Saturday morning I had to bring my car into the shop for some work. So, I packed my bike in the back and headed off. As I was riding home I saw a truck pulled over and the driver poking around in the bushes. Curious, I stopped.
He was trying to catch a crow that was flopping around in the shrubs with a broken leg. Some other birds had attacked it, he said, and it couldn't get away. I helped him corral the injured creature and get it into his truck. Once it calmed down and was sitting on the floor of his cab... now what? He was going to take him to an animal hospital but neither of us knew of one around.

I pulled out my mobile phone and did a local search for "vet Tustin" and... bam, one just down the  street. I live around here, but don't remember seeing it. No matter; gave them a quick call and found out they'd open in five minutes. I shook the guy's hand, told him he'd done his good deed for the day, and he was on his way.

As I pedaled home, I thought about how cool it was that the Internet and local search have come so far and are really changing our lives on a daily basis. I'm excited to be part of an Internet advertising agency that's on the cutting edge of making it happen. And I'm sure the bird probably appreciates it.

  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

Last time we posted a picture of one of our wildlife visitors, it was a slightly less intimidating creature (an Egret).


Today, hanging around the backdoor outside our Internet advertising agency, was a rather large snake. I think he was on his way to eat the Egret. Mmmm... Egret.

-- Contributed by Kevin Ryan,
    WebVisible CMO
  
Joe the Plumber is so 2008.
Meet Arsen the Tailor, Southern California’s Best Kept Secret

Arriving back in Southern California after living in the grueling winters of New York
City was a breath of fresh (if not slightly smoggy) air. After taking some time to
settle in—and because my Mom wanted closure on this story—I’ve decided to close this series by revealing a closely held secret.

Since the early days of my online advertising career, I’ve been moderately obsessed with making sure I have access to some level of sartorial excellence. I would never claim to be an expert, and I’ve loosened up a bit over the years, but I do enjoy making sure my clothes are of good quality and made to fit well.

I’m afraid this might read like a “how to find a good tailor in Newport Beach” or “where’s the best place to find custom clothes in Orange County” piece, but stick with me; there’s a bit more going on here.

To me, a good tailor fills the role a good bartender plays in the life of many others. In the early days of my career, I preferred having one or two good outfits in lieu of ten bad ones. I was pretty broke when I first started, and competition for looking good was stiff in my first agency job. I am not embarrassed to say I used to get dressed at the dry cleaner at least once a week back then.

My biological and genetic roadmap has dictated a need for custom clothes. About ten years ago, I moved to SoCal from New York City. Within days, I set out to find a good tailor. I found this tailor in the Yellow Pages (in ad unit we used to call a space ad). No graphics, just a small one-inch text box under “tailors.” No Web site, no online listing, nothing.

More recently, after weeks of traveling across the country and enjoying the bounty of gourmet places like Waffle House and Cracker Barrel, it was time for another visit to my favorite tailor.

Arsen Gueleserian has been a practicing tailor since he was 12 years old. Arsen worked in France and Germany before he opened up shop in Orange County California in 1979. Why Arsen chose to move half way around the world is another story, but I can tell you he found working with Neiman Marcus less fulfilling than working for himself. So, in 1981, he opened his doors on Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa, California.

On any day of the week, you’d find Arsen, his wife and his son, Shant, at his shop. In this particular instance, you’d also find a pile of my best custom suits.

Let me see if I can accurately describe the difficulty of finding a tailor in Newport Beach and the surrounding communities like Huntington Beach, Corona Del Mar, Laguna Beach and Irvine. I am a NY boy. To me, a tailor is a guy that when you walk through the door, there are some fine examples of sartorial excellence hanging about, and the tools of the trade should be very close by. He or she has a tape measure around his neck and his or her hands appear to be stained with tailor’s chalk.

Some of the other tailors I’ve found in the aforementioned beach communities more closely resemble a Ferrari show room with cover models serving cappuccino and no actual tailors to be found. These are the kind of places where “going custom” means picking swatches with a hottie and sending a garment order form off for someone else to build and fit. Of course, that’s one direction to go, but you’ll pay triple-digit percentage markups for those garments.

