I want to reference a post that I made a few years back titled, Putting Numbers into Perspective, in which I look very closely at the value of advertising from a Calgary Realtor perspective. Here is an excerpt making reference to the search volumes for Google and YellowPages.ca at that time:

While some of the skeptical business owners might say, “well, that’s not a lot”, most likely the top performers within the industry would look at those numbers and be very excited about what they represent.

The first thing to consider is this; the search numbers above represent qualified prospects. These are directive searches; somebody is specifically typing in those keywords or searches. I believe that if somebody logs on YellowPages.ca and does a category search for real estate agent in Calgary, they are most likely seeking a professional to provide those services. The same goes for Google, if a prospect types in Calgary realtor, clearly they are looking for a realtor in Calgary.

The point of the entire article is specifically around how top realtors look at numbers very differently to measure return on investment.

Second, I want to reference an article by Tom Tsinas titled “Google vs Yellow Pages” in which he provides some specific details on dissecting traffic numbers and examines very closely YellowPages.ca as part of the media mix. Here is an except from this posting:

Google vs Yellow Pages - This battle is a lot closer than most of you can imagine. I’m constantly hearing about how the Yellow Pages are dying and there’s no value in them. While most may say that I’m biased because of the number of years I spent in the industry, the same cannot be said for Google Analytics.

Google Analytics cannot lie, it has no biases and, thank goodness for the Yellow Pages, paints a much different picture than many so called experts. You just have to know what to look for.

Read the full article for the detailed analysis that Tom did on the numbers from one of his clients. This is a great article that is worth taking a read. I will use a couple of key measurements he spoke of, namely referral traffic, bounce rate and listing the multiple referral list for YellowPages.ca.

So what about the TheBraLady? Below are some stats from The Bra Lady, Custom Bras in Calgary. For disclosure sake, as many of my readers know, she is my mom and yes I do all of her online marketing in Calgary.

Let’s examine what Google Analytics is telling us about her stats. From January 1 to September 30 here is the traffic from different sources along with the bounce rate, the lower the number the better:

Google Organic - 1576 (bounce rate - 27.98%) - NOTE: this includes traffic from Google Search and Google Images as well as Google.com and Google.ca. Further discussion below about the local value of this traffic - which is about 50% of the number listed above.

YellowPages.ca - 495 (bounce rate - 21.02%)

Yahoo - 60 (bounce rate - 33.33%)

Microsoft Live - 56 (bounce rate - 37.50%)

NOTE: With Google Analytics, Google has done a very good job of pre-aggregating all their sources of traffic in the Google bucket, this would include traffic from Google.com and Google.ca and includes traffic from Google Search, Images, etc. My only complaint with Google Analytics, unlike log analysis, is the breakdown of traffic by time of day. In the case of The Bra Lady when I look at the log files, I see a very high percentage of traffic from Google coming after midnight, usually between 1am and 3am. If I correspond this to keywords, what I notice is that late at night, we are getting lots of “junk” traffic, people looking for pictures of women in lingerie, most coming from US or International based IP addresses. If I remove all the easy to identify “junk” traffic, I notice that the good traffic from Google drops by almost 50% in this particular case.

In the YellowPages.ca bucket was sources of traffic from the following sites which are all part of the network and these to be added together to get the true picture of traffic from this source. This is important to note when calculating return on investment to ensure that you have all the data.

YellowPages.ca Business Directory

CalgaryPlus.ca

Canada411.ca Phone Book

MyTelus Business Finder

SuperPages.ca - purchased by Yellow Pages Group in 2005

Sympatico MSN YellowPages.ca

YellowPages.ca Facebook Application

For her specific business, as you can see Google and YellowPages.ca are both very good drivers of traffic to her website. In terms of bounce rate, YellowPages.ca is showing as the strongest. So if we were only interested in the “Big Shiny Numbers” we might stop here, make our conclusions and call it a good day at the office.

