A Reckoning is Coming: Good Uses for Traditional Media

The post is a part of a series of blogs about traditional media’s data quality versus digital data.
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You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. 

local marketing

In this last part of this series I want to talk about the benefits of local media. Depending on the size of your market, local media will be around for a while or forever. (If you come from a really small market you might lose your newspaper like my hometown just did.) But print media will be in decline in the coming years but TV seems to be on the upswing. Jackson recently launched another local network. But how can you leverage these local mediums to your advantage?

Local Media Works great if:

1. You only sell locally. If your product or service is used nationwide, local marketing might not be a great idea. If your product is national there will be lots of and lots of markets to focus on and unless you are large enough to hire a national ad firm this will be an exhausting process. Local products and services go well with local media because of the local audience. While online ads might be great for targeting people locally who are currently looking for your product and local media can increase brand awareness.

2. Offer a specific deal. As covered in the first post, we should look skeptically at the data that local media outlets give us. They have no good way of measuring the eyes and ears that take in their content. But think of ways you can measure the effect of an ad. Can you make a specific offer for each campaign. Maybe you can create a second URL for people to go to for the promotion? Maybe you can activate a second phone line for a particular ad campaign? There are different ways to try and measure the ads that you are sending out.

3. Position as an expert. Local newspaper and radio can be great ways to position yourself as an expert in the community. This is a soft sell tactic. Use their medium to broadcast free knowledge to the public to help them realize that you know what you are talking about. While not measurable it is a great marketing technique and I would bet more effective than regular ads(without a specific offer).

4. Have lots of money: If you have money to spend local advertisers can use as much of it as you want. One of the keys with local ads is repetition. Repetition takes time and money. If you are going to run a traditional campaign plan spend enough to make effective.

 

If you want to talk about your marketing plan. Send me an email: kevin@kadelseberger.com

Update Yahoo Local – A How-To

I had a client recently who found that their map listing on Yahoo Local was incorrect. They had tried and had been unable to find how to update Yahoo Local. I then took up the quest to change their Yahoo listing and also found it to be difficult. I wanted to show how to make that change and talk about why it is so hard to change:

1. Using Yahoo search: Look up your business.

2. Look for the local listing, which should look like a map listing.

3. Click the text that says: Is this your business? Verify your listing

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 11.02.38 AM

 

So far so good. But here is where it goes downhill:

You will now be taken to a page that instantly aggregates almost all major (and some minor) directories online to match up the contact information for your business. This showed about 36 directories in all and all the info shown about your business. It also highlights the problems with each listing.

This tool is powered by Yext. Yext is a tool that I was told about by a fellow CO Member Austin (@NotReallyAustin) a few weeks ago. Yext allows you to update all of your online listings at the same time. This could be a very useful tool for marketers and businesses in two ways: 1. It shows you were your listings are incorrect (for free!) and 2.) if you have more money than time (established business or if you do not have an intern), you can pay Yext to update all your listings at once. Yext would be a great tool for creating brand consistency over all the different channels people might be looking for you. Yext could be a good tool, but this article is about Yahoo.  Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 11.04.02 AM

Yahoo really really really wants you to use Yahoo Localworks.  Localworks is Yahoo branded version of Yext. Yext has a small icon at the bottom of the page indicating that the Localworks is powered by Yext. Most of us are not going to want to pay to update a Yahoo Listing though!

Now its time to pick up with step 4.

4. From here, click on the Local Marketing tab on the main navigation menu.

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 11.26.34 AM

 

 

5. On this page scroll down to “Try Local Basic Listing for free” this is two thirds the way down the page.

Clicking “Sign Up” will bring you to a prompt to fill in your business info. This will once again bring you to a screen with the Yahoo LocalWorks listing. They will once again ask you to buy something!

 

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 9.52.18 AM

6. Read this screen carefully and find the No Thanks! button.

It is next to the large brightly colored sign up now button on the top of the page. Now you will be able to go through some more routine steps to update your information.

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 9.53.24 AM

There are a few steps still like verifying your identity and things but from here its pretty typical. One last thing is they have to approve your changes which takes between 2-5 days. The last listing I changed has been pending for about 2 weeks now.

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