Category Archives: local advertising

The Small Business Owner Dilemma

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Let’s say I own a restaurant, and I want to run a Google ad campaign where I buy keywords to show my ad to users within a 10 mile radius of my physical location… uhm, nice try.

Urban Mapping posted some insight last week that does an excellent job describing the issues surrounding local advertising — mainly how it fails miserably.

Sure, Google and Yahoo can attempt to deliver your message to a specific geographic region, but if you want targeting any more focused than the general metropolitan area, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.

The portals don’t really give clear data on how exactly all this “we’ll only show your ad to certain users in the country” thing really works. And speaking from experience, if you are local small business owner — good luck getting your keyword buy to only show your online ad to the local residents around your establishment. Most likely, you’ll waste most of your daily budget advertising to people that would never even consider visiting your business based on logistical distance issues, if nothing else. Ultimately, there is nowhere to go for effective online advertising if you’re a small business.

This is where eNeighbors will change everything.

eNeighbors is building the first “bottom up” hyper-local, social network based on where you live. This social network will then provide neighborhood-centric targeting for advertisers to spend their ad dollars more effectively. Instead of Val-Pack coupons, or the typical 1.5% return on direct mail flyers, these small business owners can leverage an online channel to message their service offerings while being confident that the people actually receiving this message live nearby.

Can you imagine the response rate on such a marketing tactic?! I make no predictions in terms of numbers or percentages (yet), but it’s going to be unbelievable! It will literally change the advertising landscape.

Get started by getting your neighborhood online today!

When In Rome…

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Greg Sterling has a great post today on his blog, Screenwerk. He is once again stressing the importance of local/neighborhood level search and advertising when it comes to differentiating between similar cities, towns, or general geographical areas that the larger search portals often get mixed up.

We all know the major metros get the coverage they deserve, but what about the little guy? For that matter, the “little guy” might just be in an outlying suburb of one of the metros and inherently get the short end of the stick due to the traditional “top down” national view of the portal approach.

Yet again, I’ll make my plea for the “bottom up” approach to this entire paradigm. eNeighbors aims to build a network of users that are tied together by where they live, not what internet portal they use.

Learn how to get your neighborhood online with eNeighbors.

Ask.com: AskCity

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Ask.com released some data last week that shows how their new local search service AskCity is being used.

Here is the top 10 list for services search:

1. Restaurants
2. Hotels
3. Churches
4. Banks & credit unions
5. Car dealers
6. Lawyers/attorneys
7. Family doctor
8. Furniture dealers
9. Children & Daycare
10. Hair salons

Additionally, here’s a byte from Greg Sterling’s blog about the service:

Barry Diller keeps talking about Ask as the “glue” of his empire and more specifically about the importance of local. Ask and the new AskCity are thus in the hot seat.

What I find interesting is that all the large portals that are interested in search and local advertising are requiring users to come to them. Yahoo, Google, IAC — they are all building these great tools and portal interfaces with new user interfaces, experimenting with mapping, tagging, and any other type of user generated content (UGC) they can dream up.

What’s the ultimate fate of this “go out and find it” scenario? Wouldn’t it be better for them to come to us? Wouldn’t it be great if the new restaurant on the corner came to you and told you they were open and what kind of food they serve? Sure, they can drop a flyer on your front step, but that’s old school, right?

What type of network would it take to alert a community to new services in their area that they are already looking for anyway? Maybe something like a neighborhood-based social network of local residents that live within a 15 mile radius of the new business which is the same area where they spend the majority of their hard-earned dollars.

If we can build such a network, the service providers would come to us on our turf. Then we get to call the shots. Take the first step and get your neighborhood online with eNeighbors.

Viral Marketing & Social Media

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MySpace just released an interesting research report on user habits and responses to marketing campaigns. I’m not sure what to make of the findings quite yet. After all, it was commissioned by Fox Interactive Media (MySpace’s parent company).

But there was one part of the report that grabbed my attention:

In addition to tracking overall usage of the site, the research study focused on the reasons why users are continuing to flock to online social networks. The data indicated that social networkers use the sites not just to improve their online lives, but also to make their offline lives richer and more exciting. More than 48% said they are having more fun in life in general and 45% said their lives are more exciting as a result of spending time networking online. In addition, 57% said they’ve found more people with similar interests and 52% said they feel more in tune with what’s happening socially in their lives due to social networking sites.

The part about making “offline lives richer and more exciting” is a tremendous validation of our efforts here at eNeighbors. First and foremost, we strive to connect neighborhood residents to each other, but our hope is that the natural progression from that communication is that neighbors will interact with each other outside in the real world where there’s sunshine instead of the LCD glow we’ve become so accustomed to.

Newspapers need to take a distributed approach

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It seems that everyone agrees – newspapers must innovate to salvage their business in the age of the Internet.

But what exactly should they do? Jeff Jarvis suggests on “CalacanisCast 23” that newspapers must adopt a distributed approach and accept the fact that they are no longer the single conduit of news that they once were.

But what does that mean – distributed approach?