Another option is hoping your dry cleaner can make some changes, but they usually send things to an outsourced cutter. In the unusual instance that he’s any good, you’ll have to pay his premium plus a little something for the dry cleaner. I’d rather have the guy with the tape measure and chalk. I don’t care what the shop looks like; I’m looking at the clothes.

If you’ve been following my trip, you’ll recall I’ve met a few artists along the way
across America. I remembered Gil Hibben’s words when he told me he still cuts all his own blades. Arsen cuts his own fabrics.

From the moment I walked through the door all those years ago, through last Saturday, I have been pleased with the work that has been done. I’ve had custom suits and shirts made and have witnessed perfect hems, the likes of which God herself would be proud to wear.

Arsen has a Web site now, and it’s not a multi-million-dollar enriched digital experience. Like many small business sites, Arsen’s site tells you where to find the shop, what he does, and a bit about him. While it may be basic by today’s big spender standards, it maintains the essence of his creations.

The challenge for most small business is maintaining the core identity of their local brand in crossing over from tangible media onto the screen you see before you now. That challenge is balanced with the need to be found by the right people at the right time, which is the essence of marketing on the Internet.

When I searched for Arsen on major engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, I found local listings within local avenues such as maps with the search sites. Text links directed me to more popular sites for small business like Judy’s Book, California Directory, Local.com, Yelp, YellowBot, CitySearch, Insider Pages, Topix and YellowBook.

As if the problems small companies face weren’t great enough, when looking at local online marketing, small businesses have to navigate listing and advertising options on directory and social media sites that receive a great deal of natural search traffic from search sites. They also have to contend with reviews on these sites. It took me about an hour to add a two-line review on each of the sites I mentioned above.

There are challenges and thankfully there are solutions. This is just one example of the need for small businesses to find experts to help with continued expansion into social platforms alongside search engine marketing, display, local and mobile advertising. I wonder where such businesses in need might find an expert Internet advertising agency?


Arsen’s European Tailoring
1840 Newport Blvd.
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
(949) 646 3400

 

I recently met a stranger who coincidentally ran a struggling small business. In our brief chat, he volunteered that he's involved with real-estate lending and has fallen upon hard times in recent months. When he asked, I told him that I work for an Internet advertising agency that helps small and mid-sized businesses start and manage their local online advertising campaigns. This elicited an immediate reaction of, "Oh, so you get people to the top of Google?"

"Yes, but not in the way you're thinking," I responded. "We're an Internet advertising company that manages their ad campaigns in the sponsored links area. We help write copy and choose keywords that get our business clients the best targeted leads, then our software platform automatically manages the bidding process ensuring you the best possible exposure for your budget."

I was a bit surprised when he replied, "I read a book on that and did it myself. It was, like, $30 on Amazon. I wouldn't think businesses would need a service that did it for them."

Instead of asking how it performed (he didn't volunteer the info, so my guess was either he didn't know, or it didn't do well), I replied, "Well, knowledge is power."

He was right in that you can create and manage an online marketing campaign on your own. But should you? Do you know all the best-performing and long-tail keywords for your business? Do you have the bandwidth to manage the bidding process on a daily basis? What about testing multiple advertisements to see which performs the best? And what about other search engines like Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com?

The truth is that it's time consuming and technically demanding to execute an effective online search marketing campaign. You hire accountants, marketers, attorneys. Why not an online marketing expert? Search marketing, with all its potential to bring new customers to your business, really should be treated as a serious business investment rather than a sidebar experiment!

In this information-aplenty world, combined with a downtrodden economy, small business owners might be tempted to cut corners. But remember, your time is valuable... and at the end of the day you get what you pay for.

-- Contributed by Erik Rosenow

New University, UC Irvine’s university newspaper, recently published an article entitled “Newspapers Lose Business to the Internet, Suffer from Crisis.” They cited several recent statistics that indicate people are turning to digital sources for information now more than ever before.

