The viability of marketing profits from live television has been in question for years. As time moves and technology improves, viewers, once chained to the chair and forced to sit through commercials, are now captains of their domain; using TiVo and DVR to skip advertisements and renting entire series on DVD, avoiding the promotions all together.

This makes companies, who traditionally advertised their local business on TV, very twitchy.

The situation grew even more dire for local advertising on live television when the 2008 statistics began to show that many viewers are embracing TV on the web, essentially downloading or streaming their favorite show on their computer…with nary an add in site.

emarketer.com has in interesting blog up on the online television trends.

“Unfortunately, while online users are viewing more content,” says Ms. von Abrams, “producers, broadcasters and advertisers are seeing little return on their online TV ventures.”
The proven formulas for making money from television content are under threat.
“Historically, broadcasters’ profits have depended on restricted access to their material—viewers had to tune in to a broadcaster-owned channel and watch advertising that covered the costs of program production, promotion and distribution,” says Ms. von Abrams. “Advertisers paid a lot to be seen in prime TV slots on these channels, and (until video recording arrived) viewers could not avoid seeing ads.”

Companies will be forced to add an online television advertising strategy to their previously successful local TV ad campaigns in order to compete. Those companies that build a strategy to embrace a new online local TV marketing campaign will be ahead of the game.

The Livesearch team over at Microsoft announced last week that they would be effectively ending the Live Search books and Live Search Academic projects, and that the accompanying sites would be taken down.

According to the livesearch blog:

Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities.
As we wind down Live Search Books, we are reaching out to participating publishers and libraries. We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines.
In partnership with Ingram Digital Group, we are also reaching out to participating publishers with information about new marketing and sales opportunities designed to help them derive ongoing benefits from their participation in the Live Search Books Publisher Program.

The underlying tone of the article? The project was great and worthy and all, but they weren’t making any money.

While the death knell is still sounding for livesearch books, the blog cheerily annouced their new focus:

Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner. For example, this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers.

The (between the lines lesson) learned? If you want to read a book, go to the library, but if you want to make money, go on the internet.

The SMX Search Market Expo is planning their 2008 industry exposition for Local Mobile Marketing. Last year‘s event was a big success, and this year they‘ve set an aggressive agenda. The event will be July 24-25 in San Francisco, and chaired by search marketing experts Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling.

They are promoting the event pretty heavily and reaching out to businesses to explain why local search marketing is a necessity.

Local & Mobile search:
promises to enhance ad-spending ROI by identifying customers poised to buy when using location-aware technologies
requires new and specialized techniques for achieving optimal organic results
will enhance searches (70% of people research products/services online) with location-specific data that facilitate in-store purchases, which represent 90% of all purchases made
is fostering an entire ecosystem aimed at simplifying online marketing and making it more accessible for local and vertically-focused businesses
is a largely untapped opportunity to gain extra visibility in Google Universal search results with relatively little effort
For agencies, mastering Local & Mobile advertising will enable you to serve existing customers better and acquire new customers. And for in-house marketers, you’ll discover ways to outflank the competition

Local mobile marketing is still tracking to be a big deal in the near future as more and more people are accessing the internet through their mobile phones rather than through a regular computer. In fact, statistics are tracking that about 70% of Japanese consumers are exclusively using the internet through mobile devices.

The SMX Search Market Expo should be a great event to look into some of the insider trends in local mobile marketing. We’re looking forward to it!

There isn’t any doubt that local Search Engine Optimization Marketing is a primary goal of most webmasters. It is through local SEO that a business can either move to the head of the search engine pack or be lost somewhere around page 27, which might as well be Nowheresville, Invisastate.

Studying the SEO market can be both time consuming and tedious, but when you’re trying to figure out your competition’s strategy in order to beat them, SEO can turn into game of cat and mouse. A successful marketer needs to find the keywords being used for a competitor’s successful site and develop a strategy to get ahead of them in line. You can’t out play another team if you don’t know the rules they’re playing by.

There are new products on the market that can find out what a specific domain’s keywords are, and other products that center on finding what keywords are being used and by whom.

SpyFu offers strategic research and competitive analysis on keywords. It will find out what keywords your competition is bidding on to optimize their own rankings. Once you know this you can narrow your own local SEO campaign and focus on those words. This can save your business costly trial and error keyword campaigns that generate scattered and possibly useless results.

If Local SEO is at all confusing to you though, don’t expect a product like SpyFu to solve your marketing issues. It won’t. It is a tool to help experienced webmasters and SEO marketing execs make the best and most efficient use of their time. A scapel in your hand won’t make you a Doctor, and SpyFu won’t implement the right local SEO marketing campaign for you.

Business owners new to the social media scene often confuse social media with traditional media such as newspapers, television, and radio; or worse yet, they think that social media optimization is simply creating a Myspace page.

Matt Goddard at R2i blogs wrote a nice piece about the difference between social networking and social media. It’s definitely worth taking a look at.

