Imagine this: You’re at a new neighborhood boutique restaurant with your better half for Friday date night and are looking forward to epicurean brilliance and great service. Over the next hour, your server who never seems to be available, allows your wine glasses to go dry, gets your order wrong and doesn’t even offer dessert. Not living up to your expectations or the price, you whip out your mobile device and write a scathing user review on your favorite local search web site. Instantly your voice is heard by millions of like-minded consumers as this information is picked up by the other related web sites, blogs and web services offering aggregated consumer reviews.

Think about how this information almost instantly shows up on iPhone apps like iWant and Urbanspoon. The consumer’s voice is heard, and while many of us are now using our mobile devices before going to a business or restaurant, we are strongly influenced by the business ratings, scores and consumer comments. That real-time empowerment influences our decision to visit a business with less than stellar reviews.

As more user-generated reviews web sites such as Citysearch and Yelp are accessible on mobile devices, and with social network web sites that offer real-time status updates like Facebook and Twitter, consumers now have the power to share their experiences as they’re experiencing them. While this can capture the immediate excitement of finding a new restaurant, it can also serve as a channel to express frustration or disappointment with an outing gone wrong. Previously, consumers had to wait until they got home to post a user review. Now, they can do so in the heat of the moment, when passions run high and filters are non-existent. The result can be crushing for the local small business owner.

While the newfound accessibility is great for consumers, often businesses feel powerless when it comes to negative reviews and comments. We are fortunate to enjoy the freedom of speech, and folks are certainly entitled to their opinions. But what about the voice of the local business owner? How can he or she tell the other side of the story or clarify inaccurate or unfair statements?

Businesses are speaking out and are demanding an equal voice on these user review web sites. And the web sites are listening. For example, last week, Yelp announced a new offering enabling local businesses to respond publicly to inaccurate facts or statements, which is a service some other web sites, such as TripAdvisor already allow. Citysearch and Marchex’s Open List enable businesses to provide their own description of their business and provide updates to their online profiles, ensuring contact and other important information is accurate and current.

But is this enough?

Truly successful reputation management calls for business owners to be proactive for anything being said about their business online. But let’s back up. There’s an assumption that businesses are even aware of what’s being said about them while I contend that most likely aren’t. With so many new aggregation sites popping up daily, both positive and negative user reviews—along with the business’ reputation—instantly permeate across the web and mobile communities, right into the hands of consumers. So how can business owners harness this to their benefit? Here are a few suggestions.

Jump in and learn. To fully protect businesses’ reputation, it is critical to do some level of monitoring, such as a regular search for your business name on multiple search engines, including Twitter’s search engine, as well as searches on user review web sites. Search for the business by name, category, and location.

Discover your web and mobile footprint. Another option to consider is investing in a reputation management service that can be your eyes on the internet, alerting you to any potentially slanderous or inaccurate content, and giving more control over how the business is perceived online. This is a more nascent service, as related to online business reputation awareness, but gaining traction very quickly with offerings from Marchex, Trackur, BrandsEye and a few others. These services can provide a quick snapshot of the business’ footprint on the web and mobile community, and provide tools to take action.

Use the same web sites/medium to speak to your customers. Listen to what is being said and carefully consider whether a response from the business is even appropriate. Many user reviews or blogs are shared within a community and that community can feel threatened if an outside voice appears defensive. If the comment is to correct an inaccurate statement, think about responding by first thanking the reviewer or commentator for the feedback, and then offer a remedy and/or a response that shows you are taking action and will do what it takes to regain the trust from the customer for this isolated incident. Remember, those consumers that take the time to post their review of a business want to be seen and heard. When you validate their voice, you build a stronger relationship with them and hopefully as a result, they will be inclined to try you again and write a glowing review next time.

When it is not possible to mitigate a bad review or join in on a blog or Twitter discussion, you can still treat the situation as a free focus group with feedback that can help improve the business. You can even scope out the online and mobile reviews for your competition. You’ll be amazed at the insight that is out there and how you can fold that into your ongoing business strategy and marketing efforts.

