Why You Should Reveal SEO Secrets To Clients

Training: The In-House SEO/SEM Marketer’s Trump Card

A recent Forrester research report, US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2007 to 2012, concludes that all marketing will become interactive over the next five years, with no single channel dominating the scene.

We’ve seen some evidence of erosion in the ad spend for traditional media this year, as the latest TNS Media Intelligence report shows a decline in U.S. ad spend for newspapers, radio, and broadcast TV. However, Internet spending increased 17.7 percent to $5.52 billion over the first six months of this year. This supports Forrester’s contention of the shift toward interactive advertising.

Forrester predicts the interactive marketing spend will increase to $61 billion by 2012, and that interactive marketing, coupled with its technological advances, will drive the customer-centric model, demanding integration of all marketing efforts to achieve optimum results with less emphasis on media buying.

Interactive marketing drives growth

What does this have to do with in-house SEM training? Forrester believes four interactive marketing areas will drive major growth: search marketing, online video ads, social media, and mobile marketing—all of which require serious attention and aptitude for search marketing and optimization skills.

Yet, our interactive industry is still young, and we don’t have a lot of trained personnel to provide the skills needed to fuel this growth. With the barrier between traditional and interactive marketing dissolving, Forrester predicts a 27 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the interactive marketing spend over the next five years. Currently, interactive marketing accounts for 8 percent of all ad spending, and this will increase to 18 percent of total ad budgets in five years. Search marketing is slated to triple in five years. The search category is increasing at 26 percent CAGR and will reach $25 billion by 2012 (Forrester Research).

In-house versus outsource

The question of whether it’s best to outsource search search marketing or bring it in-house has created ambivalence for years, and is currently a topic covered in many industry conference sessions. Research shows at least two-thirds of U.S. businesses prefer to keep SEM in-house.

Reasons can vary, but basically, there are special challenges in executing SEO strategies, especially when it comes to integrating recommendations with other marketing and IT activities among multiple divisions. When it comes to paid search, different departments or divisions can be targeting the same or similar terms, resulting in these units competing against each other for keywords when there is no centralization. The trend is definitely toward in-house SEM, and the headhunters have their jobs cut out for them.

The challenge of in-house search marketing

One of the most difficult challenges marketers face with in-house search marketing is the management, organization, and training of personnel. Very likely, in-house training for SEO, PPC, developers, graphic designers, copywriters, and brand managers will be the norm in the next couple of years, if not sooner. Businesses continue to develop in-house search departments, but if they proceed without SEM/SEO training, they might as well begin their dissolution process in 2008 because their competitors have been and will continue to ramp-up in search knowledge transfer.

Search Marketing: To illustrate the effectiveness of in-house training, I can report that by implementing SEO best practices in-house training in January 2007, a national retailer increased year-over-year, non-brand keyword organic revenue 258 percent in Q1 and Q2 (the company chooses to remain anonymous). Their success is only one of many in-house training success stories. Smart firms will put SEO best practices in-house training on their to-do list today.

Online Video: Increasing consumer adoption of online video will result in a dramatic 72 percent increase in online video ad spending to $7.1 billion by 2012. Forrester Research states, “More customer-centric online video applications will increase the medium’s appeal for consumers and marketers.”

To quote The Weather Channel’s search marketing manager Derek Fulford, “…applying SEO basics to your video content will put you ahead of the curve.” Derek has done an excellent job of improving his company’s web site organic search results and raised its Quality Score for Paid Search in the process by complementing video with text-based content.

SEO video best practices being developed today should be on your list for training sessions as soon as possible. Derek was able to revise The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth strategy to increase the average daily number of video views to 275 percent.

Social Media: As one of interactive’s emerging channels, social media will reach $10 billion in ad spending by 2012. Mainstream adoption will drive spending in social media, mobile marketing, game marketing, widgets, podcasts, and RSS. The social media ad spend alone will reach $6.9 billion (Forrester Research).

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is known to have significant impacts alongside best practice SEO/SEM. As CondéNet Director of Marketing Sandor Marik said recently, “SEO best practice just gets you in the game… involvement is needed on all levels. Traditional Web publishers are challenged as target audiences are drawn to blogs and social networking sites. While professional quality content does present unique value, publishers have to employ the tools and practices of the ‘long tail’ to stay visible in the ever-increasing volume of Web content.”

