FranCamp is the first social media un-conference for the franchise industry. To be held in Atlanta, GA on May 4, FranCamp 2012 will offer CEOs, franchise development staff, and franchisees the opportunity to develop a clear roadmap for how to get started with social media and how to integrate all the pieces together to create a successful social media and online content strategy. Qiigo is pleased to a sponsor of FranCamp 2012.

Qiigo CEO, Rick Batchelor, will also be leading the roundtable table discussion “Why Can’t Search Engines Figure Out Our Site Without SEO?” Join Rick as he leads this discussion about the complex and constantly evolving relationship between search engines and your website’s ranking.

The FranCamp agenda includes a Tweetup on Thursday evening, May 3, at the Marriott Lobby Bar prior to the Friday un-conference. Friday’s events begin with a networking breakfast and continue with the following sessions:

• Welcome
• Social Media Gone Wrong and What To Do Next
• How to Monitor and Leverage Social Platforms
• Building The Perfect Social Media Campaign
• Building a Fan Community
• Working Roundtable Lunch
• Local Marketing Rules!
• The Power of Connecting
• Build Your Business..Build Your Brand…Build Your Legacy
• Evening Meet Up

Click here to register for FranCamp 2012 and join Rick for his roundtable discussion. Attendees earn 50 CFE Participation Credits.

The International Franchise Association Convention is your chance to “Seize the Opportunity”! As the leaders in the franchise community gather in Orlando, Florida for the 52nd Annual Convention, we invite you to join the Qiigo team as they lead two Business Solution Roundtables in the Marketing and PR Track.
Join Qiigo CEO Rick Batchelor as he leads the Local PPC for the Franchisee Made Easy roundtable with Charlie Ellis from MDG Advertising. This roundtable will cover:

• What does it take to launch a locally targeted Google Adwords campaign?
• What is bid management and how can it be used to curb costs while increasing visibility?
• How do you pick keywords that will deliver qualified prospects to your franchise’s website?
• What are three simple steps you can use to track PPC conversions?
• How much should you be spending on your local PPC campaign?

Interested in Mobile Marketing? Then you should join Zach Dickens, Qiigo Senior Account Executive, for the Your Customers Have Gone Mobile: Now What? roundtable with Bill Adams of Matchbin. This discussion will cover:

• What mobile marketing efforts are critical to success?
• Are they best for branding or driving transactions?
• How can I make my web site mobile-ready?
• Can I track the effectiveness of mobile marketing?
• How does it fit into my overall marketing strategy?

The Business Solutions Roundtables will be held on Tuesday, February 14 from 10:15 am to 12:30 pm.
We look forward to seeing you at one of these Roundtable sessions. To meet with Rick or Zach prior to the Roundtable sessions, please stop by the Qiigo booth, #214.

In the first nine months of 2011, Yelp generated a whopping 80% increase in year-over-year revenue totaling $58.4 million. Advertising sales accounted for 91% of the company’s revenue during this period. Local advertising revenues grew by 67% year-over-year to $40.3 million, while branded advertising also grew by 67% to $12.7 million.

During the past year, Yelp has been increasing its spending on sales and marketing. Year-over-year expenditures have risen 60% to $38.5 million.

Yelp is currently concentrating on local and brand advertising on its website including graphic and text display ads. While not currently featuring local or brand advertising on its mobile apps, Yelp does “see the mobile market as an attractive monetization opportunity.”

Yelp saw an average of 61 million unique visitors in the third quarter, up 63% from the prior year. As of September 30, 2011, the site was maintaining more than 22 million reviews with approximately 529,000 free business pages claimed. As of the same date, Yelp also recognized revenue from approximately 19,000 local business accounts.

Yelp user demographics are as follows:

• 42% age 18-34
• 45% college graduates
• 36% annual income of $100,000+

You need a regular Google+ account prior to starting your business account, sign up here if you don’t have one. Then visit the Create A Page tool to create your business page. There are five options for businesses to categorize themselves within Google+. They include:

• Local Business or Place
• Product or Brand
• Company, Institution or Organization
• Arts, Entertainment or sports
• Other

If you choose the local business category, you will enjoy some special features including the ability to enter a phone number. The Local Google + pages are designed to allow customers to easily connect with a business’s physical location and include a map, the location’s address, phone number, and hours of operation. The one drawback is that your current Google Places page operates separately from your Google+ Page. The reason being that the Places page is designed to provide information about your business, while the +Page is designed to allow you to engage and build relationships with your customers.

When creating your Google+ Page it is important to not delegate this task randomly. The person who creates this page will become the page administrator and no one else will be able to admin the page. The admin rights are also not transferable at this time. Google has indicated the option for multiple administrators will be available in the future, but no timeline has been given for this feature.

Once you have established your page, you can use it much the same way you use your Facebook page. You can post items to your page as yourself or as your business. You can share photos, videos, links and conduct hangouts.  Your page can also follow people, but not until they follow you first.