1. Social networks and social media are distinct but connected
2. Social networks are patterns of advice seeking and advice giving used to reduce the risk of decisions.
3. Social media is a popular platform for delivering the social message.
4. You need to establish whether the social networking exists in your target market and whether social media is viable channel of influence.

Further thinking about the guidelines that Matt is discussing, there are some questions that you need to ask when considering a social media marketing strategy:
1. Should your business host a blog?
2. Social Networking: Are there social networking sites or groups that target your industry? If there are, what kind of strategies can you employ to enter them?
3. Podcasts: Are there any podcasts in your target industry already? What can you offer as an alternative podcast?
4. User Generated Content : Are there videos or other forms of user generated content already being made public in your industry? How can you make a different, more noticeable impact?
One of the key points of the article is that businesses don’t want to approach social media optimization just because they’ve heard the term and it sounds nifty. They should make a concerted effort to look into the social networks of their target audience and see if there is a social market to go after with SMO practices.

Sara Hashash and Roger Waite wrote an interesting article about the quietly growing business of online identity management. More specifically, they wrote about how online identity management is changing the reputations of business moguls and movie stars.

We all understand that online identity management is a process. At its simplest, it is a set of methods used to build a reputation in good standing for a person on the Internet. The online identity management or reputation process can consist of any sort of news, blogs, forums, social websites, pictures, media articles, or even videos that affect the reputation or identity of a person. That’s right…anything that is written, blogged, or discussed about you will be popping up on any search done on your name, potentially decreasing the value of your online identity management.

Does that scare you? It should.

When your business is inextricably linked to your name, any bad reviews or references about you can have a hugely detrimental affect upon your businesses. Online Identity Management, OIM, is another tool in the Search Engine Optimization process, but the difference is that OIM has one keyword that will follow across every business that you own, on every site. That keyword is your name.

By utilizing skilled OIM practices that are infinitely familiar with SEO principles, you can take advantage of online identity management processes and make them work for you.

When consumers are searching for a new product or service, they are increasing turning to online to research the products and services before buying. In the case of very large products or labor-intensive services, however, the research inevitably comes down purchasing locally.

The question always remains the same… “Where can I purchase this from?”

If a consumer in Massachusetts is looking for a pool heater, for instance, they might research pool heaters and prices to have a solid knowledge base of what they are looking for and what the common costs will be, however they will still want to purchase the pool heater locally and have it installed. A search on pool heaters will bring up companies from all over the country. Companies from Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and many national businesses will be competing for top spots on the search engines, but that will not help the consumer connect with what they really want; a local company. Your company.

The fact is that most small, local businesses are not getting the top hits on search engines, and so perceptive consumers are turning more towards local internet searches for the closest business that is selling the product they want.
Finding a service company in Florida will not help a potential customer in Massachusettes. Customers are online, searching for your business, so give them a break and help them find you.

This is where Local Online Marketing becomes your businesses’ newest power advertising and marketing tool. When you place your business in local online listing sites with optimized content regarding your services, you are ensuring that your customers can find your business when they need it the most.

Matt Cutts recently gave a presentation to a techie crowd at a conference and included the PowerPoint presentation slideshow on his blog. To be honest, it’s rather boring, but he did give three really useful tips about how to keep spammers at bay. Here they are (in a nutshell):

• Build trust and reputation
• Don’t be a target
• Frustrate them so they spend time and money

I particularly like tips #1 and 3. If you build your local business as a trustworthy business and one will a solid reputation for good business practices then you’ll be a lot less touchable. Secondly, make it difficult for spammers to easily do injury to you and they will be less likely to do so. But how does Matt Cutts suggest doing that? One way is by using CAPTCHA.

A CAPTCHA is a simple test that a human can perform but a computer can’t. For instance, what is 5 + 4? Any human can add two single digit numbers, but computers can’t do that (yet). They also can’t type a single word that you tell them to type. If you say “Type the word Pickle” then all a human has to do is type exactly what they see. But computers can’t see so they’ll not be able to pass the test.

These simple tests will drive out most spammers so if you put them to use on your local business website then you’ll find yourself deleting a lot less useless comments.

It will give you insight on what small business owners must do in local advertising and what mistakes are easily made. It blends advertising, copywriting tips, branding and much more and caters to small and medium sized business owners.

Corbett provides a great resource for non-professionals and semi-professionals alike. He does an exceptional job at defining all 33 rules and explaining them thoroughly. Anyone within business or aspiring to be in business will be able to easily comprehend these concepts and apply them effectively. There is no jargon to fill up pages and the author does not talk down to readers. Pick up this quick read and be sure to learn a thing or two about local advertising!

Yellowbook.com has built a new microsite called SayYellowToTheFuture.

It’s a cool looking site with a sleek design and the first thing you see when you land on the home page is an automatic play video commercial. Whether you want to advertise locally, in print, or on TV, YellowBook.com promises you great advertising at great prices, but even more important than that, they promise you results. And since people are migrating from traditional avenues of finding businesses - print directories - to online directories, advertising through online yellow pages makes a lot of sense.