The real question is which one is converting into sales? Although at this point I can’t get into specific financial conversion, I can tell you that the order of the top 2 from web traffic is opposite in terms of conversions to sales. This does not come as any surprise to us when we consider at what stage a user in their buying decision. People don’t go to YellowPages.ca to “surf”, they go their to conduct a specific local action, unlike search engines whose user motivation tends to be higher up in the purchase funnel.

Lastly, I would suggest that you take a look at another older post from January 1 of this year called - Word of Mouth Needs Support - A Deeper Look at Web Referral Traffic - in which I examine specific tactics for a small business to dig deeper with their customers to fully understand conversion of traffic so that a business owner can make business decisions not based on hype, but based on fact.

The bottom line decision for any local business is not who drives more traffic to their website, rather who drives more sales conversions.

I selected these as they all have iPhone compatible versions of their websites. Google Maps is a standard icon on the iPhone by default.

For this particular test I decided to focus on a popular generic category search (dentists in Toronto) and a very specific landmark search (restaurants by Eau Claire Market). For those of you who don’t know, Eau Claire Market is a popular destination located in downtown Calgary. I believe that landmarks would be important search criteria for mobile products.

In terms of ranking, I have decided not to rank the results. For the landmark search I indicated success or failure. You be the judge in terms of your personal preference. Please feel free to add a comment on your favorite or suggest other sites in Canada that have iPhone versions.

Let’s start with what happens when you bookmark the websites above and put them on your iPhone desktop.

From left to right:

Maps (Google) - this is default on your iPhone. One issue that I have is that Apple or Google have failed to customize this icon for regions - notice the US highway signage.

YellowPages.ca - In Canada, Yellow Pages(TM) is a registered trademark and when you bookmark you get the logo on your desktop.

411.ca- They have a unique icon and tell you 411 at the beginning of the text string. The ouch! at the end is a little weird though.

Canpages.ca - No custom icon, uses a screenshot that clearly tells the user nothing.

Let’s look at each property individually based on my two search queries.

First we try Google Maps - “dentists in Toronto” search on Map view.

The same search done via list view.

Here is the screenshot of the details of the business listing.

Finally we will conduct “restaurants by Eau Claire Market”. This search failed as the results are located in Toronto. Google did not recognize this landmark.

Second we try YellowPages.ca here is the screenshot for the “dentists in Toronto” search. NOTICE: with YellowPages.ca you also have the ability to switch to find a person in Canada using Canada411.ca.

Here are the results of this search.

Here is the details of a business listing

Finally we will conduct “restaurants by Eau Claire Market“. This search was a success, landmark was recognized.

Third we try 411.ca here is the screenshot for the “dentists in Toronto” search.

Here are the results of this search.

Here is the details of a business listing

Finally we will conduct “restaurants by Eau Claire Market”. This search failed as the results are located in Ontario. 411.ca did not recognize this landmark.

Fourth we try CanPages.ca here is the screenshot for the “dentists in Toronto” search.

Here are the results of this search.

Here is the details of a business listing

Finally we will conduct “restaurants by Eau Claire Market”. This search failed CanPages.ca did not recognize this landmark.

If you want to see another comparison - check out Taking a Look at Local Merchant Pages in Canada - a post from last December.

So what is the determining success in developing a facebook application? In the facebook world it really comes down to the number of installs of the application and more importantly the number of daily active users. At the bottom of this post, I will share some numbers on local search applications in facebook.

Before I get into small application numbers, I want to highlight a feature about the YellowPages.ca application - building your own lists to share with friends and then map your lists. This application allows a user to create lists for private, semi-public and public on pretty much any topic. Here are some public user created lists:

Favorite Restaurants in Calgary - Map List.
Favorite Sports Stores in Montreal - Map List.
Favorite Toronto Restaurants - Map List.
Great Restaurants in Port Perry - Map List.
Places to Eat in Ottawa - Map List.

Some interesting lists, including one for my favorite places to eat in Ottawa.

Back to numbers of successful application usage. I grabbed these numbers from Adonomics.com, which aggregates usage on facebook applications. Here are some stats regarding application usage on facebook. Numbers are as of today.

The most successful application, in terms of installs is SuperWall with just under 43M installs and a daily active usage of 2%.

