A few years ago, Merchant Circle pushed the boundaries of SMB marketing,– getting claimed profiles from over one million SMBs with just minimal staff but the latest in social marketing (and telemarketing) techniques. The site has continued to develop after it was acquired by Reply!, Inc. in 2011 — it continues to gain new profiles — but it may have the perception of fading as a top local play.

Reply! is now relaunching Merchant Circle with an eye towards making it “the best directory site on the Web.” The relaunch focuses on leveraging the 1.6 million member merchants with speedy searches, and more of an emphasis on user experience — especially, Reviews and Expert Answers, and the mobile experience. In general, merchant profiles will become more of a “showcase” rather than a flat listing experience.

The site is a major improvement, with a slick, updated design. We especially like the globe-like local maps highlighting reviewed businesses.

The consumer-facing design launches this week. An updated dashboard with self-managed Merchant Circle profiles including blogs, images and Q&A — will be launched at the end of January. A dedicated mobile app will come later in 2014.

With the relaunch, “the merchant’s persona is front and center,” CMO Chris Mancini told BIA/Kelsey. “This relaunch will continue pushing that mission forward. Our research shows that SMB’s need simple solutions for their online marketing and we are dedicated to providing that without breaking their bank account or their timeclock.”

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MerchantCircle.com released findings today from a survey that revealed 50 percent of small-business owners follow political candidates or related organizations on Facebook. Fourteen percent of respondents follow these groups on Twitter. The survey comprised more than 6,000 U.S. small-business owners. It’s surprising to learn that busy small-business owners prefer their political messages funneled through social media. This is a telling effect of the comfort shift from traditional to digital advertising among SMBs.

Television was the least informative marketing method with 40 percent of business owners tuning political ads out. Ironically, the bulk of campaign ad budgets are spent on television. Based on MerchantCircle’s results, social media appears to be three times as effective as television for political campaigns that are seeking to target small-business owners.

Printed materials, including direct mail political fliers, are also better received than television. Fifteen percent of respondents said they found these materials informative. With less than six months until the presidential election, these data come at a critical time. Digital media agencies are feverishly working with political groups to ramp up effective outreach strategies. If you want more political ad talk, read our Advisory on how traditional and digital media stack up in political advertising.

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MerchantCircle, which was sold to Reply.com in May 2011, continues to rethink the traditional Yellow Pages small-business model. The company today unveils a website that is less oriented toward directory listings, and more oriented — it hopes — toward winning more consumer traffic, generating more SMB leads and better monetization.

While the new platform has been launched on the core MerchantCircle site, it will soon be available on a white-label basis for other publishers, such as Internet Yellow Pages and city guides. A key driver of the move has been the company’s desire to leverage a larger consumer base for Reply’s “clicks or leads” model.

MerchantCircle has actually been moving toward a “social commerce” model for some time, in recent years adding Answers, community content and other features. But EVP Darren Waddell tells us that the site has now more clearly moved away from an IYP “silo” model, where consumers basically encounter a business and its merchant page.

“It is not about the merchant value proposition,” says Waddell. “It is about helping consumers to connect with local business owners in a meaningful way.” Consumers will be able to seek requests for quote; see pictures, which Waddell stresses are “really important”; build deals; enter business subscriptions; and access the company’s trove of 6 million+ pieces of user-generated content. Merchants, meanwhile, move up from a simple IYP-like enhanced listing to Reply’s Marketplace.

“We really blew out the entire MerchantCircle front-end,” Waddell adds. “We’ve developed an entirely new look and feel.” In beta tests involving up to 10 percent of its user base, the new, improved MerchantCircle has yielded a 2.5 X improvement in consumer engagement.

Being consumer friendly has also required MerchantCircle to crack down on merchants that were aggressively gaming the site and hurting its credibility. “It was a small but loud minority,” notes Waddell. “Algorithmically, we’ve really cracked down on people gaming the system.”

Initially, some of its merchants have not been pleased with the changes, which put most non-featured businesses below the fold. Waddell notes that some merchants on the site’s forums have been “really upset,” but MerchantCircle is sticking with its more balanced approach.

In the long run, the company believes they’ll realize they’re better off with the consumer-friendly features. In the meantime, Waddell suggests that MerchantCircle has hit an effective balance, with 1.2 million active merchants being able to respond to a strong volume of consumer requests — a capability he believes is unmatched in the industry.

Waddell appears at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston on our all-star “Local Business Success: Picking Winners” session, along with AT&T’s Maria Kermath, Schedulicity’s Dave Galvan and SMBApps’ Randy Parker. Register here.

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MerchantCircle last week quietly added free Request for Quote services for its large base of 1.6 million local merchants, immediately sending out more than 180,000 quotes. The quotes are based on category and locale.

