In the case study below, Liquidus created a lead-gen platform for a Cincinnati television station that enabled advertisers to engage consumers through customizable rich media connected to inventory.

Background

WCPO Channel 9 in Cincinnati has been on the air since 1949 and has a nationally-recognized history of providing first-rate news coverage. It is a part of the E.W. Scripps Company (Scripps), a diversified media company and owner of multiple television stations and newspapers.

Scripps required a new online advertising platform for WCPO and its other properties to add some variety and dynamic content for its demanding advertisers.

The Engagement Challenge

Scripps desired an advertising solution that could promote end-user engagement and result in higher ROI for advertisers.

WCPO was deeply involved with making a high volume of Flash-based creative for multiple clients and wanted a solution that could help properly display that content within interactive banner ads. They also wanted to utilize a database-driven solution that could provide the flexibility needed by the end advertiser.

Innovative Solution

WCPO has used both Bannerlink and Videolink since 2009 to present dynamic and interactive advertisements for Cincinnati-area businesses.

Using the Liquidus solution, WCPO offers its advertisers a lead-generation platform that helps them acquire accurate customer data by encouraging them to share personal data.

Advertisers benefit from the customization options within the Liquidus solutions, which allow creation of unique shopping experiences. This customization promotes awareness of the advertiser’s offerings, allows them to introduce new products in real-time and results in better sales conversion. Advertisers can choose different settings, colors and product display options within each banner.

Consumers enjoy the ability to sort through different product options within the banner, which results in deeper and more sustained interaction and brand awareness. For an automobile ad, consumers are able to dynamically choose vehicle color and other variables while browsing through the banner. They are presented with a full inventory, helping them to quickly decide if they want to move forward to the dealership’s site or to call or email for an in-person visit.

This enhanced consumer interaction and engagement allows advertisers using Bannerlink and Videolink to consistently achieve interaction rates of five times those of traditional rich media. Bannerlink provides WCPO and Scripps with useful metrics beyond just impression and click-through-rate. Expansion and interaction rates, and average video play time are all recorded and available, providing WCPO and the advertiser with more data

The real-time video and image rendering provided by Liquidus means advertisers can offer the most current products and services. This process doesn’t require costly editing, making it extremely cost efficient to promote limited-time sales or remove discontinued inventory.

Immediate Results

WCPO and Scripps have experienced significant advertiser buy-in using Liquidus, with several advertisers in multiple verticals reporting increased ROI and better brand awareness.

One particularly pleased WCPO advertiser was a coin shop operation that desired a better way to advertise its precious coins in a more dynamic fashion. Using Bannerlink and Videolink, WCPO was able to provide the shop with seamlessly flowing images that showcased the breadth of its collection. The database engine allowed real-time changes to images to remove sold items and also to promote interesting new pieces to entice collectors.

For WCPO, the Liquidus solutions give them an added advantage when trying to attract advertisers. The interactive advertisements encourage real interaction with the end customer, who can quickly learn more about products or services without clicking to a new website. These customers are “pre-qualified” through their interaction with the advertisements and are ultimately more likely to make purchases.

“A big part of Liquidus’ competitive advantage is their ability to handle any issues quickly and completely,” said Rob Schuck, sales manager at WCPO. “We also appreciate all of the reporting metrics, which allow us to give our advertisers updated information and make content changes on the fly.”

The deal space today is a direct marketing machine. That’s part of its problem and yet one of the reasons I love it so. The get email send offers has been referred to as the blunt instrument approach, so it will need to be fine tuned if it is to continue. Otherwise, it will turn into the yellow pages business — big but dying.

All of local advertising looks to drive people in stores. Discounting isn’t new. Local coupons aren’t new. Using the web to drive a local merchant thousands of customers on a performance basis is new. The scale and speed with which Groupon and now LivingSocial have achieved this warrants the attention the space has received.

As Jim Moran of Yipit told me, national brands may leverage the space, but influencing local dollars is what has people up at night. It’s why Online to Offline or O2O as Alex Rampell coined is, if not a trillion dollar industry, a multi-billion dollar one.

ROI

Here is what the big guys all get. Namely, that if they take a dollar out of a merchant’s pocket and don’t give them back $1+ back, they will fail in the long-term. This is where we are today. You can’t get merchants to spend more than a billion dollars with limited accountability and not have quesitons raised.

But, as a deal’s business, do you wait for the merchant’s level of sophistication to increase before taking their money, or do you take their money and try to balance their needs and your own?Google is a case study in the latter. If they let only savvy marketers spend money so that no one could lose money, they wouldn’t be where they are today.

If a company is taking advantage of merchants and/or creating a system where that is possible, that is unacceptable. But, it would not be unsurprising to hear of examples in our revenue driven world.

The Future of The Deal Space

The deal space is really a collection of spaces. It started with the just the web, or more specifically email. It was and still is primarily a broadcast approach with little targeting or specificity. Were it start any other way, though, we wouldn’t see such scale in one particular company.

The web deal space will be like search, dominated by a handful of players. Groupon and LivingSocial will stay the winners, but how large will they be of the total market when it continues to expand is up for the debate. A friend told me about a conversation he overheard where one executive outside the deal space predicted Groupon would be the MySpace of the sector. It’s not that the sector is all bad only that certain tactics are not sustainable.

