Local listing management is one of the hottest topics within Internet marketing; yet it confuses and overwhelms many business owners. In this blog, we’ll help clear up the confusion and provide some useful tips to help business owners make informed decisions to harness the power of Local Listing Management. Why are Local Listings so important? There are more people conducting online searches for local businesses than ever before. In fact, the Kelsey Group has identified 70% of US households now use the internet when shopping locally for products and services. It’s never been more important to ensure your business is accurately listed in as many online directories as possible. Supplying information about your business to these touch points, or local listings, is crucial to your business being found in an online search by a potential customer.  Establishing and maintaining a strong local listing presence helps businesses rank higher in organic results when potential customers search for your business. Plus, local listings are more important to consumers than you might think. Research by comScore has identified online searchers find local and organic results to be 7 times more relevant and 8 times more trustworthy than paid results!   Why do businesses outsource the management of their Local Listings? It takes a substantial commitment of time, manpower and dedication in order for a business to manage its own local listings. There are literally hundreds of digital touch points and online directories, but some companies like to manage the process internally. The basic steps of the process are outlined below:   Claim listings at multiple local listing websites – such as Google, Yahoo Bing, Ask, CitySearch, etc. Update listings with your business marketing information – and include text for web and mobile searches, as well as categories, photos, coupons, videos, images, etc.  Clean-up inconsistent data – Since local listing websites obtain data from multiple sources there could be multiple listings for a single business address. Delete or merge any duplicate listings to avoid confusion. Monitor consumer reviews – on all local listing websites. Monitoring, managing and responding to reviews is an important process and doing so will help you retain and acquire new customers.   How can Berry Network help? We know businesses often spend countless hours researching, distributing and manually updating their business listings – only to achieve lackluster results. That’s why Berry Network has introduced a new Local Listing Management (LLM) solution. Our experts will manage your local listings and do all the work for you! Berry Network has developed a one-stop identity management service for local businesses, which provides access to virtually all of the search sites consumers use to find information. Our LLM solutions are bundled into easy-to-use packages that include a combination of claiming services, list distribution, monitoring services, updating services, content enhancement development and reporting. You pick the package that best fits your needs and your budget and we’ll deliver results.   Local Listing Management is critical step to ensure your business information is listed correctly in search results so customers can find accurate information about your business when they’re searching.  At its core, our Local Listing Management solution provides a single point of entry for the creation and distribution of enhanced business profiles that are distributed to all major outlets, including: Google, Yahoo, Bing Data Providers – Localeze, Infogroup, Acxiom Online Yellow Pages – Superpages, YP.com, Yellowbook Social networks – Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook Portals and guides – AOL, Mapquest, Cityearch Cell phones and mobile apps – Blackberry, iPhone, Android 411 directory assistance GPS navigation and telematic services – OnStar What should you do? Local listings are far too valuable to be ignored, so don’t leave them to chance. Simply decide if you want to invest the time and resources to manage the process in-house or utilize Berry Network’s LLM solution. Remember, the goal is to accurately list your business, monitor your presence and enhance your online profile! To get more information about Local Listings Management, please contact Berry Network today at 800-366-1264. 