A few of their stats:
   --  According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, newspaper circulation has fallen 2.6% in the last 6 months alone.

   --  According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), paper consumption for newspapers has declined from 675,000 tons in 2003 to 450,000 tons in 2008

   --  Internet readership has increased from 63.5 million to 69.3 in the period from December 2007 to August 2008, a 15.8% increase.

   --  NAA forecasts an 11.5% decline in advertising revenue for 2008 and an additional 5.5% decline for 2009.

   --  Only 9% of print readership is from the 18-24 demographic

If you're looking to advertise and grow your business for the future, you should definitely consider contacting an Internet advertising agency. An entire generation of Americans has grown up with advertising on the Internet. With only 9% of this generation making up newspaper readership, Gen X'ers are more comfortable online than behind a newspaper.

-- Submitted by Erik Rosenow

In the quest to continue to expand the capabilities and services that WebVisible offers to local online marketers, also known as small to mid-sized businesses, I'm describing the project as building the ultimate local Internet advertising agency.

What does that entail?

At a high level, the ultimate agency delivers a compelling and proactive presence for a local business that attracts new customers, provides them relevant information to make decisions, aids the customer acquisition process and supports the service and ongoing relationship with these new customers.  The breadth of services that the agency delivers are intertwined into the marketing, sales, product/service delivery, support and ongoing relationship management with prospects and customers.

We love nothing more than seeing and celebrating the successes of our thousands of local merchant customers.  I look forward to sharing more of their stories in 2009, and further aiding them as we build out our technology platform and services.

MediaPost notes a recent Forrester research report that only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs, and compares company blogs to the used car salesmen of media.
We re-launched our company blog a couple months ago with 1 primary goal - harness the collective knowledge and energy that is WebVisible, and share it with the marketplace.  I've been so impressed and encouraged by the intelligence of our team around search engine marketing, and the candid suggestions, tips and ideas they've shared.  Whether a local business wants to pursue their own local search engine advertising, or wants to hire someone to do it for them, our team is encouraging and educating you!

As an Internet advertising agency, who harnesses technology to deliver the most effective online marketing campaigns for local businesses, we sometimes take for granted how much experience and knowledge exists here.  Our blog has begun to unlock this energy, and we're just beginning. 

We are passionate about local businesses.  We have pictures of them up in our offices.  Many of us grew up in local businesses, and our parents, grandparents and friends are the proprietors we strive to help every day.  Some of those entrepreneurs who need local Internet marketing services are used car companies.  Especially in this current economic downturn, more consumers are looking for used and certified cars.  We're here to help those matches occur between local consumers and local businesses.  We'll continue to share our knowledge and ideas, so you know the foundation of our organization.  I hope more of you will join our ongoing conversations.  We're happy to help used car salesmen, too.

WebVisible is pleased to announce that we have acquired a great Internet advertising company, Adapt Technologies, Inc. (Adapt SEM). Based in Pasadena, Adapt develops of Web-based applications for automating the management of search engine marketing campaigns and providing recommendations on various aspects of keyword selection, bidding and optimization.

What does this mean to our partners and our customers? Adapt has some great software that will be used to our software platform and enhance our product offerings. And it provides us enhanced solutions for our Internet advertising agency partners.

Adapt SEM has developed versatile search marketing software that complements the WebVisible platform. Users will benefit from an expanded solution that gives additional controls over campaign management, optimization and analytics reporting, including:

• A high-end keyword intelligence and search query semantic engine that enhances the ability to generate and select the most relevant, long-tail keywords

• Robust ad copy and landing page testing; comprehensive cost-per-action (CPA) tracking for precise performance optimization

• Powerful sales tools that enable customers to perform detailed competitive analysis of keyword coverage, average search-rank position and market share

• Algorithms to fortify WebVisible’s already strong and highly sophisticated campaign optimization capability

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

Whether your system is new or if it’s a “legacy” company with hundreds or even thousands of franchisees, resources—time being a biggie—are limited.

