By some accounts, more than 50 percent of local businesses that advertise have Websites. But they still need to be found by the search engines. That’s the role that PremierGuide, a local search vendor that works with 250 newspapers, TV stations and geodomain sites, hopes to play with its new “Microsites.”
The PremierGuide microsites, for instance, this example, are templated landing pages specially designed to be searched. Businesses can use them to populate their pages with info on service details, products carried, brands offered, amenities, business hours, credentials, qualifications, awards, testimonials, payment options, and contact information.
An added feature is the ability to attach video and print ads to the page. Many businesses, such as car dealers and restaurants, have invested heavily in video and radio ads, and want to include the content on their Web presence.
PremierGuide’s effort is similar to an effort started in spring 2006 by Sacramento-based EyeBall Farm. Eyeball partners with Intelligent Direct Marketing to provide microsites for auto dealers. The sites not only include the dealer’s marketing-oriented media, but in some cases, their car inventory.
EyeBallFarm Leader Jim Bonfield tells us that his company is expanding beyond auto microsites and will soon be launching restaurant and retail furniture on the platform. He adds that “version 2” launches before Labor Day, with ads, a built-in blog, survey tools and customizable colors, fonts and Flash headers. The existing microsites are “getting huge organic ranking benefits that in some cases surpass the organic rankings of the clients actual site,” says Bonfield. He adds that a client recently told him that he has a “MySpace for local business.”
My take on the microsites are that they are going to be very useful. And one more reason, in addition to blog software, why full-fledged websites are increasingly passe. But from a small business perspective, they’ll also add to confusion in the sales channel over what to buy.
Hello Peter and thanks for the thoughtful comments. Premier Guide’s Malcolm Lewis and I partnered with Surewest Telephone to launch Sacramento.com years ago (while I was still at The Sacramento Bee. I believe it is a Planet Discover project now however…).
My then, youthful enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of local advertisers using our new local directory site’s self-serve advertising tools (similar to Google’s Sponsored Links) was soon tempered by the cold reality that a local pizza restaurant owner not only doesn’t easily warm to the idea of building his own ad message, but he/she may not even understand why they should even care. It was confusing. “I already have a web site Jim…” They just want to sell more pizza.
Another project I launched with Travidia and a large regional shopping center here, Sunrise Market Place, hit a similar wall by way of cutting edge tools being offered, AT NO FEE, to over 500 merchants that made up a 501c6 Business Improvement District in Citrus Heights, Ca.
We provided many weeks of training. But we still had to beg these merchants to log-in to our self-serve Adscripter and post text about sales and special events, etc. to the microsite we had built for them.
Once again, we were reminded that the pizza guy just wants to make pizza. He “already has a web site” and didn’t understand what the big deal is about, vis a vis our efforts to have his online communications actually seen.
Local directories will work. Many are working well now. However, I remain convinced that as Peter stated, the confusion that this approach causes adds to the mix in a HUGE and unanswered way. Most small business folks are just now accepting they need a web site and along comes someone like me or Malcolm and suggests in ADDITION to that, they may need to consider my call to action platform or Malcolm’s microsite. Oh yeah, let’s add a Blog, a Podcasts, and some streaming video.
This is why we have decided to build a service in combination WITH the platform. The tech is incredible and DOES allow the pizza guy to do it themselves, but they don’t. So, we do it for them. WE aggregate their TV spots, Radio Ads, Print Ads, Direct mail pieces. WE convert them. We post them and buy THE RIGHT keyword ads on the search engines and deliver them a report at he end of the month that says “You spent $XX and made $YY.”
It is not easy. It is not a high margin business and finding people to make this work every day is kicking me in the head. BUT this approach works. The ROI is clear, easy to replicate and hard to argue with. The full-service approach ultimately serves to greatly increase client retention because in the end they get what they wanted all along…they sell more pizza! We have a LOT of learning curve ahead. “Keep it simple stupid” just isn’t going to cut it any longer. Thanks for the forum. Send your charitable contributions to PoorOverWoorkedJim@eyeballfarm.com
There are 2 questions here I think:
1) Should a local business care about a microsite if they already have a website? Answer: Yes. Their local newspaper/TV station website will generally rank higher than their stand-alone website. A microsite on a high-ranking local media website will generally get more search engine referral traffic than a stand-alone website. Even if it gets less traffic, the combined traffic is still greater than it was with a single site. And let’s not forget the 50% of local businesses that advertise that do NOT have a website. For them, a microsite is a quick and easy way to get online with a local partner they know and trust.
