1,238,584 people had viewed the ad again on YouTube before the Vince Lombardi trophy was even presented to the Saints! This again only reinforces the power of search – over 1 million people to took time away from the Big Game to search online for an ad they had just viewed.

The ad is simple, almost Apple like in production. It shows the progression of different searches and results as a young mans life starts off traveling abroad to eventually settling down with a family. Google did a great job of adding emotion to something as technical and sterile as search. The ad brilliantly illustrates how these days we truly rely on search for so many different aspects of our lives wither we realize it or not.

The ad showcases many different uses Google has – regular search, spell check, language translation,  flight status, and local search. During the 60 second spot they featured local search in 3 of the results.

Cafe’s near the louvre
Chocolate shops paris france
Churches in Paris

Think about it – Google spent millions on this ad and featured local search results 1/4 of the time during their sop. If this doesn’t show how important local search is I don’t know what else would.

What did you think of the ad? Watch the Google ad.

For most business owners it’s been a struggle attempting to leverage social networking sites and an even greater challenge trying to measure their value.  Yes, the potential to reach a massive audience through Twitter and Facebook is undeniable, but are people listening? I can only speak for myself and those I associate with, but in my experience people won’t pay much attention to branded social networking. If a product or service isn’t extremely groundbreaking and VERY specific to someone’s tastes, they’ll  just ignore it.

This could soon change with a new kid on the scene called Foursquare. 

The basic premise of Foursquare is similar to Twitter; updates from a phone are sent out to all your subscribers to let them know what you’re up to.  The key difference is that Foursquare is location based; users ”check in” at various places to let their friends know what they are doing. Foursquare also uses a point system to reward its users with badges irreverently named things like “crunked”  for discovering new places or becoming the most frequent patron of a particular spot. Foursquare will even let you see tips people have left for the locale you’re checking into and suggest nearby spots you might enjoy.  Twitter on the other hand is primarily used to find out what Ashton Kutcher is having for lunch.

Foursquare essentially makes life into a game.

Who cares?

At AgencyWeb we’ve seen some potential in Foursquare. There are ways for business owners to leverage this service and to *gasp* measure its value!

The most obvious use for Foursquare is basically to do the Twitter thing. Start an account for your business, talk your customers into subscribing and then blast them with updates about sales, events, renovations, whatever. You might find that this annoys people however, and besides, it’s boring.

Try this: If someone becomes the most frequent patron of a specific spot on Foursquare they become the “mayor” of that spot. Why not offer a 5% discount to the mayor? Others may start coming through your door more often just to claim the title.

How about instating a “bring a friend” incentive. Perhaps you own a bar. You could have a Monday special where if someone brings five friends through the door with proof of the Foursquare message that got ‘em there, the one-person street team gets a couple of free drinks.

Use tips to your advantage too. Have a “secret” mixed drink. The only way to find out about it is to check in on Foursquare and receive the tip. This type of “game” will keep people coming back.

These are just the tip of the iceberg with Foursquare. Since it is specifically geared towards local communities, there are countless ways businesses can use the service to their advantage. I find myself checking in to spots I wouldn’t have even glanced at on Twitter or Facebook.

I guess my point is to keep an eye on this thing. If you like friends, and you leave your house occasionally, you’ll probably end up using Foursquare.

Just some advice from your friends over at AgencyWeb.

The goal of Local Mojo is to allow small businesses to get more customers! Through the brainstorming, the creative process and the implementation of Local Mojo, this was our focus. Local Mojo allows small businesses to create an online presence without breaking the bank. Local Mojo allows small business owners to provide valuable information to its clients such as location with maps, hours of operation, services, payment options, background history and so much more. Small businesses can quickly and easily create a web page that is pushed to over 70 search engines so they will appear when their clients are searching for them. None of these elements just came together over night. It took many months of team meetings, brainstorming sessions, creative-wire-frames, site-maps, and research from different areas to master the needs, wants, and how to implement these elements that would be beneficial to both small business owners and their prospective clients. 

