As 2010 closes, I believe we are seeing the beginning of a transformation in digital marketing: what we at Marchex call “the call economy.” Although built on the backs of established online marketing tactics, the advent of a market for leads delivered through phone calls under a performance-based model represents a massive shift in how […]
For nearly a decade, we have watched small businesses steadily shift their marketing spend from offline to online, but it is only now that we are coming to a key realization: unlocking the local opportunity is not just about capturing transitions in small business spending; rather, it is about understanding the unique pain points of […]
If you a) believe in the power of search—as a technology, as a consumer experience and as a business model, and b) believe in the economic promise of the “local” opportunity, then you need to commit to a simple axiom: the ultimate destiny of a local search is a phone call.
In 2003, when Open List started crawling the web for local content, Marchex identified specific businesses by their phone number. By and large, that tactic worked. Today, for local businesses, the phone number is a far less reliable identifier, even though routing and tracking inbound phone calls is more important than ever. To put some […]
The “Business of Making Money” (is there any other kind of business, really?) Local Online Advertising conference held by Borrell Associates in NYC a few weeks ago represented, for me, a turning point in my own understanding of the “local opportunity” and how it will bear fruit. First, a disclaimer: in my experience, novel concepts […]
Whether they like it or not, every small business has a digital footprint: who they are, what they do, where they are located, and how customers feel about their products and services. Dialogue is in the air: Google’s newly announced focus on real-time search (read: search of dialogue), and the rumors of a possible acquisition […]
It pains me to say it, but local search is a solved consumer problem. I’m in pain admitting this, because I’ve been trying to create better local search mousetraps since 2003. Put simply, major search engines do a good enough job of surfacing local listings and phone numbers to consumers who need a specific product […]