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It’s an understatement to say that raising funds for your hospital foundation is a challenge, particularly in a tough economy. Having an online presence, however, can be an effective solution. Online marketing is quick, flexible, and a cost-effective means of soliciting and promoting your foundation initiatives. Still, challenges remain on knowing how to promote your foundation online, finding tools to use for capturing donations, and discovering which best practices are actually best for you. Following are some thoughts you should consider. Defining Your Target Before you begin mapping out an online strategy, you need to be clear on your objectives. Whether you are seeking donations to grow a specialty line or raising funds to hold a community event, your tactics will be different. Maybe you are looking to help support an affiliated cause such as breast cancer research – your online approach will be different yet again. By having specific objectives, you’ll know when and if you are reaching them. Growing a Specialty Line Suppose your objective is to raise money to expand your hospital’s cardiac care unit. An online blog is an excellent starting point. Blogs allow you to post case studies about local patients (with their permission, of course) that have received heart surgery and that are thankful for the technology and care they received from your hospital and staff. Another option is to have a cardiac surgeon post commentary about surgical procedures and the need for continued advancements in technology. You will likely be surprised about the level of community engagement the blog generates.   Your PR manager could also join in by posting on your hospital’s Twitter and Facebook site about the need for expanded cardiac care and the benefits it could bring to your community. Tapping into these forms of online social media provides the local community the ability to join discussions and ask questions in an open, friendly environment. Social media also provides users with the means of remaining anonymous if they so choose. Social Media widgets (mini Web applications) are available for plugging into your blog or Website for collecting donations. For instance, www.GoFundMe.com provides a free donation widget that you can download from their Website. The widget connects directly to e-commerce programs, such as PayPal, to give you instant and secure access to every donation you receive. Funding a Community Event From women’s health seminars, to dinner galas and children’s helmet safety programs, increasing donor income through fund-raising events is one of the most widely-used forms of foundation marketing. So, how do you get the word out about your event through online channels? If you have looked into online banner advertising in the past but thought against it due to suggestions of low “click-through” rates, you should reconsider. Online banner advertising has made significant advancements over recent years with hyper-local and user-centric targeting capabilities across large distribution networks. Most of these advertising networks can zero in on users based upon previous online history (behavioral targeting), page content (contextual targeting), and user location (geo-targeting). For instance, these capabilities would allow an advertiser to promote a bike riding event to those in its local community who are visiting a healthcare Website, and who have also visited an Alzheimer’s-related Website within the past 30 days. Some online banner programs also allow targeting by age and income demographics. If you need further evidence that online banner advertising is still viable, consider the fact that according to investment firm ThinkEquity, U.S. online ad spending is expected to reach $37.5 billion this year, up 18% over last year. Supporting a Cause  Another big question is “what marketing vehicle should I use to promote our foundation’s cause? While it’s true that mail-acquired donations is the leading medium for promoting gift-giving, you may be surprised to learn that online-acquired donors tend to give much larger gifts and give more in total revenue each year than mail-acquired donors. Whether you are seeking funds to directly support AIDS research or looking to promote your pediatric department with portions of the donations going to the Children’s Miracle Network, online marketing is a must for promoting healthcare causes. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is another very effective method of online marketing, particularly due to the nature of search – where online users are seeking relevant information, rather than having the information broadcast or pushed to them. Google Ad Words is the leader in SEM advertising. It allows users to promote local gift-giving through the purchase (bid) of keywords. For example, a hospital foundation for children’s research in Des Moines may want to bid on keywords that include cancer, oncology, children, pediatric, pediatrics, foundation, research and giving. When the user searches on any of these words and specifies Des Moines or Iowa, the foundation ad will appear in the search results. The higher the advertiser bids, the higher its ad will appear in the search results. Performance-based SEM programs are also available whereby advertisers only pay for ads clicked by the user. There are many ways to use online advertising to promote your healthcare foundation. Taking advantage of blogs, banner ads, social media, and search engine marketing is a great place to start. So, if you haven’t looked into online advertising lately, now is the time to look again. About the Author: Mark Williams is a Senior Media Strategist at Berry Network. Berry Network provides advertising solutions to national and local advertisers through a variety of print and online media. Berry Network is also the preferred advertising vendor for Novation member organizations. If you have questions or comments about this article or would like more information about online advertising solutions, please contact Berry Network, Healthcare Marketing, at 1-800-366-1264, or visit www.berrynetwork.com.

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A new partnership between Devon Security and Berry Network, Inc. is particularly important to Devcon’s massive nationwide expansion efforts.   By leveraging Berry Network’s strength and expertise in local search advertising, the new alliance will help Devon Security build brand awareness and increase advertising presence in new market areas.    “We chose to partner with Berry Network because of the strategic value they bring to the table,” said Kristin Clark, Devcon Security’s Vice President of Marketing. “The team at Berry Network excels at implementing our advertising programs, but more importantly, they’re willing to develop and explore unconventional strategies to help us achieve our goals.”   “Devcon is a perfect fit for our agency,” according to Sherri Kavanaugh, Berry Network’s Vice President of Client Strategy.  “We’re at our best when we’re working with clients that desire a true strategic partner. Devcon is strong, expanding rapidly and there are lots of opportunities for us to utilize our expertise, tools and proprietary technology to support and accelerate their growth.”   About Devcon: Devcon Security is one of the fastest growing security companies in the nation. Founded in 2004, the Devcon brand is composed of local security companies rooted in the security business since 1968. Devcon is run by a management team with more than 100 years of security experience and employs nearly 1100 people in offices across the nation. Utilizing state-of-the-art equipment, Devcon maintains two monitoring centers and offers superior customer service. The company offers residential home security systems, as well as small and large business security solutions – including commercial alarms and video surveillance systems. Devcon is proud to be among a small percentage of security companies to have a 5-Diamond certification from the Central Station Alarm Association.