Social media sites also tend to generate a large number of links that vary in quality (in terms of anchor text), while niche blogs tend to provide paid text ads and contextual links with high quality anchor text pointing to specific category and sub-category pages.

The Social Media Marketing best practices being developed today should be on your list for training sessions immediately. The natural link building power we’ve witnessed so far continues to be remarkable.

Mobile: Mobile marketing will reach $2.8 billion by 2012. As consumers become increasingly dependent on personal computing handsets, they’ll start handling more transactions on their mobile devices (Forrester Research).

Currently there are 2.8 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, and 233 million were documented in the U.S. in 2006. High penetration of devices that receive input anywhere-anytime provide 5 percent CTR, target specific audiences, have the ability to build customer databases, and generate buzz, a few of the many reasons to be prepared for this next wave.

In-house training on executing mobile marketing content sponsorships, location-specific targeting, and opt-in SMS campaigns should be on your list for training sessions now. Mobile is about interaction, trust, pull, targeting, relevancy, opportunity, and integration with media; it has unquestionably rolled out.

In the face of these challenges, your best response is to be proactive with your basic and advanced in-house SEM/SEO training objectives. Get help now or prepare yourself for mediocre results. I don’t mean to alarm; however, one of my core values is to empower clients. I like to provide my expert opinion based on the best information that can help marketers make informed decisions—the power of “the agency recommends.” And there you have it .

Training: Heart & Soul Of In-House SEO/SEM

I must admit, I wasn’t very perceptive when I received my first in-house SEO prospect call back in 2000. The caller recognized the value of his organic search results and the business need for integrating SEO functionality internally. I did not. That’s because in those days, I thought it made much more sense to outsource.

Rewind to salad days

We were green in those days. As Shakespeare once said, “my salad days,/When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…” In the late 1990s, we were at the height of the cloaking controversy; white and black hat didn’t exist yet. We didn’t have any proven guidelines for natural search optimization in those days, and all practitioners were going in different directions; many were shooting from the hip.

Maybe I blew it when I told the caller, “You’ve got to be kidding…salaries and expenses to operate an in-house team will cost you double compared to vendor service pricing…you’ll play catch-up for months and years.”

It seemed like good reasoning at the time. As optimization vendors and practitioners, we could produce volumes of redundant tasks across hundreds of clients and dozens of categories based on wins or losses from month to month. The search engine environment was unstable; we’d wake up one day (about every 45-60 days) to find all of our optimization work gone and no longer visible in the search engines. We’d change our method or script, and within a week, we’d be back up and running with great results. There was value in our vendor/client relationships, offering quick wins in a system of monitoring and adjustments as needed.

As natural search began to stabilize and brands continued flocking online, the high-demand for reliable, compliant SEO and improved natural search results grew. As this growth continued, several practitioners popped up under the radar in the reliable, compliant SEO space. Pretty soon, they weren’t under the radar any more, and eventually, most practitioners saw the value of wearing a white hat.

Fast forward to 2007

Today, we have ten years of tested and proven, reliable, and compliant SEO methodologies, documented and ready for transfer to online businesses. Although two-thirds of American businesses currently perform SEO tasks in-house, much of the knowledge base is in the hands of a few dozen experienced practitioners on the outside.

In today’s marketplace, it’s smart for mid-to-large company SEO/SEM in-house teams and managers to seek the most current, reliable information when it comes to improving natural search results on a daily basis. In fact, my big clients won’t let me publicize who they are for fear their competitors will follow suit. They know that SEO/SEM training puts them ahead of the game. Tapping into the resources of experienced practitioners willing to transfer SEO/SEM knowledge is both wise and valuable, especially when the in-house trainer brings in additional experts, adding to the buildup of resources and networking opportunities.

It’s all in the training

In case you’re not convinced that SEO/SEM training can give you an edge, the stats from MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Guide are telling:

• Outsourcing gets marketers an average 110% lift in overall site traffic
• In-house search marketers get a mere 75% overall traffic lift

I continue to advise CEOs and senior managers that the reason for this dismal statistic is the lack of reliable, compliant SEO training for in-house teams. It really doesn’t matter how much experience or lack of experience you have; we all continue to need training throughout our careers, and success is all about lifelong learning.