Logistically, consumers who ask for quotes are asked for more information, if needed. They are then routed to merchants. The MerchantCircle system automatically creates profiles for consumers that allows them to track which vendors have received their request, manage their responses and also go back and rate the vendors they’ve worked with.

On the merchant side, merchants receive leads in their inbox, where they can engage with the prospect or pass along the lead to other merchants in their network. Each lead is pre-qualified through the MerchantCircle system to help prevent junk and spam and to ensure quality.

MerchantCircle also announced that it will be deploying the leads feature to the CityGrid Media network. As part of the agreement, MerchantCircle will provide CityGrid with a feed of advertisers for distribution on the CityGrid network; each advertiser profile will include a clickable button that launches a lead submission form. CityGrid is an investor in MerchantCircle.

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Scheduling is seen as the next wave of  online marketplace services for SMBs, encouraging sticky usage, premium features and, in some cases,  highly contextual advertising. Scheduling vendors such as Agendize, Full Slate, MaxiPage and X Time are actively syndicating solutions.

Jumping aboard the scheduling trend is MerchantCircle, the SMB services company with 1.3 million registered SMBs. It announced today an all-cash acquisition of TimeBridge, an online meetings facilitator that incorporates scheduling among its other solutions. TimeBridge represents  MerchantCircle’s first acquisition.

CEO Ben Smith told us that MerchantCircle will use TimeBridge to incorporate a free, simple to use scheduling service for its merchants.  While TimeBridge is not primarily a scheduling platform, over time it has acquired 25,000 SMB customers over time. “We knew (scheduling) is something we’d have to have at some point in time,” said Smith.

Ultimately,TimeBridge’s value may be its use as an in-house technology vendor. CEO Yuri Nelkin is bring brought on as CTO of Merchant Circle, and the expectation is that his five-person Israeli team will work on a number of development projects for MerchantCircle.  Meanwhile, TimeBridge will continue to exist as a separate entity.

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MerchantCircle is joining the ranks of companies creating local and vertical content, including Demand Media, Associated Content, Examiner.com, AOL’s Seed and Patch, Perfect Market, Helium, Brafton Media and others. MerchantCircle’s new Local Content Studio is being led by Andy Halliday, who many of us remember as former head of e-commerce at Excite@Home and who has since been engaged in several entrepreneurial efforts.

The basic idea for MerchantCircle’s Local Content Studio, and the others, is to create optimized content that can be used to economically and efficiently spur local traffic to its directories and profiles, while driving ad impressions. Presumably, MerchantCircle will have an edge over rivals via 1.3 million SMBs that have claimed profiles on the service, covering 95 percent of U.S. communities.

The SMBs may be seeking to build attention for themselves (i.e., real estate agents), and/or earn awards or make a little cash — $1 or $2 per article. The cash can eventually add up: Some SMBs, in early testing, are already being sent checks for $300 and up.

The Studio, in fact, may be seen as an extension of MerchantCircle’s Answers division, launched last September, in which members are encouraged to provide their expertise on a wide range of subjects (where to fix, how to fix, etc.). Both efforts are part of a broader effort to broaden MerchantCircle’s identity and engagement with consumers and businesses beyond the core directory.

At the heart of the Studio is an online authoring and publishing system which can support thousands of simultaneous content development projects. The projects can be claimed by local merchant members or other writers remotely, submitted, reviewed for approval or corrections, and published to local and topical “Expert Pages.”

MerchantCircle VP Darren Waddell says the creation of the Studio does not alter the company’s extensive and successful relationship with Demand Media, which includes syndication of MC’s Answers, domain registration for MC members, and expert articles and other content to MC profiles for $9.95 per month, among other activities.

MerchantCircle’s efforts to launch more local content is not occurring in a vacuum. We have watched with interest as Yahoo has been developing local news and information via the hiring of writers in New York and San Francisco, and recruitment of writer/editors in San Jose, Chicago and Denver, per reporting in paidContent. Their written and edited material will likely be paired with material from Associated Content, which Yahoo purchased this spring. It represents a very different take from Patch.com, which is hiring journalists for hyperlocal reporting in up to 500 communities.

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MerchantCircle has registered its millionth SMB, Nassau Avenue Nails of Islip, NY. Owner Danielle Biegler found out about MerchantCircle after searching for other local businesses nearby, and will receive a lifetime MerchantCircle tools, cool MerchantCircle gear and a new sign.

The million number represents roughly 6.7 percent of U.S. SMBs. It may not mean much in the context of Merchant Circle’s success, given that some SMBs unintentionally signed up for the service and may not be regular users.

Yet the service has also built an undeniably impressive track record. Its merchants have written nearly 400,000 blog posts using its publishing platform, uploaded 1 million+ photos, and created more than 350,000 local coupons.

On the consumer side, the service, largely relying on search optimization, currently attracts 20 million unique visitors per month, making it akin to a large Internet Yellow Pages. Users have contributed more than 650,000 local business reviews.

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