How Yellow Pages Is Disconnected From Real Small Business Customers

I spent part of my afternoon listening to a panel of experts from the local internet business. Three things really came out of this for us that I want to share with the industry and most importantly our merchants:

• The Yellow Pages industry sales force thinks the answer to getting merchants is to leverage the transparency, value, and flexibility of the Local Internet -- forcing you to buy it with their expensive, onerous, opaque offline product. I don't get how a "massive feet on the street" sales force is the right way to deliver a solution to real small merchants -- especially a sales force known for selling based on the fear of you losing business. The Internet is about the hope you have in growing business.
  
  
• A key to success of local merchants online is drawing the local customer in. The key is for the small merchant to bring more of their unique local content onto the web. We have found blogs, newsletters, consumer pictures, etc., all critical to driving actual customers to our local merchants. Small businesses invest in relationships with their customers, and communication is a critical part of that relationship.
  
  
• User generated content is driving new local information onto the web. This is the information people used to get at the local coffee-shop bulletin board, the local newspaper, or even the Local Little league game. Today, more consumers look to the web for local content. We are providing a platform for small merchants to generate and leverage local content. If you look at our merchants who have used our platform to create content they are seeing orders of magnitude more consumers, who are in turn now seeing more of their local ads.

A few interesting points that were raised:

• Small merchants pay $6000 a year for advertising today. Our solution that will include everything from Google to Yahoo, the local newspapers, broadcast media websites, 411 and even TV ads will deliver significantly more value than the Yellow Pages "tax" merchants are currently paying.
  
  
• $55 billion will be spent on local internet search by 2010. 55% of search ads will be locally driven.
  
  
• None of these traditional advertising businesses believe small merchants are smart enough to actually buy online advertising. They believe it has to be SOLD to them and forced on them. We know they're wrong.
  
  
• In local online advertising, CPC is too complex, and small merchants don't need that complexity.
  
  
• To get past the 300,000 small merchants who are advertising online today, self service has to work but most of these guys just don't believe the SME is smart enough to do it.
  
  
• The people who have the majority of today's small businesses online ad dollars have expensive sales forces. Growing this base of advertisers will require something special and innovative -- beyond a traditional sales force.

Thanks for tuning in.

Ben

Innovative Ways to Find New Customers

Here at MerchantCircle we are constantly looking for ways to help small businesses find new customers. Whether it be allowing the merchants in our network to advertise for free on the webpage of any other MerchantCircle merchant they invite, or us placing the ads of our merchants on Google and Yahoo, from getting all of our merchants' pages listed highly on local internet searches, to creating and placing a cable television ad for one lucky merchant, we are dedicated to bringing results and new customers to our network of merchants. And it's beginning to get noticed.

In recent days, we received calls from a number of ad networks looking to sign up our network of local merchants as advertisers. Businesses as diverse as free phone directory assistance (411) providers, national coupon distributors, internet ad networks, and even national and local radio stations have come calling on MerchantCircle to provide access to their ad networks to our merchants. And still the phone keeps ringing!

The power and promise of the MerchantCircle network are only beginning to be felt, but in the months ahead, you can look forward to many new and exciting ad placement opportunities for your business. We're getting the word out for you!

Interested in helping make MerchantCircle ever more effective at bringing you new customers? Try the following:

1) Tell a friend! Inviting more merchants in your area not only gets you more free local ad space in our network, but it also makes the MerchantCircle network more powerful when negotiating rates with outside ad networks (like radio and cable TV stations) as well

2) Create coupons and ads! The more ads you create and place on the network, the more customers that will find you. It's free, so why not take ten minutes and create a new advertisement or coupon for your business?

3) Write newsletters and blogs! Upload more photos! The more new and interesting things you have to tell your customers, the more they will return to visit your page. And all new content raises the likelihood that Google or Yahoo will visit your page.

Thanks,

Doug K
VP of Business Development

Finding Success with MerchantCircle

You've heard us talk about how MerchantCircle delivers results for merchants like you. I thought it was about time we let a merchant tell you how it's worked for them.