2) Will local businesses use self-service interfaces to create and manage microsites? Answer: Not likely. These folks generally have neither the time nor the required skills. But this has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of microsites. It simply means that local media companies have to take the initiative to create and manage microsite for local advertisers. Any local media company that wants to own a chunk of the local search opportunity in their market must invest in building unique local search content. Content has value, and like anything of value, it requires an investment to acquire and manage.
ROI of Microsites:
At AD2AD we have a system that integrates print and online classifieds for community publications. We offer a number of web-based upgrades…little icons, colored backgrounds etc. We provide for one — and only one — photo to be uploaded per ad.
We often get requests from “sophisticated” newspapers and consultants for multiple photo uploads, slide shows, image carousels…also for ‘micro web pages’ that the customer can build.
I have used throughout the ‘Mother-in-Law Test’. I show prototypes of new features to my mother-in-law, a very tuned-in and opiniated 80 year-old who rules her corner of the internet via AOL dialup. The test is simple: She has to figure out how to use the feature without help, and then not call me up with insults for wasting her time with the feature.
Several Multiple-picture upload prototypes and microsite prototypes have completely failed the MIL Test. So to date, we have KISS’ed off microsites, etc.
The MIL test has proven to be a very helpful measurement. My MIL has taught me that in the consumer/local/web world, there is an invisible factor in ROI…One must consider not only the ‘time is money’ equation, but ‘frustration is money’.
It’s helpful to think about that pizza-maker and his microsite. So you can prove that he’ll sell more pizza, and thus get some ROI on his time and money spent on his microsite. OK, but have you considered the frustration involved in that extra time? And for a small business person, whether sales resulting from that extra aggravation will actuually provide more satisfaction?
It’s my belief that the pizza guy hasn’t really finished his quote. “To sell more pizza — and/or have more fun…” His goal is NOT to sell more pizza…The pizza guy wants to own and control his life. He wants a business that satisfies him. So he will always balance the potential for new sales against the quality of the work required to gain them. The hidden frustration factor can pust up the “I” in ROI until the “R” looks very small indeed.
This discussion seems to be confusing the what with the how.
I don’t think microsite proponents are suggesting that creating and managing microsites is the local advertiser’s responsibility. Local advertisers should not be asked to create their own microsite for the same reason YP publishers, newspaper publishers, TV stations and radio stations don’t ask advertiser’s to create their own ads. It’s the same reason I don’t expect a restaurant to drag me into the kitchen to peel the potatoes for my steak and garlic mash.
As I read it, Malcolm, you’re saying:
i.e.: if I google pizza encinitas ca, I’d more likely to find Vigilucci’s (my local dive) if they have a microsite on KNBC39.com (my local TV aggregator wannabe) than if they simply have their own website. Did I get that right?
Isn’t that a difficult hypothesis to prove — in terms of ROI — to Senor Vigilucci?
Doesn’t he need to understand a whole hell of a lot about how search engines work, and how aggregate sites work, and how it’s better for him to be in “Restaurants>North County>Encinitas>Italian>Pizza” of KNBC39.com than to be at Vigiluccis.com…or in addition to having his own site? Doesn’t he need to be able to define the scope of his involvement of creating the microsite (which you say” a microsite is a quick and easy way to get online with a local partner they know and trust”…in other words someone they spend time to talk to and to review, and redo, and of course, eventually pay) and to optimize it for searching, and to compare that work and effort to the work of creating an independent site, etc., etc., or no site at all?
Just thinkinig about the problem, IMO, pushes the Frustration Factor of the ROI equation up very, very high.