As I’ve stated in other posts and emails I’ve sent out, franchise companies are typically involved in two types of online advertising campaigns: one for recruiting franchisees and the second for the existing franchisee to market their product or service. Both are challenging and local online marketing is particularly burdensome as there are so many components to manage.

The thousands of hours it takes to do it efficiently would give any marketing manager or CMO angina and this approach probably wouldn’t be profitable. An idea to consider would be to enlist the support of a trusted Internet advertising agency partner to do the “heavy lifting” while keeping oversight at the corporate level. This ensures brand continuity, along with centralized oversight and reporting—whether or not the franchisee campaigns are funded locally or through corporate.

The key is to have a well-conceived strategy that supports both goals. Anything else and you’ll have an industrial-strength migrane on your hands!

-- Contributed by Terry Wall

For an amazing number of small business owners, online advertising agencies seem unapproachable.  Understanding local Internet marketing can be a difficult endeavor, and the typical Internet banner ads a business owner sees are big, recognizable brands.

The great thing about targeted online advertising is that a little investment can go a long, long way.  Is there $100/month in your budget to learn more about your business and your clients than you've ever known before?  Would you rather send out 100 letters to people who you don't know your business, nor have clear interest in your business OR get almost 10 phone calls per month from highly interested prospects?

Consider this real world example - a sign designer here in Costa Mesa, CA.  The client initially did not have a website, but smartly recognized that many consumers now use search engines to find sign makers and designers.  In fact, without a website, search engine marketing was the most immediate way that he could be found by potential customers on the Internet.

We built a customized profile landing page, and set up an initial campaign to determine what types of sign and graphics services were most compelling to potential customers in the Orange County area, all for an introductory budget of less than $100/month.  The results so far have been staggering.

• Over 300 targeted visitors to the company's landing page
• Nearly 40 connected phone calls from interested prospects
• Several people printing out the landing page and carrying it into the signmaker's office
• Search data showing that vehicle graphics and lettering are the most demanded and high performing services in his campaign

With the several new clients that he received in just the first couple weeks of the campaign, he paid for several years worth of online advertising.  As you think about local Internet advertising and whether it's for your business, think about this company's results, showing the incredible possibilities that an Internet advertising agency can bring to a local business.  Make sure they can provide the tracking, market research and results that your business deserves, even if you want to start with a $100/month initial investment.

We continue to read about the increased allocation of advertising budget from traditional media to more accountable and productive Internet advertising, specifically search.  There are a few very practical reasons why:
1. When the economy slows, people naturally move to cut costs, and advertising has historically been viewed as a cost, even a luxury.  If one cannot assess the effectiveness of his advertising, he's going to either hope it's working, or he's going to cut costs and stop it.
2. Media consumption is shifting online and the effectiveness of traditional media, both real and perceived, is declining.  Advertisers want to be where the audience is.
3. Search engine marketing has become the #1 direct response medium, and when times are tough, who better to market to than targeted online advertising consumers.  Historically, the best direct response media has been a "pay for placement" model, with the hope that the placement would be seen by ready-to-buy customers at their moment of need.  Search advertising is even better because you don't pay for placement, you pay for performance.

At a time when consumers are less open to advertising, less likely to be in a buying consumer mode, and more likely to extend their purchase cycles, the best potential place to advertise is where the most active and measurable consumers are - on the Internet, specifically in the search engines.  As an Internet Advertising Agency, we help local businesses recognize their first opportunity is online.  Everything else in the media world order arranges below search engine marketing, as it is less productive, less useful and lower return on investment.  If you are in a local market like Chicago, search engine marketing may be the place where you can spend your entire advertising budget.  In a market like Spokane, Washington, you may have to consider Internet banner advertising, billboards or radio, to stimulate some additional demand for your business.  However, search's rank in the media world order for most companies is now firmly at the top, and it is unlikely to be supplanted anytime soon.