Funwall has the most active users at 1.8M from a total install base of 36.5M and a daily active usage of 5%.

Scrabulous (now being sued by Hasbro) has 3.9M installs and daily active usage of 506K or 13%.

So what about local search applications? First, from an expectation perspective, they are not even close to the above numbers. Facebook is still, at its core, a platform of entertainment. However, it is interesting to see how some of the local search player applications fair-out:

Yell Socialiser (UK) - 500 installs, 2 daily active users (0%)
Praize’n'raze (CDN and US) - 950 installs, 57 daily active users (6%)
YellowPages.ca (CDN) - 667 installs, 40 daily active users (6%)
Local Picks (Global) - 1.1M installs, 3349 daily active users (0%)
Lolodex (US) - 2800 installs, 15 daily active users (0%)

Over the past number of months, I worked with the Praized Team on the data distribution and traffic agreements for Yellow Pages Group Canada. Many people kept asking me what Sebastien was up to (I use to work with Sebastien at Yellow Pages Group and he is one person with whom I regard very highly) but had to keep quite out of respect as well as contractual obligations.

Now that it is launched, what I think you are going to see two things; 1) a user focused platform that I would bet is going to be very successful and 2) a model that demonstrates how publishers and new ventures can work together. For the start-ups they get the necessary data to ensure they can fully deploy their concept and a revenue model. For publishers they get exposure in the social space and targeted traffic to their online networks. This is a very exciting time and I am excited to be working with such innovative organizations such as Praized Media.

So how does it work and what does it look like?

First thing a business owner should do is go to YellowPages.ca and do a search for their business listing. Once again - I am using my mom’s business, The Bra Lady as an example. Once you are on your business listing click on the ? beside the Add These Tools To your Website.

When you click on the ? mark - this will launch a new window with some Javascript code that you can copy.

Take the Javascript code and add it to your website. In the case of TheBraLady.ca - we decided to add this code into the header of the website so that it is available on every page.

Finally - when a user selects this new button on your website - it launched a window that gives a user a multitude of ways in which they can share your business information.

And that’s it. Now your business contact information can be shared via email, address book, desktop, social media, print and instant messenger.

Pretty cool eh.

I have had the pleasure and opportunity of working with Jeff and his company since I started working at Yellow Pages Group as an employee in 2006. He is one of the most intelligent, level headed, and forward thinking experts in the field. I suggest checking out his corporate blog for insights from field.

There was a question in the interview that was asked of Jeff specifically about Social Marketing.

“I have recently become addicted to social bookmarking, esp. StumbleUpon. What words of advice can you give to anyone looking to become a power user in any of the social guises?”

To that Jeff answered:

Jeff: Don’t lose perspective, and always track results against objectives. Social media can become all consuming, but the actual traffic is very difficult to convert. Its very easy to have spent a great deal of time and effort, with no real returns. So, begin by setting objectives (Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing). Its not for every business … its merely a tool in our toolkit. So make sure the effort can satisfy specific goals.

3) Network … participate in these communities. Vote, comment, submit … in that order. Establish friendships in various social media, and migrate them to other platforms. Be loyal to your friends … follow their submissions religiously. Tip … use RSS to follow their submissions pages, and check every few hours. THIS WILL TAKE TIME … and continue to take time! If you really want to be a power social media user … its takes a lot of time and effort.

Could not have answered that question any better.

Jeff answered many more questions from Paul - so make sure that you check out the entire interview.

In discussions with small business owners, when asked, what method of tracking do you use to measure your new sales, the most common response is “I ask my consumers where they heard about me”. Usually the second part of the conversation goes this way - “word of mouth is my best form of advertising” and “I tried many forms of advertising, none have worked for me”.

For this particular post I want to focus on two areas:

1) How word-of-mouth (WOM) needs support
2) How to leverage in-store questions and online traffic

Word-Of-Mouth

I am a very strong believer in WOM and the incredible growth it can generate. That being said, WOM often takes more credit away from supporting advertising vehicles, giving the impression to a SME that their advertising is not working.

