieve results that are 200-300 percent better than what most merchants do now.”

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