Search That Works

I believe that if a business is e-commerce ready, there is a lot that can be done for them. The problem in my opinion is the total lack of understanding that many of them may not be, short of providing a Website with a catalog and maybe a map.

When Absolute Adventures started advertising online, CEO Carissa Zenorini found that her search engine ads were working a little too well. Her three-employee San Francisco company organizes outdoor activities and corporate events, and most of its customers come from California’s Bay Area. Yet Web surfers from Ohio, Florida, and beyond would sometimes click on her company’s ads. “We didn’t want people looking for adventure in Texas to click on our ads, because each click costs us money,” says Zenorini.

So in August, 2004, Zenorini signed up for Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search, which lets you target ads to a specific state, city, or even neighborhood. Now her ad pops up only when someone within 75 miles of San Francisco searches using the keywords she has chosen. She pays 10 cents to 99 cents per click, spending a total of about $3,000 a year.

The local approach is working. Absolute Adventure’s revenues doubled, to $400,000, in the 12 months ended in August, 2005. “Online advertising is the single most important contributing factor to our success,” says Zenorini. “We ask every client how they found us, and apart from repeat business, about 97% found us online.”

A growing number of small businesses are using local search. A November, 2005, survey by Boston’s Yankee Group found that more than 30% of businesses with 20 to 99 employees and 40% of those with 2 to 19 staffers were using local search engine advertising. Those numbers are expected to increase substantially this year. “Definitely more businesses, particularly service businesses, are using local search,” says Sanjeev Aggarwal, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “They know people aren’t looking in the Yellow Pages.” About 55% of consumers used a search engine to find information about a local business last year, up from 47% in 2003, according to Kelsey Group, a Princeton (N.J.) research company specializing in electronic media…. Source: Business Week

[tags]e-commerce,san francisco,absolute adventures,local sponsored search,bay area[/tags]