• According to Wikipedia, lifelong learning “is the concept that ‘It’s never too soon or too late for learning,’ a philosophy that has taken root in a whole host of different organizations.”
• According to WorldBank.org: “The latest knowledge and successful practices of planning and implementing education for lifelong learning suggest that lifelong learning is more than just education and training beyond formal schooling. A lifelong learning framework encompasses learning throughout the life cycle, from birth to grave and in different learning environments, formal, non-formal and informal.”
• Terence Burton, president of The Center for Excellence in Operations, wrote an article still worth reading in Intelligent Manufacturing, July 1995, titled: Are You Afraid of Change?

Juliette Love, author and motivational speaker, said it best: “You are only as good as the latest information and your ability to adapt to it.” That is especially true, and remarkably so, for most of us in SEO/SEM.

In-house SEO/SEM teams have much to gain by reaching outside their scope of influence to find additional input that will improve their day-to-day activities. It’s as simple as that.

The Pros And Cons Of Mobile Marketing

Managing a mobile marketing campaign can be a challenge because there are many different entities contributing to a successful campaign. At minimum, we have the carriers, advertisers, and consumers. But in the background, we have third-party technology companies like Enpocket, ThirdScreen and Quattro; not to mention industry organizations like The Mobile Marketing Association, the CTIA Wireless Association, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which provide resources and guidelines for setting the standards to help move the industry forward.

This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search Engine Land, a special look at local search marketing issues in the run-up to our SMX Local & Mobile conference next month.

While local search marketing is well established, local-mobile search marketing is barely getting started. Marketers will spend $3 billion worldwide on mobile ads this year (ABI Research, April 2007), with spending expected to reach $11.35 billion by 2011 (Informa Telecoms & Media) as more users start surfing the web on mobile phones.

The number of worldwide mobile phone users is expected to grow from 2 billion in 2005 to approximately 3.3 billion in 2010. Currently, there are over 2.8 billion mobile phone subscribers. In the U.S. alone, we had 233 million subscribers at year-end 2006, which is over 76 percent of the population.

Mobile marketing has the potential be the next big thing in interactive marketing. As Greg Sterling stated earlier on SEL, “We are on the cusp of a new mobile era.” However, there are many obstacles to overcome. Below are some issues for consideration when planning a campaign.

Pros and cons of mobile marketing

Pros:

• High penetration of devices with twice as many cell phones as PCs.
• Web searches on mobile devices will eventually exceed searches on PCs.
• Access to many international consumers who can’t afford PCs
• Mobile phones can receive input anywhere-anytime, enabling location-specific and behavioral targeting for local businesses.
• A cell phone is a very personal device that people take with them wherever they go, making it easy for marketers to develop a relationship with customers through this medium.
• Carriers have customer data and location information potentially available for targeting.
• Personalization, immediacy, and interactivity of mobile ads encourage response by consumers on the go.
• Preliminary data show good response rates for mobile campaigns (5% click rates vs. 1% for conventional web ads).
• New tool for brands and advertisers to reach new customers and target specific audiences.
• Smartphones and iPhone to enhance mobile surfing, promoting mobile marketing success.
• Messages sent to a mobile phone are more likely to be read than email sent to a PC, which can get caught in the spam filter.
• Mobile marketing campaigns are highly targeted and are opt-in, making them more effective than other forms of advertising.
• Mobile marketing can help build a customer database. Once customers opt in to receive an ad, you can use the information for loyalty marketing and customer retention.
• Mobile marketing can help generate buzz about your products/services because your offers will reach consumers while they are actively shopping, socializing, and making buying decisions.

Cons:

• Current WAP technology inadequate, discouraging web searching and surfing.
• General intolerance of advertising messages on a personal device.
• Current carrier-imposed “walled garden” approach prevents unfettered mobile web access.
• Adaptation of content and messages to the mobile web results in poor user experience.
• Scarcity of mobile web sites (only 8% of 1,000 top U.S. brands offer a mobile site).
• Current low usage of WAP-based mobile search doesn’t support investment in creating mobile sites because traffic volumes are low except on search portals and other high-volume sites.
• Trial and error period required for mobile marketers to learn how to succeed in mobile marketing, which differs from the traditional web marketing.
• Advertisers are wary of consumer privacy issues.
• FCC yet to rule on limiting use and release of customer data, including location information.
• In April, FCC released order requiring mobile marketers to obtain express consent from customers before carriers can release data and to make it easy for customers to opt out.
• Mobile marketing is fragmented and complex because of many different handsets and carriers, different types of functionality, and different preloaded apps (i.e. Google Maps on iPhone).
• Currently, reach is low because consumption of mobile content is small (10% of subscribers), and penetration of 3G devices is still low in most countries.
• Establishment of reliable measurement and metrics for advertisers to measure mobile ad effectiveness is needed.