Your business can also have multiple pages. This is a nice feature for businesses that have a need for dedicated pages. For example, you may want to have an overall page for your business (Ford) and a separate page for a product line (Ford Focus). You can even have pages for events (2012 Auto Shows). Just be sure you have a good solid reason for each page.

To follow a business page, the page must be added to a Google+ circle. The +1 button merely states that the visitor to your page “likes” your business. To follow and get your updates they must add you to a Google+ Circle. Kind of confusing, we know. But your business page gets the benefit of a total +1 count showing on your profile page. This option is not available to personal pages.

Other things you should know about Google + Pages:

• Vanity URLs are not available yet. For example, Macy’s didn’t get plus.google.com/macys their Google + page is https://plus.google.com/116142452604357423186/posts. Google has given no estimated update for when this might change.
• Want to change your name? Unlike Facebook, you can change the name of your Google+ Page whenever you like. The only caveat being that if you have verified status, you will have to re-verify with your new name. So it still makes sense to choose your name wisely.
• Google is launching a new icon you will be able to use to encourage people to follow your page.
• Use Direct Connect search to get directly to a Google + page. Just use the [+] in front of the page you are interested in and it will take you to the page automatically.

If you have questions about how Google+ Pages can benefit your business, please contact Qiigo today!

Mark Fratrik, VP and chief economist at BIA/Kelsey was surprised to see an increase in digital ad spending. “I thought it would hold steady, especially in the midst of an economic slowdown,” he said.

Overall local media market advertising is showing a slight decrease for full year 2011. Earlier projections in March 2011 called for spending to reach $136.2 billion, revised projections now call for a slightly lower total of just $135.9 billion.

The largest downward projects come for yellow pages and newspapers. Yellow pages are expected to see only $9 billion in revenue and newspapers will reach just $23.7 billion. These figures represent decreases of $600 million compared to March 2011 forecasts.

Over the next five years, projections for yellow pages are for decreases of 7.7% in spending. While newspaper revenue is expected to decrease from 19% to 12.9% of total market share.

Fratrik says he believes digital advertising will continue to see its share of market increase as yellow pages and newspapers share declines. “In terms of Yellow Pages, online search is so much quicker and more attractive to people,” he added.

If your company wants to stay ahead of the trends, contact Qiigo today about Pay Per Click and online local area marketing opportunities.

With a focus on Myers’ two main categories of business, stair glides and ramps, Qiigo was able to immediately impact his call volume. Myers started seeing an increase of as many as 4 calls each day. By qualifying those calls, he has seen an increase in closed sales over the last several months. “Our March numbers were up 50% over February, April was up 25% over March, and we are on track to have a record month in May thanks to the SEO work Qiigo has done,” says Dave Myers.

Driving business to his local site was an important objective for Myers. His clients want to work with someone who has a local presence, someone who is rooted in the local community. By emphasizing his local website and phone number, Qiigo was able to start generating calls for Myers right from the start of the campaign. With the volume of calls increasing exponentially, Myers has even added staff to ensure that phones are answered at all times. 

“I am 100% pleased with the work that Qiigo has done and I look forward to expanding my efforts with Qiigo shortly,” says Myers.

In this year alone, they expect marketers to earn nearly $25 billion in revenues from local interactive marketing.  This is a nice jump from the $21.7 billion earned from online ad revenues in 2010.  Total local ad revenues in 2010 came in at $136.3 billion.

BIA/Kelsey is predicting online’s share of local advertising revenue will also continue to grow over the next four years. According to the firm’s estimates, the online and interactive local marketing percentage of revenue earned will increase 9.5% to 23.6% by 2015.

With a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4% over the next four years, local interactive advertising revenues will take on even greater importance in advertiser’s overall marketing strategy. BIA/Kelsey predicts overall local advertising revenues will grow at a CAGR of 2.1% to $153.5 billion by 2015.

Let’s start with a quick refresher course on claiming your Google Places page. If you haven’t already done this, here is what you need to do.

• Go to http://www.google.com/ and find your business, if you get to the places page and see this message, you know you still have to claim your page.

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• Once you have gone through the steps to claim your listing, you will be able to add any basic information that is missing, including hours of operation, address and phone numbers. List your name, address and exact phone numbers as Google doesn’t take kindly to geographic or keyword stuffing. If you have a toll free number, you can add more than one phone number, but list your local phone number first as this will help to localize your listing.
• You next step will be to choose your keywords, categories and description information. You can choose up to 5 categories to describe your business, if possible use all five, but choose only those that accurately describe your business and avoid location words as Google doesn’t like them here. Your description, on the other hand, can and should include geographic or location keywords, while still being easy to read.
• After this step is completed, it is time to add photos and video to your profile. Add at least one photo, even if it is only a logo or photo of the outside of your location. Also consider adding geotagged images to Google Picasa or Flickr. By adding geotagged images to these sites and linking them back to your Places page, you are providing Google with additional geographic data. You can also add up to five YouTube video URLs and since YouTube is now a Google company, it certainly won’t hurt to do so. Video is an engaging medium and adds a compelling image to consumers who visit your Places page.
• Ratings and reviews are important to your rankings, so ask frequent customers to rate you online. It’s not advised to post your own reviews, but if you can get a few positive reviews online it will certainly help the cause.