Denise Broesler is a RE/MAX Prestige realtor in Cranford, NJ. She's been with MerchantCircle for a couple of months, and has created a great blog, in addition to purchasing a free Google campaign with her AdDollars. She's also been a big help with an experiment we're doing with local television in her area. If you are in her neighborhood, keep an eye on the television (especially HGTV) over the next couple weeks so you see her television ad we helped create for her.

Here's what Denise had to say about MerchantCircle:

"When I started working with MerchantCircle, I was impressed by the professional and courteous attention of their staff. I was easily able to locate businesses in my area, and forward them information on joining the group. Because of my response, I was awarded free advertising dollars with Google's Sponsored Links. Imagine my delight when searching in Google and finding my free ad from MerchantCircle! I was even spotted in my parking lot by another MerchantCircle customer who joined the site! I loved getting my free commercial and can't wait for it to air next week. Every business who wants to get exposure on the web should hook up with MerchantCircle. It's like an internet Chamber of Commerce."

Thanks, Denise. We'll keep you posted on the results of our tests. Meanwhile, if you haven't done it yet, try creating a free Google AdWords campaign, and see for yourself how many new customers you get.

Customer Feedback

It amazes me how much our customers want to participate and help grow MerchantCircle. I've already spoken to a great majority of our clients and the effort to help make MerchantCircle even better is phenomenal. I love seeing the feedback come in and appreciate the time our merchants are giving.

I've heard a number of different things and just wanted to touch on a few of the specifics.
Bill over at RankMagic along with John at MerchantID and Julie at Celebrant all mentioned ways to improve our category system. Their input was great and because of them we now support multiple categories which a business can use to classify themselves in our directory.

Heather of Staging Places offered some ideas on creating a better newsletter. We've touched it up since then and have gotten some great responses.

Debbie over at Annabelle's Bakery, Scott at 3rd Planet Photography, and Nathan at Groundswell Media Productions all just recently gave us some insight on a few future high end ideas. They offer great promise and are definitely being looked into.

Thanks for all the great feedback guys and I hope to hear more as we continue on. I'd also love to hear from the many other customers we have, so if you have any ideas you're willing to share leave a comment and I'll follow up with you ASAP.

Let's make MerchantCircle the best we can! Hope to hear from you soon.

Ryan Osilla

Get your point of view out there, Walmart is.

One of the basic ideas that MerchantCircle is being built on was bringing the capabilities of the biggest companies to the small merchant. We want to bring the local internet to the small merchant so they can put it to use. One small part of this was to bring the ability to get your point of view out to the local community via blogging and newsletters.

Well it ends up that the mother of all Massive Retailers, Walmart, has been using blogging to get their point of view out to the local community. They may not really be doing it in a fair way , as is pointed out in the New York Times, but they are doing it.

A couple of our merchants are starting to see the impact of their own activities to share their story. Here are two of our favorite blogs. Because of the way these blogs are picked up by the major search engines like Google and Yahoo, this offers you a great way to not only share your story but to have it heard by your local community.

Denise Broesler's blog
RE/MAX Prestige realtor
Cranford, NJ

Travel 2 the Caribbean's blog
Travel agents
Valparaiso, IN

Thanks,
Ben

Want a television ad for your business?

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who responded. We have our first participant for this trial, and we'll keep you posted on the results and the experience. Stay tuned!

------------------------

We're running a small promotion right now. For the first merchant who sees this, and invites five people to sign-up for MerchantCircle, and gets at least ONE of them to join, we'll give you a free television ad in your local market for your local business.

The ads are professionally done, and feature your core business contact information. However, we don't have ads for all types of businesses. So if you win, and we don't have the right ad for you, or can't get airtime in your local market, we'll give you a free month's worth of Google advertising instead.

