Local Search and PPC

Any local portals running PPC

[cyanweb]

I run a Paid Annual Inclusion system on our local portal network as the average joe business owner already understands the annual fee approach = anything remotely complex in online advertising makes most "non experienced" SME's avoid...

Just wondering if any local portal webmasters are running local PPC listings and how is it going for them?

[jkwilson78]

I would be interested is this as well. I think local search is going ot be big once the kins are ironed out.

Might even have its own forum here one day.

[cyanweb]

Yes - would be good to have a forum on it's own for just "Local Portal WebMasters"

I've been doing local portals for 4 years now and there is definite value in Localised Marketing... if done correctly... we've been evolving and evaluating and adapting - while it's been "hand to mouth" the whole time - it's really starting to pick up... people need a REAL online alternative to Yellow Pages and City Search...

Also - global search engines are just too big and gluttonous, great for research - but not effective enough for local business...

With spammers subverting them and the link descriptions are usually crap garbled stuff... etc... quality will prevail for the local user in the long run - hopefully

[eWhisper]

We did an analysis study a while ago about local portals in some areas, advertising expenditures by category, etc.

After looking through all the numbers, we're currently in the process of building a trial local portal based around PPC. However, as the local business don't really know that much about PPC or net advertising, so we're going to be using a fixed bid system and then randomize each category as to who comes up first.

It doesn't make sense for a business that might get only 10-50 hits a month from such a portal to have to worry about logging into a cp and manually bidding. They have to log in once, supply business info, credit card, etc and then they can be done with it.

They are allowed to modify their ads at will to take advantage of any new specials or something they'd be running, but it's not necessary.

This site should be live within a month, so in 3-6 months, I'll be able to give details about the effectiveness our trial with such a portal - if you're really patient - long time to wait for an immediate question.

[cyanweb]

Will be interesting to read about the results. Do keep the post happening.

We are working the Paid Inclusion model at the moment - and it is doing well... PPC is still a mystery to the "average business owner" - and it seems only businesses that have advertising account managers or webmasters that buy advertising for clients are using PPC...

Marketing companies are working PPC as well - good for the ig boys - but the little guy still needs paid inclusion... any average business that gets 1 client off of a $99 listing should have made their money back...