One of the cool features I like about the new SayYellowToTheFuture site is the YouTube Channel. This will likely be a very popular way to advertise in the future. Companies like YellowBook will open up a video channel on YouTube. The videos will be entertaining and serve well as marketing messages. Consumers will subscribe to the channels for products and services that they have an interest in and watch only the videos that look interesting to them. How effective it will be, only time will tell. But the potential is there.

Twenty years ago, if you ran a local business it was imperative to have a yellow pages listing. Today, it’s just as imperative to have a yellow pages listing online and that’s Say Yellow To The Future is all about - a marketing slogan that makes a lot of sense for our times.

Microsoft also announced plans to further expand its mobile offerings for advertisers to now include mobile search advertisements on Live Search Mobile. For the first time invited advertisers can create keyword campaigns through Microsoft adCenter that target customers on the go while they are using Live Search Mobile.

Microsoft has finally entered the mobile market. It’s good news if you currently advertise through MSN Live, but if you don’t, then you might not care. To me, this is just another local mobile advertising service. Microsoft adCenter is a great PPC platform for advertisers who have used Google AdWords to optimize their PPC campaigns. You can take what you’ve learned from Google AdWords to Microsoft adCenter and take advantage of the less expensive clicks (and less traffic). It’s the same with local mobile marketing.

If you are a mobile advertiser then you can use other mobile marketing providers like Google to help optimize your marketing efforts then once you’ve got your mobile marketing ROI where you want it, take what you’ve learned to Microsoft’s brand and tap into the users there. Again, fewer users will result in less traffic, but it will also mean you’ll pay less for clicks. You might even try Superpages and Citysearch before going to Microsoft, but it is worth considering as an alternative.

For many local businesses, getting their name out there both online and offline can be a struggle. The competition seemingly increases each year and opportunities diminish for many. The best way for any local business to stay in front of their potential customer’s eyes is through online local listings. These days most consumers look to the internet when searching for the best place to provide them with exactly what they need. This is where Local Search Engine Marketing comes into play. By placing your business in these local listing sites with optimized content regarding your services, you are effectively allowing your site to be found multiple times within the search engines. For just 49.95 a month, Brick Marketing will submit your business profile along with your website, address, phone number and hours of operation to local search engines – Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, MSN Local, YellowPages.com and several more. The good thing about this service is that the business does not even need a website in order to be listed. Providing your business simply has an address and phone number, it can be listed along with every other business in your area. This is a submission service and does not guarantee a particular ranking on any search engine but does mean your business will exist on the web if it doesn’t already. At any time, you may change your information and there is no commitment period. You may cancel at any time for any reason.

With Brick Marketing offering this form of Local Online Marketing, you can be sure you are in good hands as they are members of the Better Business Bureau and are known widely for their impeccable service and reputation. Sign up now for Brick Marketing Local and enhance your local business today!

Here’s another reason to use Facebook. But there is more to online advertising than merely filling out a Facebook profile. One of the things that makes Facebook such a great place to network and advertise your local business is its local networks that you can join. Through those you can meet other local people to do business with.

But services like Yell adding applications for Facebook make it even better. Here’s what I like about this app:

Yell advertisers will get more in-depth exposure in the app than non-advertisers, but all the activity happens within Facebook.

But I like Greg Sterling’s recommendations as well:

The application only works for Yell coverage areas. In my opinion, the company would do well to either duplicate this for its Yellowbook subsidiary or combine the applications so that it offers US-UK coverage.

A mobile component (send to mobile) would be welcome as well.

Even without these applications, if you do business in a Yell coverage area then you’ll have a leg up on your competition by advertising with the service through its Facebook application. Not that Citysearch and Superpages also have Facebook networking tools that allow you to reach out to new customers and they’re available in the U.S. If you really want to make the most of apps like these, advertise within them and do your own outside-app networking and advertising as a “doubling up” effort.

Mobile marketing is picking up speed. Live Search recently announced some new additions to its mobile marketing applications, including:

• Weather forecasts
• Web search
• Traffic reports
• Bluetooth headset support
• Map a contact
• Delete a recent location
• Collections

Each of these applications can prove to be useful for your customers, but they can also be of use to you - the local small business owner. For instance, if you have a business that can be affected by the weather, encourage your customers to check the weather on their mobile phones before coming to see you. And they’ll be really happy to know that they can search for your business online right from their mobile phones with Live Search’s Mobile Web Search. Would your customers want to know how long it will take to get to your location right now? Introduce them to up-to-the-minute traffic reports.

There is more than one way to take advantage of mobile marketing and if your customers have cell phones and spend a lot of time in their cars, this could very well be an avenue for you to reach them.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report, display advertising online is increasing. In fact, online advertising in general is improving despite recessionary concerns.

Display advertising is up 34% according to the report. Classified advertising is up 16%. All other statistics don’t look too bad either.

This is a good sign for all of us. It means that online advertising is growing, which means online business must be growing. And I think rising oil prices might have something to do with this. People are driving less. That means they are spending more time online and that means more online business in general. This could very well continue for a good many years down the road. What small business owners - locally as well as global - need to think about doing at this juncture, is learning how to make the most of their online advertising opportunities.