If you are in the Local Search business your goal should be to become the Market Leader. Being the 3rd or 4th local yellow page listing provider in your area isn’t going to get you there.

There are things a local media company can do with their business listings and SEM products to get them there-

• Determine Your ‘Impact’ Categories. Choose (4) categories per year to focus on. Each category has a 90 day sales cycle.

• Become a Brand Marketer. Each category vertical you create is a new brand or extension of an existing brand and need to be promoted. In-paper ads alone aren’t going to get the job done. Remember, these verticals will provide a new resource for your existing audience and if promoted properly, they will attract a new audience.

• Get Into the B2B Business. If you build it chances are they might not come. The SMB is very busy and doesn’t have time to research the best avenues to promote themselves. To be successful you need to determine the most cost effective way to meet the advertiser where they are. It may be a mixture of things- Chamber of Commerce meetings, Direct Mail, E-mail, Breakfast Seminars and more. Note- Goodwill marketing campaigns are a great way to get advertisers involved. Give every local business in the category a FREE business profile (Website) and make sure you promote it. Don’t worry, you have a lot more advertising products to sell them.

• Sales Channel Development. Who is going to sell these categories? What are they selling? What pricing model? The existing sales staff may get the job done with current advertisers but they will not be able to get deep enough into the category to make it successful. This is a long term strategy that will lead to new core ventures in the future. Yes, these online verticals will translate to print revenue in the future. My suggestion: Bring in sales consultants like Borrell and Associates to analyze your situation, followed by high energy presenters like Mel Taylor to motivate the businesses in the category and then hire an outside sales force to develop the category for you. In the end this process will make sure the old shell game doesn’t happen and will turn a lot of SMB into advertisers.
  

• Don’t forget Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. 65% or more of your users start their search with a major search engine. It is important to make sure your business profiles, ratings and reviews, coupons and other relevant advertiser content is being crawled by or sent to the major search engines. If this isn’t working with you hire an SEO consultant or team member to oversee it. Oh yeah, spend some of your marketing budget on SEM.

• Analyze, Benchmark and Follow-up- To be successful you need to know what worked and what didn’t. The first category will always be the most difficult to gauge success but it will get easier. Please don’t forget to create a customer follow-up strategy. It is worse to not tell them anything than it is to tell them they had bad results. The follow-up strategy should include the introduction to your Business Center/ Self Serve Interface that will provide the advertiser with direct access to reporting and the opportunity to purchase additional advertising.

This was just a summary of the plan. Each market is different and not everything that works in one market always works in the next but these (6) steps will lead you on the path to becoming the Market Leader. If you would like more information please feel free to contact me.