The entrance into a new digital age has brought endless changes to the world. Current media is in a state of transformation, undergoing great modification in its traditional medium form – from print to digital. The century old Radio industry is not excluded from this transition. It is facing ever increasing competition from new and innovative digital media outlets that are available to local advertisers, but within this competition lies opportunity.

Publisher Eric Rhodes, a leading voice for progressive radio, gave his take on “the new digital stuff” and introduces new areas for the radio industry, such as “the connected car” in the first session of Day 3 at Leading in Local conference.

BIA/Kelsey’s advertising revenue forecasts illustrate that national advertisers play a significant role in the purchasing of advertising opportunities across many different local media outlets. In 2012, our estimates are that national brands spent $45.2 billion dollars in local media advertising such as direct mail, television, print yellow pages, radio, out-of-home and more. This amount accounts for more than a third (33.6 percent) of all spending in local media. “The Radio industry is caught between two worlds” said Rhodes. Current radio owners are invested heavily in transmission costs and they see no compelling reason to back out of it now. They have seen little decline on listening time in the last years – only between 1-2 percent. Compounded with the difficulty to monetize digital radio when consumed out of market areas, makes the idea of transition far more difficult. The radio industry is waiting for things to get further developed, but entities such as Clear channel and iHeartRadio are investing heavy and it may be too late for the traditional players in the space to transition. As we know, digital moves fast, so although Radio maybe okay now, it may not be with continuation of newer developing technologies in the digital space.

The “connected car” emerged as one of the most important touch-points on the horizon for radio, given that the car is where audiences continue to report that a good deal of radio listening continues to happen.   Tech savvy consumers are already listening to streamed audio in their cars via blue-tooth through their smart phones, or connecting through plug-ins, and the configuration of the dash board could make a real difference to Radio’s future. People are no longer carrying radios on them. However, Rhodes said “It’ll take 8 years for 50 percent of the U.S. cars to have connected dashboards and 16 years for 100% of them to be connected.”

The question remains: Where and when does the transition need to happen?

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: Radio Living in Two Different Worlds 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.

BIA/Kelsey has just published a Briefing that examines HubsSpot Sales SVP Mark Roberge’s presentation at last month’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing even in Austin, TX.

By all accounts, the 15-minute presentation was a clinic in how a local/SMB sales force needs to operate in today’s environment. The session went into detail on how HubSpot runs its sales organizations, while also exposing some of the big ideas driving sales transformation. This is a must read for anyone involved in local/SMB sales.

Key Takeaways

* The sales process has essentially flipped, with buyers approaching sellers having already traveled far down the path toward a purchase decision. Effective content marketing is therefore critical to winning the customer.

* Outbound selling is far too inefficient to be a sustainable model in local/SMB sales. Driving high volumes of quality inbound leads and then managing them efficiently is key to winning in modern local/SMB sales.

* Consistency is king. Sales organizations must have a consistent process for recruiting, training and managing the sales force. Otherwise success will be more random than repeatable.

Roberge will be expanding on his talk in Austin with a keynote address at BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media conference in San Francisco.

Summary: In September 2013, BIA/Kelsey held its “Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing” conference in Austin, Texas. At the event, HubSpot SVP of Sales and Services Mark Roberge gave a compelling view inside his company’s cutting-edge sales and lead generation process; the latter driven by sophisticated content marketing. His core message was that the process of selling must be driven by data and analysis, so that success is repeatable and predictable. This scientific approach creates a much more efficient and effective sales organization. The notion of using robust data to drive sales efficiency is a breakthrough idea that makes it possible to attack the often intimidating local/SMB opportunity with a smaller sales organization than once thought necessary.

The post BIA/Kelsey Briefing: HubSpot Points to a New Way of Selling appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the underlying themes at BIA/Kelsey’s recent SMB Digital Marketing conference was extending beyond marketing services for SMBs. This includes operational tools that address their pain points and “lock-in” deeper (read: higher retention) relationships.

This is something we’ve covered several times on this blog over the past six months, and it continues to ramp up as a key topic in the local media world. The SMB Digital Marketing show kicked off with a session that dove right into it, led by Executive in Residence Warren Kay.

Managing growth is central to all of this. What is the threshold for burn rates for Saas offerings that require time to build “lifetime value” relationships? This goes back to the above equation: The threshold should be high to build products with operational lock-in and perennial revenue.

We unpacked the session’s takeaways in a report last week. The executive summary is below and BIA/Kelsey clients can log in to the client portal to view or download the entire thing. Anyone interested in the topic can email me to engage. This will be an ongoing area of focus.

The rest of the play-by-play blog coverage from BIA/Kelsey analysts at the conference can be seen here. And we’ll be doing an analyst round table on this topic Friday. Check back here to see the video, and check out our past video round tables here.