There is much more to know about managing mobile marketing campaigns besides the pros and cons. You’ll want to know what types of campaigns work best, how to target your audience, and the most important factors leading to campaign success. To learn more, consider attending SMX Local & Mobile 2007. I’ll be speaking and will elaborate on these topics. Hope to see you there.

Launching Organic Analytics & Buzz Monitoring In-House

In previous articles, we covered Structuring an In-House Team and Creating the Search Engine Marketing Needs Assessment Report. So now your in-house search team is in place and the search department has gained insight into the key performance indicators (KPIs) they are responsible for influencing, as well as the resources available to accomplish search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SMM) objectives. After establishing these fundamental requirements, the in-house team and trainer will need to prove that SEO and SMM are driving an increase in the previously established goals and metrics. Two powerful strategies can help demonstrate that search and social media are providing value to the organization: natural search analytics and buzz monitoring.

The evolution of organic measurement

Traditional search measurement involves simply monitoring rankings for improvement. Ranking improvements are still a nice indicator as long as you have selected the right keywords, but search analytics has evolved to include more sophisticated metrics. Depending on the type of site (i.e. content/ad-oriented, lead generation, or e-commerce), you will want to measure many other data points, including visitor demographics, visitor engagement, average click-depth, organic landing page bounce rate, organic (brand and non-brand) traffic, and organic (brand and non-brand) KPI conversions. Furthermore, in the rapidly-emerging social media sphere, you better be measuring the buzz that your company and brand have created (and hopefully have actively maintained) within the online community surrounding your brand, industry, and target market.

Three steps to launch SEO analytics in-house

Defining the metrics to be measured is one thing, but getting access to accurate and meaningful data provides a separate set of challenges. Outlined below are three steps that will help your in-house team put a leash on organic analytics data.

1. Align your resources. Refer back to the SEMNAR Discovery Brief and determine which departments and people are responsible for gathering web analytics data. Does the search team have buy-in from those people? Scenarios often exist where multiple agencies or internal departments handle web analytics or drain the resources of the analytics team. As such, a compelling argument for natural search analytics must be made to the right people. You may even need to ask an executive evangelist to apply pressure on the analytics team or expand the team’s size.

2. Assess maturity and audit accuracy. Once buy-in is established, find out how long analytics have been in place. Life will be a lot easier if analytics software has been installed and tracking properly for more than a year. Moreover, if analytics is not currently set up in an appropriate way, then an expert consultant should be brought in to straighten things out ASAP. As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” There is nothing worse than making decisions based on faulty data.

3. Manage expectations. If analytics are not in place or were set up improperly, then you will need to start from scratch and look at monthly increases for the time being. If this is the case, expectations must be managed because the seasonality of search can create false impressions about the success or failure of SEO in the short-term. The executives receiving search marketing reports need to understand that the true lift created by SEO cannot be measured unless there is more than one year of data. And even then, SEO tactics can take 90 days or more to affect traffic and rankings. However, armed with tools like the Discovery Brief and Google Trends, you may be able to make assumptions about seasonality and estimate lift.

Making the case for buzz monitoring

When it comes to buzz monitoring, it often takes more than the Search Engine Marketing Needs Assessment Report (SEMNAR) to get the ball rolling. In many cases, companies have operated successfully on the web for years without giving a second thought to the online conversations that surround their company and industry. Why should they care now? You should make the case that if the company expects to create a powerful and sustainable presence in the search engines and on the web in general, resources will have to be dedicated to buzz monitoring and active online engagement.