The worst business problem is an unknown one; consider the information something that can empower your business to become better than the competition and worthy of people to talk about—in a positive way.

Last week’s inauguration was a great time to reflect. Witnessing such an inspirational, historic event combined with the ground-swell of optimism gave me a renewed sense of purpose and possibility. Professionally, it made me think about how I can get even more resourceful in my marketing approach and solving the problems of my valuable clients.

While the campaign slogan was “Yes we can,” for our purposes here, I’d like to suggest a new slogan, “Yes we should.” This could be the year that mobile really takes off and here are a few things to consider regarding the mobile opportunity – whether you are a business or a marketer who needs to continue to take care of your advertiser.

Phenomenal growth of the iPhone and other Internet-enabled devices

With estimates as high as 10 million iPhones sold in 2008 and “smartphones” being the fastest growing segment in the market, Internet-enabled mobile devices are a very attractive opportunity. Why? Because mobile search, at its core, is local search. And the opportunity for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as national advertisers to connect to consumers via mobile applications and phones, is more real than ever before. But don’t buy in to the notion that only big advertisers and big budgets can afford to buy mobile advertising. There’s a growing amount of inventory out there available to savvy advertisers.

Bid prices on Google and Yahoo

There are a lot of smart marketers who know how to get their ads on the search engines, but our consistent angst is that more and more, we compete and drive those bid prices on the big search engines up and up every day. There’s a lot of competition and the growing cost of getting those clicks from paid listings reflects this. In the mobile world it’s not there yet. There are not as many advertisers fighting over inventory and there’s a lot of inventory available.

Future growth

iPhone applications have gone from 2,000 to over 10,000 in a matter of four months – 75% of which are paid – and there have already been 300 million downloads. Not to be outdone, Google launched its own “Android Market” to provide the same opportunity for G1 developers. And as both phones offer GPS and mapping tools nothing could scream “local targeting opportunity” louder for businesses in the local market.

We have become an economy based on instant gratification. The iPhone mobile app developers know it, and as a result we will continue to see more mobile applications designed to help us find what we want. In fact, I was recently playing with an example, an iPhone application called, “iWant.” Say I’m walking down the street, remember a friend’s birthday and need a gift. I pull up the app on my iPhone or Internet enabled phone. As it has GPS, it knows where I am, completes the look-up providing three relevant results within walking distance. I select one and with a tap on the screen, I give them a call to see if they carry the item I’m interested in. They do and with another tap, I can get directions.

That’s not just a nice story or a plug for that particular application.  It’s a wake-up call to marketers and businesses.  If you want to be one of those businesses that came up on my screen, now is the time to repurpose your business content for mobile… “Yes we should.”  If you have a search ad running on one of the search engines today, it can be repurposed to mobile very quickly and distributed on one of the many mobile networks… “Yes we should.”  If you have content on your Web site, it can and, say it with me…“Yes we should,” be repurposed into a mobile optimized page.

Consumers look up 58 billion numbers a year, most to connect with a business. So where do they look those up? Yellow Page Directories, 411, ask a friend? For how long, when it’s so easy on a mobile phone or mobile app? Consider what people are doing on their mobile phone every day. With a click of a button or a tap on a screen – or in some instances, just talking into the device – not only have they found the local businesses, but they can now connect via a phone call, instantly. If you are a local business, you need to be that business that comes up in the results. If you are a marketer, you need to get your advertiser’s business content mobile optimized now, and get it distributed to these new mobile and mobile application inventories.

Mobile is a great medium to be in and with the New Year, worthy of your consideration. Balancing your paid search with your organic lowers media spend and increases ROI right? But now add mobile into the mix, and it lowers the average media costs even more! While it took 10 years to build the online pay-per-click marketplace, the mobile version will only take 1 or 2 to mature to the same point. Get in while the going is good. “Yes we should.”