All of these factors go into helping improve your ranking because Google takes several things into account when providing search results.  The three primary factors are:

• Relevance – Google only shows you those listings that are relevant to your search. For example, if you search for sporting goods stores, they won’t show you listings for car dealerships and fast food chains.
• Prominence – Prominence is determined by how well known those stores are based on sources across the web.
• Distance – Distance is calculated based on how far the stores are from the locatiaon you typed in your search or from your general location.

Now that you have claimed and optimized your Google Places page, let’s take a look at what’s going on with the newest additions to the Google arsenal…Tags, Boost and HotPot.

Google Tags help your organic listings to stand out on a Google results page or a Google Maps search results page.  Google Tags are the bright yellow marker that highlight when business have videos, photos or special offers on their page. They look like this.

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Google Boost is an online advertising solution that enables you to create an online search ad from your Google Places account.  A Google Boost ad appears in the Pay Per Click listing area with a special blue marker and looks like this.

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Google Tags is a flat rate, online advertising product.  While Google Boost is a per click advertising product. Neither affect the ranking of your business on Google or Google Maps.

Google HotPot on the other hand can affect the ranking of your business’ local search result.  It is Google’s new local recommendation engine that allows users to rate and review stores, restaurants, and businesses, and then share these reviews with friends.  When logged in, Google HotPot will also send you personalized recommendations based on the ratings you and your friends provide with the goal of providing you with exposure to new places you might otherwise not have visited.

As Google continues to evolve and add new products to its local search toolkit, it is vital that you have a firm foundation to stand on. Now is the time to ensure that your Google Places listing is claimed and that all information is correct. Firm up your Google Places listing now and start exploring the options available with Google Tags, Boost and HotPot.  Then see what happens to your local search rankings!

Many business owners go to Google Places and claim their business listing. This basic online marketing strategy is well known, but with the addition of Hotpot, Google Places has taken on a whole new meaning. 

Google Hotpot is a local recommendation engine that allows consumers to rate businesses, stores and restaurants.  Google will then provide recommendations on other stores, restaurants and businesses that are similar to those they rate positively.

The first B to B marketing campaign to promote the new Google Hotpot was launched in Portland on December 9 and targeted businesses with a strong online presence.  Businesses in the Portland that have claimed their Google Places page can request a free Business Kit to help them promote their business and get recommended. 

The Business Kit “holds the keys to making your Google Places page famous.”   The kit contains a variety of products to help promote your business. Items range from basic customized cards and stickers to the interactive “recommended on Google” window sticker.  This window sticker is designed to interact with smart phones.  Smart phone users can then touch their phones to the sticker to find out more about your business.

The new Google Hotpot is sure to lead the way in providing businesses with a new avenue to reach consumers.  Combining Hotpot ratings with Facebook and Twitter followings is an ideal way to engage and interact with your customers.  Encouraging your faithful customers to provide positive reviews on Hotpot is bound to draw in new customers.  As Jeff Aguero, Google product marketing manager, explains, “If you give “Pizza Place X” a five-star rating then the next time you search for pizza in another city [Hotpot] will know that Place X is similar to Place Y, and Hotpot can enhance your search results.”

Keep an eye on Google Hotpot and watch for them to expand their marketing efforts to your city. Be one of the first to get your Business Kit and start exploring this exciting new venue for consumer engagement.

The answer to these questions and several other variations, is called “Personalization”.

This is a new concept that was rolled out from Google in December of 2009.  In simple terms, Google is trying to “personalize” YOUR experience.  That is to say that they are trying to show YOU things that YOU seem to be interested in (based on their observations of your computer usage).  If you have done this search several times and have never clicked on the ad, then Google says “hmmm…  he/she must not be interested in that.”  As a result, they might not show you those ads.

This is a great information page from Google about Personalization.  It includes a video that explains the concept further:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html

This article from Business Week’s blog further explains the concept of “personalized search”:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/12/google_gets_rea.html

This paragraph from this article (near the bottom) explains this concept well.

Last Friday, Google quietly rolled out a feature which may have even greater impact on Web users — though many are unlikely to notice. With something the company calls Personalized Search, Google will start showing different search results for different users, depending on which links they have clicked the most in the past. In theory this means that eventually, a car lover and a zoologist typing “jaguar” into the search field will wind up with two different sets of search results.