As blogs, social news sites, and social networking sites continue to steal mindshare and search engine shelf-space from conventional web publishers, traditional opinion-makers and venues are losing their impact on web audiences. Their influence is being siphoned off by blogs and social sites in the form of the long tail. Most in-house public relations and marketing departments are failing to adapt and extend their tactics to meet the challenges of this new paradigm. Since these emerging mediums represent organic traffic and often affect search engine rankings, the search team is usually the best department to engage the online community and monitor the company’s influence on relevant conversations.

The argument here is not that the in-house search team should be solely responsible for creating buzz, but that the search department should be the command center for monitoring and disseminating information about online conversations which are company-related, industry-related, and keyword-related non-brand.

Aggregate and summarize

While the search team should use granular analyses of data to closely measure and tweak SEO and SMM tactics, the company executives can’t be bothered with such details. They need a high-level overview of trends and an executive summary of strategy recommendations. The best way to put things into perspective for executives is to compare SEO and SMM to other web-based and offline strategies. The objective is to show executives that the search department is affecting the company’s business goals in a positive way and providing a solid return on investment. If you can establish this in the mind of key decision-makers, then you will be able to expand the influence of the search department and push for more budget in the next quarter.

Needs Assessment: Key 1st Step For Successful Search Marketing

My last article, How To Structure an In-House SEO Team, stated that once business goals and KPIs are established, in-house marketers must conduct a needs assessment for both the in-house search team and the Web site. Your Search Engine Marketing Needs Assessment Report (SEMNAR) is the anchor for future in-house search projects, specifying the resources needed to accomplish your search marketing goals. Before getting into the details of the SEMNAR, I want to touch on the importance of training in professional services and how the Search Marketing NAR facilitates training.

The role of training in professional services

Every professional practitioner receives ongoing training during his or her career. The American Society for Training and Development estimates that U.S. organizations spend $109.25 billion on employee learning and development annually, approximately $29.50 billion of which is spent on external services. Professional training is especially common in the service sectors such as real estate, medicine, public safety, transportation, etc. It’s no coincidence that the professionals who embrace training and focus on developing their strengths are the top performers year after year. Those who are complacent about education and training tend to fall behind and often become cynical or stale in their day-to-day activities.

In marketing, and in particular, organic search engine marketing (SEO), there is a clear need for best-of-breed, top-gun style training if companies expect their in-house staff to exhibit the skills required to be number one in their industry and category within major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live.

In-house search engine marketers and managers are well advised to seek additional training on a month-to-month basis if they expect to surpass their competitors. As an in-house train-the-trainer, I’ve seen first hand the benefits of well-trained staff performance, and recall several instances where the big brands receiving this type of in-house training reaped major financial benefits by effectively competing and expanding their markets within the natural SERPs. I’ve also witnessed the challenges for companies that have delayed in-house SEO training, and the ramp-up time required to catch up in competitive markets where it can take years to make up for lost time.

The type of training I’m referring to is not typical classroom training of lecturing or memorizing—teams and managers can do that on their own time. What I am referring to is dynamic brainstorming, problem solving, and utilizing a network of search engine marketing experts throughout the United States. This type of training is focused on very specific internal problem-solving sessions, relevant to business goals and objectives. Nothing about this type of training is generic or pre-packaged. It’s all spontaneous, and the client gets real answers and solutions to very real and difficult problems in natural search.

The purpose of the NAR

It is common practice within many professions to perform an assessment before embarking on any particular path, action, or tactical behavior.

In professional municipal fire services, for example, fire departments conduct need assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses in order to be better prepared as first responders to the daily occurrence of unfortunate, yet inevitable, circumstances. A Needs Assessment Report (NAR) is a compilation of identified needs and recommendations providing a critical path to success, no matter what the objective is or how large and complex the issue might be. The result of a NAR for a search marketing in-house staff often migrates to triage-like behavior with a focus on quick wins as well as a strategy for long-term success.

As practitioners within the search engine marketing community, we are, to some degree, very similar to a fire department. We take a proactive approach in preparing for inevitable problems, and we respond appropriately to improve a given situation. The only difference is that our actions are generally not considered life threatening, although some business owners who rely on the Web as their life-blood for revenue or lead generation may disagree. Many businesses become extremely concerned when search engine marketing (both paid and organic) is not operating efficiently at full capacity.