A typical conversation with a new customer may go like this:

Bus Owner: Thanks for coming in. How did you happen to hear about our store?
Customer: A friend recommended you
Bus Owner: That’s great, if you liked the service today, please tell your friends

The above dialogue is good, however, what if the conversation was slightly changed:

Bus Owner: Thanks for coming in. Can I ask you two questions about how you come to our store today?
Customer: Sure
Bus Owner: How did you hear about out store?
Customer: From a friend
Bus Owner: Thanks, how did you get our address?
Customer: From your website? From my friend? From the Yellow Pages?
Bus Owner: That’s great, if you liked the service today, please tell your friends about us and have them visit my website, Yellow Pages ad, etc. for my store details.

Of course the exact questions can be changed and tailored, but the main point is that in most cases WOM is supported by another medium that connects the buyer and the seller. People will refer people they like to people they trust, however, those same people will usually not know all the details about your business. WOM can accelerate your sales when you have a support mechanism behind it and you incorporate it into your WOM strategy.

In-Store Questions and Online Traffic

Continuing with the example above and examining customers who indicated they used the Internet to find your address, we need to examine our web analytics. The first question I usually get is, should I ask customers how they found me on the web? I advise against asking any questions about how people found you on the web. The reason is that there is a lot of confusion among web users - so the typical response is Google - even if they used MSN, Yahoo or something else. This gives the illusion that all web traffic is generated from Google - which is not the case. As a business owner, if you have a good analytics package - all you need to know from your customers is whether they saw your website. Once you have a in-store count you can cross-reference this with your web analytics to find out what is and is not working online.

As a side-note I want to share a quick story. I helped a auto dealer in Calgary with their tracking and customer acquisition strategies. Calgary has two major newspaper dailies - the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun. We started by creating a baseline, by spending one month asking customers how they came to stop by the dealership. Of the two newspaper dailies what we found was that 25% came from paper 1 and 15% came from paper 2. Here is where it gets interesting - this particular dealership had not advertised in paper 2 for a couple of years, yet 15% of new customers said they found the dealership there. Here is my take on this non-scientific survey - when asked, some customers will simply answer what comes to their mind first as opposed to what is actual. Not because they are dishonest, just that they most likely don’t care and will answer to shut you up. The same thing is happening on the web - I bet I could take 10 people who use Yahoo Search as their primary engine and half of them, when asked quickly, would probably say Google. My point is that only relying on asking people how they found you on the web can be misleading, whereas this potential misleading information does not exist with web analytics.

Here are some stats from my mom’s business, The Bra Lady. What we have learned over the past 4-years of tracking results is that WOM is by far her #1 way of generating new business with the Internet as her primary support mechanism to WOM. What we have also found is that many people are referred to her business, but use search engines and directories to find her web address. Probably 80% of her new clients indicate that Internet played a role. NOTE: this may be high and in her particular situation makes a lot of sense - because she is a home based business. However, when I worked with Auto Dealers - this number was about the same and dentists were up there as well.

On a monthly basis we compare the number of referrals who indicate the Internet was a source of them finding her to her actual analytics - we use Google Analytics to understand better exactly how these people ending up finding her.

Here is the aggregate view:

In the above you will notice that the top three referrers of traffic are Google, YellowPages.ca, and Direct. Examining just the top three referrers, typically I would examine further both the traffic from YellowPages.ca and Google.

For Google:

What I notice is the majority of keywords from Google are good quality. You will notice that keyword #20 - the one that references ebay is not considered a good keyword, however, this is the nature of search engines. It is important when examining search engine traffic to look at the keywords to get a accurate picture. The conclusion is that Google is generating good traffic.

For YellowPages.ca:

What I notice is that the top referring URL from yellowpages.ca is the merchant page that was built for her business by YPG - this is good - it supports the decision to have the website URL located on this page. If I continue to examine further I see that users were searching using keywords we anticipated and specifically in Calgary. What I like about directory traffic is that people don’t surf directories. They go there for a purpose - usually to find something in particular - so the traffic generated here is high-quality.

For Direct:
This is pretty self-explanatory.