Summary: In this briefing, we examine a few key conference themes introduced on the panel “Focus on Profits: Winning Strategies for SMB Marketing” at last month’s SMB Digital Marketing event in Austin, Texas. One involves balancing the opposing SMB requirements of high-touch sales (to reduce churn) and automation (to improve margin). The answer? SaaS-based operational products that have found success at the enterprise level will play a crucial role in the future of local. Another key question is how start-ups in the SMB space should balance growth and profitability. The general view emerged that high customer lifetime value dictates a focus on growth over profits in the short term.

The post BIA/Kelsey Briefing: Is Software the Answer to Local’s Challenges? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Last week we held a big 3 day conference in Austin on the changing world of SMB digital marketing. It was an awesome turnout, solid speaker lineup and lots of takeaways. Check out our session-by-session blog coverage.

To stay true to our new found love of analyst roundtables, we did one yesterday to unpack some of the takeaways across our analyst team. This one is an audio podcast and is embedded below.

Stay tuned for more audio and video coverage of all of the areas we’re covering.

The post BIA/Kelsey Podcast: Takeaways From SMB Digital Marketing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Last week at SMB Digital Marketing, we held a wide reaching forum on the main mobile topics and areas of innovation that touch SMBs.

This included Google’s kickoff presentation on Enhanced Campaigns, Dex Media on packaging and selling mobile to SMBs and our surprise guest GoDaddy. To open the session I presented the BIA/Kelsey take on the SMB mobile opportunity.

The video for this session and all of our sessions will be available soon. Meanwhile, a separately recorded version of my presentation (audio and slides) is embedded below. It covers a wide range of data points and drivers in this key topical area.

Email me for the slides or any other questions (mbolandATbiakelsey.com)

The post SMB Digital Marketing Conference: The SMB Mobile State of the Union appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Thanks very much to all the members of the BIA/Kelsey community who came to the Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing conference last week in Austin.

We had quite a large crowd of about 500 people, and did some really great new things – touring Capital Factory, the home of 100 Austin startups; building a women’s networking group within our community; showcasing demos over local Austin beers; and bringing a bunch of “real” (and smart) SMBs on stage, courtesy of our friends at Yelp.

I think it is safe to say that we all loved Austin – the “weird” city that really delivers. While we’ll be in super New Orleans for the SMB show next year,  we’ll find a way to come back to the Texas capital.

As researchers, of course, we found a lot to like at the show – some real takeaways that will greatly impact our research and analysis in coming months. My colleague Charles Laughlin and I got to sum up our takeaways in a great SMB All Stars panel that we did to wrap up the event.

What we noted was that while almost all of our programming is anchored in sales and profits, the new SMB Digital Marketing discussions can be broken down into:

Social Media/Engagement: Home/landing pages, images, video, content management, reviews, reputation management, Facebook, Yelp, Pinterest, blogs, email

Retail and Transactions: Big data, coupons, showrooming, loyalty and promotions, scheduling/booking, transactions

Mobile Transition: Mobile optimization, Geo-location, always on, ewallet functionality

Our next event is our flagship: Interactive Local Media. This year, it will be held Dec. 10-12, and we are back in San Francisco, where so much of the action is in this space. Early confirmed speakers include Joanne Bradford, SF Chronicle; Kara Swisher, AllThingsD; Chris Schroeder, Author, Startup Rising; Victor Ho, FiveStars; Marco Zappacosta, Thumbtack; Lama Nachman, Intel; Mark Roberge, Hubspot; Sean Smyth, Groupon; Joe Zedeh, Airbnb; Denise Cuddihy, The Weather Company; and Bill Dinan, Telmetrics. Sign up now for early discount rates.

10 favorite quotes From SMB Digital Marketing

“Software is going to dominate local marketing. In a few years, everybody is going to be in a Software as a Service business.” Nate Hanks, President, ReachLocal

“We can’t just make it as a reselling channel.“ Paul Ryan, CTO, YPG

“The publishers are shifting from print to a marketing services model. The challenge is one of margin.” Simon Greenman, CEO, Home Advisor Europe

“The #1 thing is proving ROI to advertisers.  What we’ve found is that it is not just driving searches, but task completion: for us, that means location extension, click to call with Skype, and card linked offers.” Raj Kapoor, Sr. Director, Local and Mobile Advertising, Microsoft

“‘We won’t invest in anyone unless they can tell us why they won’t get steamrolled by Amazon.‘” Jeff Fagel, CMO, Gannett’s G/O Digital, quoting one of the partners at Andreesen-Horowitz.