Given that you have your CEO’s support, a needs assessment report is the starting point for in-house training and natural search implementation. The SEMNAR revolves around your business structure, the existing organization, specific staff members, and your overall business goals.

Like any good head-to-toe assessment, it begins with pre-planning and a systematic, expert review of every part of your organization as it relates to organic and paid search team structure, the tools used, your Web development plans, network operations, measurement and analytics, graphic design, copywriting, branding, and the competitive landscape.

The blueprint for your in-house search engine marketing team

The SEMNAR will provide a blueprint for your in-house paid and organic SEM teams. The report will identify your company’s resources and its strengths and weaknesses related to your search marketing objectives.

The intention of the SEMNAR process is to document a critical path for making intelligent decisions for building your in-house paid and organic search teams. Another benefit of the report is the creation of an organic SEO plan and efficient deployment of best practice search tactics within your company’s existing infrastructure. The SEMNAR will provide your search team, C-level executives, and everyone in the company, with a cornerstone document for company short- and long-term goals, training objectives, business priorities, action plans, and accountability related to all search engine marketing activities.

It would be ideal to have the SEMNAR performed by an outside team of in-house search engine marketing experts, in conjunction with a company project manager who can objectively assess your company’s search marketing needs. By identifying the project needs and the means to accomplish them, you can avoid potential in-house turf battles that might arise between developers, marketers, brand managers, and search team members.

Search always works best when the CEO mandates a needs assessment with top-down support. This is especially true when it comes to organic SEO, which requires support and personnel resources from multiple functions within the company and affects every aspect of your Web site.

The discovery brief

The best way to kick-off the SEMNAR is with a Discovery Brief. This document is designed to provide your outside team of search experts with a clear understanding of the company’s:

• Background (target market and competitive advantages)
• Objectives and corresponding KPIs
• Organizational structure and internal resources
• Web site optimization and promotion strategies and tactics (past and current)

If you would like an example Discovery Brief please contact me directly.

As you can imagine, preparing the SEMNAR takes time. But it’s time well spent as it makes the job easier for everyone; the in-house team, other departments and the outside trainers.

Pay-per-Call to Enhance Local Search

The promise of Local Search is yet to flower. But the pay-per-call search advertising solution may be just what the doctor ordered.

The pay-per-call advertising model is designed for small and local businesses as well as firms that sell a “high-touch” product or service that can benefit from personal contact. Advertisers bid for phone call leads starting at $2.00 and up. Services offer geographic targeting and provide a dedicated toll-free number in the text ad, which is also used for tracking and billing. Once dialed, the phone rings through to the business’ regular phone line. The service also provides a business-information landing page for companies that do not have a website.

Easier Than Pay-per-Click

Pay-per-call is a fairly simple solution compared to the complexity of pay-per-click. Many small merchants have not been able to use pay-per-click advertising, either because they don’t have a website or because the pay-per-click bid management tools are just too much to handle. With pay-per-call, these merchants can now tap into the power of the Internet and receive targeted phone leads from customers in their area.

Pay-per-call is in a position to compete with pay-per-click because of broadband penetration and the increase in local searches. Additionally, the 15 to 40 percent click fraud rate makes pay-per-click advertising less attractive. Many small businesses simply prefer telephone to online leads because they are better able to engage prospects for conversion. On the customer side, it’s natural to pick up the phone for local shopping. This combination of factors will fuel pay-per-call adoption.

As a result, pay-per-call service providers are working hard to increase distribution partners. This would expand advertiser exposure and spur proliferation of pay-per-call advertising solutions for local merchants and small businesses.

What’s the Buzz?

A forum post on SearchEngineWatch says that Yahoo! is testing Ingenio’s pay-per-call platform. As reported by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal, an SEW forum member noticed some Ingenio pay-per-call ads on Yahoo! and then called Ingenio to verify. An anonymous source confirmed that Yahoo! is testing the technology.

A pay-per-call solution would help Yahoo! Local broaden its appeal. Conversely, a partnership with the #2 search engine would be a winner for Ingenio. Distribution partners like Yahoo! already have ready-to-buy consumers who will now be able to connect with thousands of pay-per-call advertisers.

While fairly new, the pay-per-call search platform is rapidly gaining momentum. Ingenio just expanded its distribution network to include Local.com in addition to current partners AOL, go2 and Miva.