Looking back and examining the process of Local Mojo, the most beneficial tasks as a team that we could have done was the brainstorming sessions, the creative-wire-frames and the usability testing. Although the brainstorming sessions may have lasted hours or even days, the outcome of the sessions were worth it. Sitting in a room and creating the flow of the site, deciding what elements would be most valuable, and how the site can be most beneficial to the user began the outline/skeleton of the site. Then came, the transformation of the outlined information from the brainstorming session into visual creative-wire-frames. The visual wire-frames hung on our office walls allowed AgencyWeb, to examine the flow and the design of the entire site before any programming/coding began. Once the wire-frames went through many revisions, and then approved, the programming/coding began. Once the site reached a certain point, we had usability testing with third-party users. We were happy to see that the users were able to easily and quickly build their site within 20 minutes with no major issues. These users ended the test surprisingly happy with a hassle free web site which was now going to get them more customers. 

As Local Mojo is now live and ready for small business owners to create their Local Mojo Local Website for FREE! Local Mojo also has offers for those small business owners who wish to go beyond the basics. 

So, start getting more customers by visiting LocalMojo.com to sign up for your FREE local web site. 

We have had several businesses come to us that just need a simple, small website for their local business. We helped out where we could but often times we were either booked or was not efficient for both parties involved. We like to keep our focus here at AgencyWeb on strategic marketing and really get engaged with our clients on a long term basis. On the flip side one of our other businesses which provides simple directory style listings in over 50 engines was often not quite enough for some businesses who needed a little more. We were unable to serve this huge gap in the middle which most businesses fit in that are too small for an agency, but too big for a simple directory listing. Then came Local Mojo.

Local Mojo provides businesses with a free optimized local site. The small business owner can provide detailed information that potential clients are looking for such as location with maps, hours of operation, services, payment options, and background history. Local Mojo goes beyond the basics with the ability to embed videos from your YouTube account, photos from Flickr, feeds from Twitter. Your local site will not only give customers the information they are looking for, but also help you brand your business as well as your self to help build a relationship with your customers.

For those businesses who wish to go beyond the basics Local Mojo offers simple and affordable ways to increase traffic to your page or existing site. This can be accomplished buy purchasing blocks of targeted localized traffic and adding click to call technology.

What makes all of this even better for the local business is the fact that everything is measurable. The small business owner will now be able to track everything about their local site and online marketing efforts. Local Mojo has high end analytics incorporated into the platform so everything is measurable such as site traffic, geo-targted results, pay per campaign management and more.

So head on over to LocalMojo.com to sign up for a free site for your local business.

I performed a search and noticed the one box was listing some local results even though I did not include a city name or local phrase in my search. At first I thought it was due to the fact that I was logged into my Gmail account. I logged out and tried the search again and it again displayed the one box. I refreshed the page several times and eventually it displayed a “normal” result without the one box. I then tried the same search term, this time listing a city name afterward and the traditional one box came up this time at the top of the page like we are used to seeing.

For those users who are familiar with searching without using city names they will now be introduced to local results. Because of events like these your local presence will be even more valuable. Now thousands of businesses will be showing up to potential customers for the first time ever. Those who have enhanced local listings will be the ones who capitalize from this. Our sister company Local Mojo is coming along at a perfect time to help that often under served market of small businesses trying to get online with a local profile.

We are working with Local Mojo to bring small business an online solution that is a lot like the yellow pages on steroids.  It’s super easy for the small business owner to use and makes it even easier for the shopper to find what she’s looking for.

Traditional websites are very general and all encompassing by there very nature.  It’s all about the company.  Local search has to be all about the shopper.  Local Mojo makes small nimble targeted web sites for local business that are optimized for local search.  Local Mojo isn’t trying to out aggregate the aggregators or supplant the search engines.  Local Mojo is totally agnostic in terms of a go to market strategy.  Local Mojo knows how to feed the search engines and aggregators the food they need to feature a Local Mojo optimized site.

Local Mojo doesn’t wait for it’s client’s site to be found, the site is optimized and submitted monthly, and Local Mojo is always monitoring the presence consistency and accuracy of the business information supplied as a part of theif offering to small business.

We’ll be sure to keep you up to date as this exciting new client of ours get’s ready to go to market.  Let us know what you are up to in this new local advertising space.