Does Senor Vigillucci even need a website for his Pizza? I haven’t ever checked if he has one, and yet I’m a pretty good customer.
Perhaps we need to consider the ROI iincluding the Frustration Premium for the local advertiser to figure out:
Benefits of a microsite in a conglomerate local site vs independent site
Benefits of local search with microsite vs benefits of current local search
My experience is in the small newspaper industry. My classifieds program generally incrreases a new paper’s ad volume by 40% and reduces labor costs by 70%.
HOWEVER — Just THINKING about what it takes to switch from current mode of business to my new system — despite its efficiencies, despite its better revenue — gives the potential publisher Such A Headache that he needs to lie down and put a cold washcloth on his forehead.
I’m sort of thinking that this type of response might be the same in the microsite world, the typical response from a small-business owner.
You talk about spoon-feeding the website creation — I’m saying that the problem isnt the website — it’s spoon-feeding the CONCEPT of the microsite. THAT’s where the frustration comes from. That’s the sales hurdle.
What Jim Bonfield’s comment says is that even with Elaborate Handholding and persuasion, the small-business honors couldn’t maintain the motivation to continue. In other words, they didn’t see the return on their investment vis-a-vis frustration. THEY DIDN’T SEE THE VALUE of the microsite.
You’re asking the small-business owner to make evaluations of somewhat subtle alternative internet strategies, and guess the net effect in his personal businees environment. That’s a tough order.
If a huge amount of Sales Effort and Customer Reinforcement is what’s required, can the Microsite concept be cost effective?
I couldn’t agree more re saving the SEO mumbo jumbo. To sell the concept, regardless of whether they have an existing website or not, just show them a Google search results page.
In this example, Greiner Buick’s microsite (on yellowpages.vvdailypress.com) is the #1 result on Google for “Victorville Buick”. Greiner’s stand-alone company website, http://www.greinergm.com, is nowhere to be found in the top 100 results.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-19%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=victorville+buick+&btnG=Search
Even my mother in law uses Google and knows that she generally clicks on the first few results ;)
J. Schauer is right. Malcolm is always right ;-) and I am too, sometimes.
BUT…the bottom line is that each company in each industry responds to this information in different ways. Just because the horse doesn’t know it’s thirsty we still need to make the water available. (stupid analogy, I know). BUT this is really about survival for these smaller companies. I bet our Pizza maker found his POS system details confusing too, but he buckled down and learned it because he had to.
The single most compelling tool I use is a search engine ranking report. I hear this often… “I am already on Google. Just type in my name…see?” BUT when we type in their industry type with more common terms like “Sacramento restaurants” (which according to ReachLocal’s traffic estimator tool, was searched for over 100,000 times last month with “Sacramento Pizza” contributing nearly 18,000 searches of its own…) they don’t come up. SOMETIMES their competitors do. Either way, at that very moment they get it and they usually ask “how much will it cost for me to be page-1?”
I have had similar experiences to Malcolm’s by way of organic rankings success. We ran a three month trial for a Hyundai dealer in Vegas. The platform was linked page-1, Google PPC everyday. The impressions were huge, CTR over 4%. We had confirmed sales of three cars in month one alone. We brought in nearly 100 leads (Fully filled-out lead forms on the site. Samples linked from http://www.eyeballfarm.com) and produced and tracked a large number of incoming calls (can’t remember the actual amount). By the end of the third month, our landing page had ORGANIC page-1 position on Google, Yahoo and MSN (free baby!). Even though we had only spent money with Google, we were getting leads from all three networks because the microsite was now better ranked than their own gazillion-dollar web site that had been up for over a year and built on a content management system from ancient days, locking all of the viewable text in Flash and JavaScript vaults with the Meta tags spammed to the brim with 50 or more terms, none of which was written with the city name in maind. These are leads they would have never had.
Here’s the kicker… the program cost them only about $56 a day AND THEY STILL CANCELLED!!!! (I am laughing through my tears… No, that’s just tears I am pretty sure)
It’s all in the success reporting in my opinion. Selling page-1 Google is easy. Reporting it in a way that makes them understand the ROI is the hard part.