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The answser to the question above depends on whether you are trying to find a business, sign up for offers, or wanting to be found. When someone asks my opinion on location services, that’s the question I must ask first before I can respond. The value of location services isn’t something that can be addressed at face value. The answer comes after you break down location services based on three basic needs of the user. In the first need, you are searching for a business or offer, the second involves opting-in to local offers based on your profile, and the third is being found with pushed offers and messages based on your physical, geo-location.  1. Searching for Local Businesses Naturally, Google comes to mind when conducting a local business search. In fact, according to Google, “20 percent of all search queries are local in nature." So, it’s no surprise that the search giant is concentrating on improving relevant results for local search queries. Google’s Places, now launching through a phased-in approach, combines local and organic listings intended to cluster search results around specific locations so users can more easily make comparisons on the information they are seeking. Google also uses business reviews from Yelp, Foursquare, and other location review sites to enhance information on the sites in Google Places. Other major players are bolstering their local capabilities as well – just look at Bing Maps, Yahoo! Local, CitySearch and MapQuest. Each has contributed to the local search year-over-year growth increase, as reported in a recent study from comScore and TMP Directional Marketing. I won’t go into each of those here, but if you haven’t looked at them lately, it’s worth checking them out.   Yellow Pages directories have also found a way to bump up their presence to stay relevant in a marketplace shifting more toward digital media. Usage of Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), for instance, as a primary source for local information is up from 21 percent market share in 2009 to 22 percent in 2010  according to the comScore study. That may not seem like much of an upward trend but with all the new services, platforms and devices on the market today, any growth or market share increase is commendable. And, don’t forget about print Yellow Pages (PYP), in fact, PYP ranks second behind search engines as the most-used secondary source for finding local business information.   Yes, social media platforms are jumping on the proverbial wagon too. Microsoft and Facebook have joined forces in an agreement that combines Facebook's "like" function with results from Bing. When Facebook users search for something on Bing, such as a company or product, they will get results that includes “Like” tags by their friends. Bing searchers will be able to see what businesses and products their friends recommend. Just ask any business owner you know, one referral from a friend is worth many multiples of an ad impression.   Twitter recently announced it has enhanced its ability to help users find businesses and products with an advertising model that places ads inside the Tweet streams of users. Twitter’s ad platform was first launched in April based on subjects in the users Tweets. For instance, if you searched on Tweets about Disney, you could receive ads by Disney served up on the side of your page as a “promoted Tweet.”  But with the new enhancement, beginning November 2, ads are not only inserted into the users Tweet stream, they are served up based on the people, companies and products that the user follows. I refer to these ads as de-facto search results. Twitter is also launching its new program in a controlled release. And let’s not forget about LinkedIn. Earlier this year, the service added the ability for members to follow companies more easily on the site. Some 30 million LinkedIn users are now following over 1 million companies to find out about company updates, job openings and promotions. 2. Opting-in to Local Offers Based on Profile You all know how ads are served up based on your member profile … Facebook, Amazon, eBay, they all do it. They serve up ads based on your likes, gender, purchase history, and demographics stored in your profile. However, what seems to be gaining steam nowadays are e-couponing services offered by services such as Groupon, LivingSocial, TownHog and HomeRun. Consumers are catching on and signing up to receive these “deals” pushed to them from businesses within their local area.   One of the newest buzz makers is Facebook Deals. Facebook Deals, lets local businesses offer discounts and deals to people who check-in using Facebook Places (discussed below) on their mobile phone. Basically, the feature gives Facebook users incentives to embrace Facebook Places and share it with friends. Facebook Deals also empowers businesses on Facebook with a valuable lead-generation and loyalty marketing tool.   3. Being Found for Offers Using Location-based Services Smartphones allow users to find locations or businesses while on the go. The reverse of that—being found based on your GPS coordinates—is where businesses are getting excited. Knowing where you are at any given moment allows a business to push a message or offer to you when you check in or are simply within proximity of the business. The hope too is that you will share your location with your friends and contacts. The down side, according to a Pew Internet Study, is that today “only 4% of Americans use these location-based services” such as Foursquare or Gowalla to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby. And, “on any given day only 1% will be ‘checking in.” I, on the other hand, believe that location-based services will grow at an unexpected and rapid rate over the next few years, exceeding predictions by most analysts.  We’ll see if I am right. One of the newest players in location-based services, and certainly the most significant, is Facebook Places (Anything is significant when you’re talking about 500 million users!). Launched in June, Facebook Places lets users "check in" on their mobile phones so friends know where they're hanging out and what they're doing. Facebook is also taking Places a step further with a feature that lets businesses “claim” a location or place, much like individuals have been able to do since earlier this year. And, yes, Twitter says it is considering altering its Twitter Places location-tagging function for use by businesses. So, are location services the new social movement? Like I said ... it depends. Where are you?    