Right now, I feel like a little Thai food, medium priced and not too far… tap screen… lunch. Thai Spice just got a new customer. Happy New Year!

More national advertisers are using online local advertising to generate leads and drive offline sales. The strategies for successful local online advertising are not the same as general online or search advertising and measuring results can be challenging. That’s why so many national advertisers, agencies and online advertising resellers are reaching out to partners to help them create and optimize their local online advertising strategy.

In conjunction with Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence, Marchex recently conducted a study of national advertisers across the United States who sell products and/or services through local outlets, dealers, franchises or branded stores to gain an understanding of their local online advertising strategies and tactics, challenges and best practices, as well as how they are measuring their results and return on investment (ROI).

It wasn’t all that surprising that the majority of these national advertisers – 73%, in fact – were doing digital or online marketing and nearly half of the respondents indicated they were doing some form of local online targeting. But despite the growing demand for local online marketing, geo-targeting by those surveyed rarely dipped below the state level and 45% indicated they did not use different messaging or tactics for different geographic or local markets. What’s more, the data also shows that while more than 50% of marketers are trying a number of different local sources including search engines, directories, local search engines, newspapers and vertical Web sites, managing the campaigns and generating volume are challenges.

Measuring effectiveness

This approach also hints to their difficulty in accurately measuring effectiveness. While 47% reported that at least a quarter of their in-store sales were a result of their online marketing, they cited the difficulty in measuring ROI and difficulty connecting offline sales to online marketing as two of the top challenges they are facing.

With general confusion regarding strategy, tactics and measurement, national advertisers and their agencies need to examine a set of best practices that can make or break their local advertising strategy. Virtually every local advertiser is looking to maximize ROI, increase local leads and sales, and reach a more targeted audience. And especially in our increasingly fractured local advertising market, a sharp strategy is required to accomplish all these goals.

Strategies you should know If you’re handling your local advertising campaigns internally, a review of the following strategies will help you find an effective mix. And if you’re working with an advertising agency, ask whether they have the capability to execute these strategies for your locally focused campaigns.

1. Diversify traffic sources beyond paid search. Search accounts for 30% of consumers’ sources of local business information. That’s a lot—but print directories account for even more: 31%. And Internet Yellow Page sites, local search sites and cell phone marketing account also account for 31%. That’s why having an advertising solution that reaches consumers using these additional online sources is essential to maximizing your marketing’s reach.
2. Utilize localized landing pages for each location or market—and track everything. Each location, market or service area needs to be tracked separately—so you can reach your customers where they live. What’s more, landing pages should use calls-to-action that are tailored to the type of leads desired: i.e., calls, form submissions, coupons. Include local phone numbers, and specifically list the locations/service areas where you offer your products and services. By leveraging call-tracking and tracking everything on your targeted local landing pages, you gain a wealth of information about your current and prospective customers.
3. Pick the lead types and measurement techniques best suited for your business. Customers are interacting with your Web sites in many different ways: some would rather pick-up the phone while others schedule appointments or use coupons, and some will print maps and visit your store locations. Be sure to track trends by geography or local market. Use call analytics, Form-to-Phone, and other measurements to determine lead quality and ROI.
4. Tailor paid ads to local markets and use local phone numbers. It may be obvious, but it’s worth saying: use copy that specifies that physical location. We find greater success using messaging that suggests the value of buying nearby, along with location-specific offers and geo-modified keywords. Targeting should occur by state, region, city, and DMA. When creating ads, think about all the locations that local consumers might use to find businesses in their area to avoid missing out on potential customers.

Local online advertising is forecast to grow nearly 48% to $12.6 billion in 2008, according to Borrell Associates. Despite this high growth, the fragmentation and granularity of local advertising creates challenges for national advertisers, resellers and agencies. However, when you have these strategies in your arsenal, you’ll know where to optimize—and how to evaluate solutions that your partners present to you. That’s a strong foundation for seeing real results.

To receive a summary of the survey results and sample RFP questions, please visit www.marchex.com.