You will notice that we are also showing other top referrers in Facebook and CalgaryPlus.ca. I did a posting back in July of this year - Facebook - Can Local Business Florish in Social Networking? and its potential impact on local business - watch for this. For those of you interested - here is an article I posted back in 2005 on the strength of media companies and front-page placement - Power of Front Page Placement.

In conclusion - I would challenge any SME to dig a little deeper in 2008 in terms of their tracking and understanding of customers. Also I would encourage you to not presuppose answers as to where online traffic might come from. In Canada - we are continually bombarded with US news and information about the Internet, which sometimes gives us a US perspective on traffic as opposed to a CDN perspective on traffic. Build your measurement criteria, find the tools to track and examine them monthly - this will generate great results for your business in 2008.

Lastly I had to reduce the images to fit within my blog post - so for a real comparison, please click on the images to load the full page.

YellowPages.ca has recently launched a new look merchant page - see screenshot below from Martin Grove Volkswagen in Toronto.

Here is a screen shot of the same company on Google Maps

Here is a screen shot from Yahoo Local

Let me explain why. As the world continues to use the Internet or devices connected to the Internet as our primary communication medium, I am betting that 5-years from now you will rely on this communication vehicle more than you do today. Consider what happens 10-years or 20-years from now? I have conducted a number of interviews in the past few months where the applicants I have interviewed - Googled me (here is the Google link to darby sieben) to find out more information about me. What do you think I do as a person who is looking for talent - I Google them to.

So what does this mean? The Internet can and in some cases is becoming the personal marketing tool for business professionals. With sites like LinkedIn.com, business blogs, etc. you have an incredible opportunity to promote yourself - you are becoming media.

Now, back to your name? What happens when you wake up one day and realize that you need to own your domain name? Why - because every employer, every potential new partner, every supplier, and so on, that you are trying to work with is conducting a search on Google to see what you have done and you need to consolidate information to make yourself the #1 choice. Consider what happens if somebody else owns your domain name? What happens if they are linking it to an undesired location? What happens if they are fabricating information about you? What happens if nobody wants to conduct business with you because what they see is what they believe and there is no official “your name” website that speaks the truth?

Sound unrealistic - maybe, is it completely unlikely, I don’t think so. Remember what happen when corporate Canada and the US thought they didn’t need to register their domain names and porn companies, competitors, etc. scooped them up? This short-sighted view caused a lot of grief and money.

What if for under $20 per year - that’s $800 for 40-years of work, you owned your domain name and had the fully security of knowing that nobody could ever use it in a way that is unsavory? With country specific domain names, like .ca for example, you may have some protection - albeit limited, but for a .com - this is open season.

Right now the hottest thing on the web is “local search”. I predict that in the next few years (we have already started to see the incredible growth of people search sites in the last 6-months) that personal marketing (shared by my friend Mitch Joel of Twist Marketing) will explode. The rush for personal domain names might become the next boom of domain name squatters. If I am wrong, so be it, if I am right - I am going to make sure that nobody can mess with my name - it is too valuable as I continue to build my professional career.

I don’t like sounding negative but I think this is a reality and I would hate to see any good person have to fight this battle. My recommendation - get your domain name - it could just be the best personal investment you can make in the 21st Century.

Both of my domains are registered through DomainPeople.ca - however, if you conduct a Google search for “.ca domain names” you can price compare or conduct a YellowPages.ca search for “.ca domain names” to find Canadian only companies.

Looking for .com - try a Google Search or try GoDaddy.com.

Praized Media is a startup company working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can trust. It’s also a tool that will structure local conversations within blogs and a new platform for local search providers to generate leads from the untapped social media market.

The company was founded by Sebastien, Sylvain and Harry and is funded by Garage Technology Ventures.

From the group on Facebook - Fans of Praized Media - “We’re hiring! We’re looking for a Ruby on Rail lead developer and a Web integrator.”

I don’t know Sylvain or Harry personally - but did have the pleasure of working with Sebastien Provencher at Yellow Pages Group for the past number of years and based on what I know they will be very successful with this venture.

Congrats guys - look forward to seeing the next Canadian Internet success story.