Verizon SuperPages launched its Pay For Calls service in October, leveraging the ads in local Verizon yellow pages directories. Verizon spokesperson Dana B. Russell states, “Our bid prices for PFC are the same or higher than industry standards. The percentage growth week over week is about 15 percent.”

InfoSpace just partnered with Jambo to offer a new pay-per-call lead-generation service. It’s too early for a report here. And you’ve all heard the rumors that eBay will offer pay-per-call with Skype.

The new local search technology from Interchange (used by Local.com) enables consumers to find local businesses, products, and services quickly and easily. Powered by proprietary and local-web indexing technology, it is designed to deliver highly relevant local-search results to consumers.

The Comeback Kid

With all the speculation on what Ebay might do with its acquisition of Skype, it is quite likely that pay-per-call online advertising could gain national acceptance very quickly. This makes the good old-fashioned telephone the comeback kid. Regardless of the technology approach ? VoIP, cell or land phone ? the telephone is the new requisite tool for connecting online buyers and sellers.

Since consumers use the Internet as their primary access point for local information, advertisers can now combine web and phone for incoming leads. Pay-per-call is ideal for the local entrepreneur who relies on the phone for customer conversions. Even the mom and pops can tap into the increasing number of consumers searching online for local products and services as well.

Are Conversion Rates Worthwhile?

Ingenio PR Manager Valerie Garing Combs said, “Conversion rates of 1 in 3 incoming leads is consistent with feedback from Ingenio advertisers in several business categories such as florists and cellular providers. Overall, feedback from our advertisers, most of whom have complex sales, is that pay-per-call phone leads convert, on average, 3-5 times better than clicks.”

What’s the Price Range?

Here, Combs said, “It entirely depends on the category. The median cost across our platform is between $8-$10. But there are hundreds of categories still bidding at the floor price of $2 per call.

Customer Profile

What business categories benefit most from pay-per-call? Ingenio reports activity in categories like high-end travel, cable/satellite TV, financial services and insurance. Verizon reports mortgages, real estate, insurance, home improvement, and attorneys as top categories.

The Proof Is in the Pudding

Here’s an Ingenio case study that shows a happy camper with pay-per-call.

Client: Judson Bradley, founder and owner of family-owned and operated Broad Street Flowers, a national floral service headquartered in Atlanta, GA. Broad Street serves the U.S. with a network of 45,000 local florists spread across the country. Though Broad Street has national reach, the company’s highly personalized approach has enabled it to successfully carve out a niche from well-known brands like 1-800 Flowers. In fact, Broad Street’s personal touch helped it crack the “Top 50″ list of national florists within its first year of operation.

Why Ingenio pay-per-call? Bradley advertises 100 percent online, with the bulk of his budget going to Internet Yellow Pages — an avenue that works well with Broad Street’s multiple websites that generate a significant portion of sales from online orders. Pay-per-click didn’t work because the keyword bidding/management process was difficult and had no clear way to track ROI. On days when his click ad would run, sales would increase incrementally (he might make $100 more than usual) but this didn’t justify the $1,000 monthly spend for the click campaign.

Pay-per-call seemed like a natural fit, given the fact that, in his business, calls are golden. He says, “What really appealed to me about pay-per-call is that very, very few customers call a florist when they are not ready to purchase — the promise of the incredibly high conversion rates is what really piqued my interest.”

Campaign Results: So far, that promise seems to be paying off. Bradley estimates he is able to convert 1 in 3 Ingenio calls — cutting his spend on customer acquisition by 25 percent. With an average sale of $72, the ROI is clear.

The Revenue Picture

What kind of revenue can providers expect from pay-per-call? As a privately held company, Ingenio is not required to state revenues. However, Kelsey Group estimated that Ingenio pay-per-call gross revenues could reach between $1.4 billion and $4 billion by 2009. Borrell Associates reported that the local online advertising spend grew to $2.7 billion in 2004, a 28 percent increase over 2003.

The potential for future growth is there. According to Kelsey Group, U.S. businesses spend $90 billion annually on local advertising, mostly in traditional media. The trend in advertising spending these days is to shift money from traditional to online marketing budgets, with less radio, TV and print, and more online media. With its effectiveness and excellent ROI, I suspect search marketing will get its fair share.