In my mind a distributed approach means that newspapers would distribute their content across the Internet to whoever wanted to publish it, so long as it came attached with advertisements controlled by the newspaper so they could get paid.

You wouldn’t necessarily go to the washingtonpost.com or wsj.com, but instead, you would visit sites centered around vertical interests like the war in Iraq, or more likely, the latest celebrity gossip.

The content of these sites could be supplemented or entirely supplied by professional journalists. But the sites themselves would be run by individual publishers who could pick and choose what stories to run.

eNeighbors is one publisher that would be interested in taking advantage of professional journalism.

The content on our neighborhood websites is entirely supplied by residents, which would be greatly enhanced by professional journalists in local communities. And what do newspapers do best? Yep, local coverage.

For eNeighbors this would be a perfect marriage to bolster traffic to our site and provide more value to our users.

For newspapers, eNeighbors’ network of online neighborhoods creates a hyper-local platform from which they can distribute and monetize their content without the overhead that they have today. In addition, they could charge more for the advertising since the audience is much more focused.

I’m sure other website publishers would find professional journalism a valuable addition to their site too. Citysearch is another example of a website that could benefit from professional journalism.

As Jeff Jarvis said, you’ve got to ask yourself, “WWGD?” (What would Google do?)

The Edge of Greatness

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Over the weekend, Perry Evans of evans ink posted an interesting insight into what he calls “conversational commerce.” The basic premise is that small business owners need to leverage the growing consumer participation on the internet in the ever-expanding world of social network sites to create connections to their local services.

He mentions ServiceMagic’s efforts to create some of these connections, but indicates that otherwise there are not any real superstars in this field yet.

Here’s my favorite quote:
“The chasm between potential and reality is still huge and the ‘live web’ is a truly compelling blank slate.”

Now I’m not sure if this makes me nervous or extremely excited. eNeighbors is trying to do this exact thing.

First and foremost, we provide a unique communcations platform for neighborhoods, but a close second is the goal to create a local ad platform for highly focused local service providers.

So, either we are on the edge of greatness, or we are headed down an ill-fated path littered with the remains of our failed predecessors.

No pressure.

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Read Evans’ entire post here

Local Advertising & Local Content

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The “Drilling Down on Local 2007” conference sponsored by The Kelsey Group finished up in Santa Clara a couple weeks ago.

Hilary Schneider of Yahoo was one of the keynote speakers presenting Yahoo’s efforts in the local advertising space. She stresses that the demand for local search is growing each year and the potential ad revenue is in the billions.

Additionally, Peter Horan, the CEO of IAC Media & Advertising, also discussed the local opportunities. Specifically, he mentions integrating professionally produced content with user generated content in an effort to capture the user’s attention in their search for local service information.

This integration of content at the local level from a trusted source that is targeted to a hyper-local audience is the exact model that eNeighbors hopes to drive. Imagine having a prescreened roofer or plumber advertise on your local neighborhood website right where you already read the latest news about your community. The local service providers can start coming to you rather than you searching them out. And it’s all done in a subtle, approachable way that is not “in your face” with sales pitches.

Can a website slow cars down?

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To a certain extent, it can. How? By increasing awareness.

The Highlands Ranch Board of Directors asked the city of Leawood, KS to conduct a speed survey due to the concern that cars were speeding through the neighborhood, putting residents and children at risk.

Then, they published the results on their neighborhood website.The survey showed that only 3% of cars (20 vehicles of 647) were going over the speed limit by 10mph or more.

The highest recorded speed was 41 mph.

While 3% sounds like a small number, it’s not for a street like 141st Street where thousands of cars move through on a weekly basis.

At some point, it may make sense for the board to pursue traffic calming measures like roundabouts. If they do decide to request this from the city council, it will take the support from the entire neighborhood.

Educating residents early on and keeping them informed of their progress will be critical to garnering the support for traffic calming measures in the future, if that turns out to be the right thing to do.

In the meantime, the board has opened up a dialogue in the community allowing people to comment on the article or to submit private “Community Feedback” to the board.

Part of the reason I wanted to post this information was because it’s a great example of how an online neighborhood communication channel can add value to a community. I also think that our other customers will appreciate knowing what other boards are doing about speed problems.

66224 – My new favorite zip code

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If you go to www.eNeighbors.com and type in a zip code, it’s unlikely that you’ll find your neighborhood. Since we’re still technically in beta and limiting the number of neighborhoods that are online, our zip code lists are pretty sparse. However, yesterday we launched another neighborhood in zip code 66224, making it the first zip code with more than one online neighborhood. Congratulations 66224!

If your neighborhood isn’t online yet, what are you waiting for? Request a demo today.

Where the magic happens

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Running a virtual company has huge cost-saving benefits, but the downside is you don’t get a chance for the “watercooler” chat. There are about 4-7 people working on eNeighbors at any given time, some in Overland Park, KS, one in California, and me, I’m in Boulder, CO.

Anyway, in an effort to make things a little less virtual, I thought I’d show everyone where the magic happens in Boulder, CO.

Note the key elements (1: coke on desk, 2: computer, and 3: dog…)