For example, we DO have television ads for the following types of business (yes, it's an interesting mix) among a bunch of others:
* Real Estate agents
* Mortgage brokers
* DJs
* Music teachers
* Dance teachers
* Car dealers
* Restaurants
* Coffee shops
* Travel agents
* and a bunch of other businesses

This is partially a test for us, so we'd love your feedback. Again, it's simple, just send at least five invitations, and then get at least one of them to signup. Once you've done this, just drop us an email with the name of your business, and we'll contact you to set up the details.

Thanks,

Mark

Latest MerchantCircle release notes!

Many a new thing available for our merchants and their customers with the latest release from MerchantCircle!

We've taken a note from the Postal Service over the last few days with our latest release. You know, that whole thing about through sleet and hail. It's been white squall-like conditions out here with the freakish weather, lately, but we still managed to get you the latest great serving of MerchantCircle.

Here are a few of the highlights:

1) Newsletters Part 2: Email Delivery
As promised just one short month ago, we now provide the ability for you to email your newsletter to all of your customers. Using the same wizard that let's you publish the newsletter to the web, you can now enter in the email addresses of your customers to send an email version of the newsletter. If you already have your email addresses in your address book in Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo, Google or Plaxo, we've included the ability to import that information easily into our newsletter wizard.

Most other companies charge upwards of hundreds of dollars for this service. We're giving it to you for next to nothing: just 50 AdDollars, which you can earn by sending just a few invitations. How do you like them apples?

2) Category Chooser
Thanks to everyone who wrote us last month about how much they loved the new business categories for our listings. Many of you asked if we could give you the ability to add more categories, or change categories, associated with your business. We heard you, and this month, we've now given you the ability to associate your business with up to four categories, and make any of the corrections you need to make. This will make it even easier for more customers to find you!

3) Activity Reports
You've heard us talk about all the customers who are visiting your site. Well, don't just take our word for it. Look for yourself! Now, on ALL business listings, we're showing the number of potential customers who have visited your business, requested a deal or rated your business over the last 30 days. Additionally, we show the number of outstanding invitations for your business to connect, and the number of times Google and Yahoo search engine spiders have come crawling on your site.

That last bit is actually very important. If you see low, or no numbers from Google or Yahoo, this may mean they're not seeing your site, and not putting it into the search engine. That's bad news when customers do a search, and don't find you there. The best way to fix that issue? Create some local content! Write a blog entry, upload a picture, create a newsletter, or create an ad. Google and Yahoo like it when you have unique new content, which will make your business stand out in their search results.

4) Customized Local News
You told us you wanted more control over the news on the bottom of your listing, and we've now provided you even more options! You can customize the news on your listing, and choose different types of news. Maybe you're a realtor and want local economic or real estate news. Maybe you're a sports pub and want sports stories, or entertainment fodder. Maybe you think your customers love those oddball stories. Choose whatever mix of news you want, and help make your listing more relevant to your business.

5) Help Connect Your Neighborhood!
Most of you invite a lot of your local businesses by inputting their email addresses. But sometimes you don't have that email address handy, or can't remember it. In that case, we're unable to send the invitation out until we get the address. Many of your neighbors have these addresses, and now we're tapping into your community to help get those invitations out, and you can do the same thing (and earn free AdDollars for being a good citizen!). Just login to MerchantCircle, and on the dashboard, you'll see a local business listed where we're missing their address. If you have that information, fill it in, and we'll help your neighbors get connected.

6) Pretty emails :)
We've cleaned up all of our emails, and are now sending better looking ones that should make it even easier to help you get connected with customers, and for them to reach you. Lots of changes here, so keep an eye out for those invitations.

7) Cleaned-up Coupons
Coupons look better than ever, so why don't you create a new one today, and help your customers get in touch with you?

Handful of other small changes, but obviously a lot of improvements. And even more are coming, so check them out!

By the way, have you created a Google campaign yet? Quite a few of our customers have, and are seeing a lot more local customer leads! Stay tuned for some testimonials, but in the meantime, give it a shot! It costs just a few AdDollars, and is an easy way to get more customers!

Thanks for being part of the MerchantCircle community!

Mark