“If you’re not on the infrastructure side and you’re just on the advertiser side alone without a large legacy sales force, you’re going to find it very difficult to scale.” Matt Booth, CEO, YellowBot

“Google is not king. The more content you have, the better. People undervalue journalism in today’s marketing.” Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot

“Mobile payments are going to have a big impact. But it has little to do with paying with your phone, which is not much better than paying with your credit card.” Seth Priebatsch, CEO, LevelUp

“Commodity content is not only not helpful, it is dangerous for a business… focus on high end and useful content…things we think people will engage with.” Mike Orren, President, Speakeasy

“Without Yelp, I would be a one man operation, cleaning carpets all day.” Matt Hagebusch, owner, Austin Carpet Cleaner

The post SMB Digital Marketing: Some Top Takeaways appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

CTOs are having the most interesting conversations at legacy media companies – or at least, that would be the conclusion of a stimulating dialog that took place last week at Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing between BIA/Kelsey’s Charles Laughlin, Warren Kay, YP CTO Darren Clark and YPG CTO Paul Ryan. Why? That’s where the reality of sales force transformation takes place.

Clark said that Digital started as YP’s “guest house.” Digital accounted for 1/6 of revenues just five years ago. But now, “the guest house is (about to) get bigger than the main house.” He noted that the company is providing three main digital products. Presence, Performance and Leads. They’re all focused on how we send people relationships, not just leads. We need to get them to connect and build and manage their lists.

Another huge issue is productivity. “How do you get someone to be two or three times more productive?” said Clark. The answer is to manage channels and decision support systems. In fact, the company still plays a vital role for the simple reason that most SMBs aren’t really ready for Do It Yourself. “We have a role to play, and capabilities,” he said.

YPG’s Ryan similarly noted that YPG is about to cross the line where digital accounts for the majority of revenues. “We can’t just make it as a reselling channel,” he said.

The traction in digital has caused the company to rethink it as more of a “strategic advantage” instead of simply erasing all the information every year and starting anew “We are the listing providers in Canada for Google, Yahoo and others,” he said. “We know about these businesses.”

It has been something of an uphill battle, however. “The pace of change really hasn’t been there,” notes Ryan, who has been with YPG for about a year. To change the culture, YPG has been launching products every two weeks. “That is the DNA we need in this space in order to compete with well-funded startups. “We are not just screwing around. We believe we can win.”

The post SMB Digital Marketing: Yellow Pages CTOs Talk about Winning at Digital appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Last week at SMB Digital Marketing, Russ Laraway, Senior Director, SMB at Twitter added to the marketplace chorus espousing the notion that Content Marketing is king.

Many of Twitter’s moves in this area are well known, as content marketing is at the heart of the company’s monetization strategy, estimated $1 billion revenue, and the driving force towards its freshly announced (tweeted) S-1 filing to go public.

Content marketing so far has taken form in Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. These have mostly been used by brand advertisers, but how does Twitter reach the SMB long tail? Of its content marketing initiatives, a partnership with Mail Chimp starts to answer this.

This arrangement takes form in a “lead gen card”. This allows companies working in email marketing (and potentially other formats) to provide a call to action that automatically authenticates and populates users’ information when they’re signed in to Twitter (think Facebook Connect for lead gen).

“If you think about lead gen, there is friction from the marketing message to generating demand and the actual collection of the lead information,” he said. You need impressions, engagement, then a click, then good website, then ultimately users fill out a form. This is lots of friction and it’s going to be even worse in mobile.”

Lead gen cards will come SMB-friendly including the ability to export leads to a CSV file and also lots of coaching about ways to set it up and use it frictionlessly. Overall, this drives towards having more tangible offline actions that can be driven (and tracked) from Twitter activity.

“On Twitter, outcomes are important,” said Laraway. “It’s a cost per engagement model, such as Promoted Tweets or Promoted Account [where] you pay when someone follows you. For SMBs, we need more accountable formats: How do you connect Twitter outcomes with off-twitter outcomes. That’s the idea of where we need to head.”

The post SMB Digital Marketing Conference: Twitter Drives Towards SMB Marketing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the new local contenders is an old name: GoDaddy. The Phoenix-based company, which is anchored in registry services (and Super Bowl ads), has been working to leverage its SMB customer base with a series of moves, including the $75 Million purchase of Locu, a Single Platform-like company. At SMB Digital Marketing last week, GoDaddy’s GM of Presence and Commerce Raj Mukerjee and VP of Product Rene Reinsberg (the founder of Locu) spoke as surprise guests with BIA/Kelsey’s Mike Boland.

Reinsberg suggested that “SMBs love GoDaddy,” which he says as being perceived as a company that “really cares and want to help SMBs succeed.” SMBs, in fact, are a real focus of the new leadership team, much of which was imported from Yahoo, along with CEO Blake Irving. “We have big plans,” he says.

Mukerjee noted that eight million of GoDaddy’s 11 million customers are SMBs. Many of these are “super, super small with fewer than five or ten employees.” Their #1 need, he says, is to acquire customers. They also want solutions that are cost effective and drive traffic to their website. Mukerjee says his challenge to his team is to “enable SMBs to do that.” They aren’t at all focused on newfangled ideas like mobile sites, he adds.

The post SMB Digital Marketing: GoDaddy Extends Beyond Registrations appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.