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In my last blog post I wrote about why I thought 2011 would be the year mobile marketing went mainstream. After finishing the post, I found myself thinking about how to define mobile marketing and how you would categorize the many forms of mobile marketing. After reading many definitions of what mobile marketing is, I found this definition from The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), which defines mobile marketing as “a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.” What makes mobile marketing unique is the engagement factor. The MMA defines engagement to mean, “to start relationships, acquire, generate activity, stimulate social interaction with organization and community members, [and] be present at time of consumers expressed need.” It is this engagement factor that makes mobile marketing so attractive. Engagement in the mobile word can take place in serveral ways, such as a consumer by opting into a text messaging, viewing a mobile website, or accessing an application. Here is a synopsis of the major forms of mobile marketing. SMS (short message service): Also known as ‘texting’, advertisers can send relevant marketing messages (coupons and sales offers) directly into the hands of consumers via of text messages. MMS messages are limited to 160 characters in length. SMS is the oldest, yet still most popular form of mobile marketing. MMS (multi-media message service): Similar to SMS, but with the addition of multimedia content such as pictures, video, and audio. Mobile Websites/Landing Pages: Have you ever tried to look at a standard website on a mobile screen? It’s not pretty. A mobile website is a website or page specifically designed for the small screens of mobile devices. Queries to a website include the type of browser being used, and when a request comes from a mobile browser is made, it is redirected to the mobile version for a significantly better user experience. A quality mobile website is quickly becoming a “must have” for many businesses. They also serve as the foundation that makes many of the remaining mobile marketing opportunities possible. Mobile Paid Search: Mobile paid search works in a similar way to traditional paid search. Image and text ads are displayed in search engine results and the advertiser pays when an ad is clicked. Google AdWords has made it easy to opt-in to mobile search by simply checking a box to enable your ads to be shown on mobile devices. However, most mobile marketers suggest creating a separate, stand-alone mobile search campaign. This is because people search differently on mobile devices. Mobile users tend to use shorter search terms, and a majority of mobile searches are local in nature. A separate mobile paid search program will also provide better reporting on the effectiveness of your program. Mobile Banner Ads: Like standard banner ads for desktop web pages, but smaller to fit on mobile screens and run on the mobile websites. In some cases, animated mobile web ad banners may be available used to convey a richer experience. Paid Mobile Local Search Directories: There are a host of local search directories such as YP.com, Superpages.com, CityGrid, and Yelp. While a paid listing on their standard internet directories will appear in mobile search results. many offer mobile specific ad units (banners) that provide advertiser’s prominent top of page placement for increased exposure. QR Codes (quick-response barcodes): Similar to barcodes, QR codes allow customers to quickly learn more about a product or business. Users that scan a QR code with a mobile device are linked to digital content (special offers, brochures event information) on the web. Mobile Navigation/Location-Based Marketing: Delivers multi-media advertising directly to the user of a mobile device based upon their current location via GPS technology. Mobile Applications: Software that runs on a mobile device and performs certain tasks for the user. Since the introduction of the iPhone and the Apple App Store, thousands of companies have developed their own custom application to interact with their customers. With mobile marketing in its infancy, this list will undoubtedly expand over time. With mobile it is best to take a crawl, walk, run approach. Start small (SMS messaging, mobile websites) and then expand into other areas as you build your knowledge and confidence. Ask yourself “what am I trying to accomplish with mobile marketing and who am I trying to reach? But don’t wait too long, because the mobile marketing train is leaving the station.

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