Localization 2.0

I was thinking about the year 2000 recently but not the way that most people think about it.  The much-hyped Y2K bug that was arguably the biggest non-issue in recent tech history wasn’t even on my list.  As I recall, Google was not yet a household name, everyone was talking about e-commerce, portals were the rage, and broadband mostly referred to groups like Destiny’s Child at the time.  Who would have thought that Localization and thinking Local would have been at the top of my to-do list both then and now.

I was working for a nameless B2B content & community portal which was supposed to revolutionize the way that business was conducted on the internet.  Specifically, I was tasked with taking our existing “platform” and localizing it for the businesses that we served.  Who knew that this would be the topic of a blog post several years later?  We even had a fancy name for what I was doing.  It was called “L10N” and boy did it sound important when pitching the business to prospects!  As I worked through all of the nuances of getting the graphics, text, content and links to conform to the region I was concentrating on, among other things, two specific concerns came up. 

First, how were we going to appeal to the local traffic that we needed to use the newly-localized portal?  Second, how were we going to track the leads that actually came through other than using the all-encompassing click count solution of the day?  I won’t bore you with what we came up with back then, but I will tell you how I’d handle it now.  If I only had a crystal ball.

Combining the power of OpenList with local VoiceStar call tracking phone numbers would have been my holy grail.  Not only would it have shown true ROI, but it would have given me the opportunity to pitch my “think outside of the box” solution at the next big powwow.  Imagine it…local, trackable content coupled with local, trackable phone numbers.  Oh yeah, and all of the fancy analytics behind that to truly bring the message home.  Talk about adding real value to “L10N.”  It’s funny how it all comes back to you once you get past the acronyms.  Here’s to re-inventing Localization eight years later and truly making it worthwhile.

Originally posted on LocalPoint – Perspectives on the Local Internet (Marchex Company Blog).

Maximizing Pay-Per-Phone-Call for The Local Businesses That You Serve

It’s exciting to see that the concept of pay-per-phone-call and the inherent value of a phone ringing to your local business has finally caught some major attention. Clicks have been ubiquitous for some time now but calls have obviously been around for decades longer: since the first shop owner installed a commercially available telephone. Direct calls were qualified leads that led to “sold” products and services…period. Fast forward to present day and it’s easy to appreciate this concept when you can private-label your reporting and enable your local business owners to sell and analyze efficiently with you being the unsung hero. When you combine scalability with accountability and match it to most peoples’ natural tendencies of picking up the phone, the benefits are obvious. Rather than taking up this precious blog space to banter about the value of real-time, holistic, channel-agnostic, marketing reporting (shameless plug there), let me instead focus on your quick start guide to showing your local clients real, quantifiable value:

The Facts About Pay-Per-Phone-Call:

1. It fits your budget because it’s performance-based (spend less or spend more, you control your results).
2. It fits your campaign because it’s channel/media-agnostic (online, offline, television, radio, etc…whatever you use).
3. It fits your technology because it only needs a phone number to work (that’s right, nothing fancy here).

If I Were:

1. An Agency or Direct Marketer, I’d be focused on delivering results to augment my existing efforts. This could mean incorporating local traceable phone numbers in your campaigns: whatever the media, whatever the focus.
2. An SEO/SEM Firm or Lead Generator, I’d be focused on conversions to enhance my existing optimization process. This could involve incorporating dynamic phone number replacement technology so that click-thru’s lead to unique, traceable, local phone calls. You could use click-to-call or form-to-phone technology to pre-qualify local leads.
3. A Publisher or Directory, I’d be focused on maximizing advertiser spend and remnant inventory. Here, you would incorporate local traceable phone numbers in your packages as an immediate value-add and differentiator.

Wherever, whatever, whenever you need to drive leads locally, there is still no better result than a qualified phone call. After all, when is the last time you sent your plumber an email when your basement was flooded?

Originally posted on LocalPoint – Perspectives on the Local Internet (Marchex Company Blog).