Mobile, other connected devices, and unexplored touch points are  going to be different. As an example, Groupon’s email list and sales force don’t make it an odds on favorite to win mobile.

They are also why a company like American Express can so quickly and easily disrupt the ecosystem if they really chose to do so. I wish I could recall which executive I spoke to in order to give him credit, but he explained that mobile will not be a winner take all or most environment.

In mobile, we will see many niche apps becoming meaningful players. People aren’t necessarily looking for deals when on their phone. They are doing other behaviors that enable the showcasing of deals. It is why Foursquare and Twitter are (still) meaningful, and it’s also why Google should become the leader in this space.

Innovations in customer acquisition. That’s where the deal space falls. It’s not about daily, and it’s not about deals. It’s about connecting buyers and sellers in ways that leverage connected devices to create scale.

Cross-published at jayweintraub.com. LeadsCon East will take place at the Hilton New York from August 24-25 — register here. Daily Deal Summit West will be held September 22-23 in San Francisco — register here.

The study found that almost half of the national advertisers surveyed are pursuing local online advertising, and more than 40% are dedicating at least a quarter of their online marketing budget to local targeting.

“The data shows that national advertisers clearly understand the Internet drives in-store sales and they’ve begun to integrate local into their marketing mix,” said Greg Sterling, Principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. “However, they’re all over the map in terms of traffic sources and success metrics; there’s a general absence of consistent tactics and understanding of best practices for local.”

Other findings:
• Almost half of survey respondents report that at least 25% of their in-store sales were driven by online marketing
• More than half of respondents are using different messaging or tactics for different geographic or local markets
• Only 10% of respondents are targeting down to the DMA, city or ZIP code level

“National advertisers are clearly trying to leverage local online advertising to increase local leads and drive sales, but this study shows they’re having a tough time figuring out what’s working,” said Ed O’Keefe, VP of Performance Marketplaces at Marchex.

The study, conducted between September 11 and September 21, 2008, surveyed 150 national advertisers or agencies that offer products and/or services through local outlets, dealers, franchises or branded stores across more than one state.

Real Cities was previously owned by The McClatchy company – terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Real Cities has a network of 1,800 local affiliate sites that get about 44 million monthly uniques. The deal will also give Centro access to Real Cities’ ties with 225 advertisers, which is projected to add between 15% to 20% to Centro’s bottom line.

The company should bolster Centro’s position as a medium between media agencies and newspapers.

The dividends will be paid on February 15th of this year. As of January 17th, 10,959,216 shares of Class A common stock, 29,987,357 shares of Class B common stock and 6, 024 shares of preferred stock are outstanding.

Marchex originally issued 230,000 shares of preferred stock in February of 2005 and dividends with respect thereto are payable on the 15th day of February, May, August and November of each year that such preferred stock remains outstanding.

Sales and business development experience is all a franchisee needs to grow their business. PinPoint Local provides franchisees with the training that is needed to turn the franchisee into an Online Consultant while PinPoint provides the search marketing, web development, email marketing and technology solutions.

According to Borrell Associates, Local Online Advertising should increase by 50% and become a nearly $13 billion industry by the end of next year. The Kelsey Group also predicts that global ad revenues for online Yellow pages and local search will increase to over $11 billion next year, the release states.

Adam Kaufman, president of PinPoint Local Inc. said “This is a monstrous opportunity for entrepreneurs to offer a 10 year proven internet program to local business owners. The PinPoint Local opportunity offers big agency muscle to local businesses, including websites, email, search and more.”

All of which explains why the proprietor asked me if I knew people that might like the gym; he likes those there and given that people often have like friends, they would make for the best members as opposed to local but still mass marketing where as I interpreted it, one could acquire new customers but at a higher cost per acquisition and generally with a lower return, i.e. they stay a shorter amount of time. Having all the gadgets I need and then some (anyone want a last generation iMac or a t-mobile sidekick?) referring people for entry into a raffle for a new iPod didn’t do anything to increase my desire to refer people. The marketer in me couldn’t help but put myself in his position and think about what I would do to attract more members. As not just a marketer but a direct marketer, I start thinking about that which promoted my thinking – a bounty per referral. An entry into a sweepstakes might not motivate you either but it embodies the essence of affiliate marketing. If he had said, for each member you refer, you receive either this in compensation or a discount to your dues, all of the sudden it is affiliate marketing as we know it. The larger chains think somewhat along those lines. Golds Gym for instance offers members varying discounts based on the number of friends they refer. If a member refers three new, Golds will give the referrer one year free.

If Golds Gym will give one year free for three new members, that suggests to me that they will gladly pay a CPA of 33% COGS for a new member. Here is where being a direct marketer can hamper one’s desire for people to people referrals. I like my gym, but assuming a similar revenue share, referring one person would net me a few hundred dollars per year if that person stayed on that long and the referral came in cash not in soft compensation. It would take referring 10 members before it even started to get interesting and referring one quarter of the current members before it got exciting. Not having a network of 100 people locally that would join a gym or even 20, the challenge he faces goes from mentally intriguing to daunting to “Next.” It puts a new light on the challenges of opening up a truly small business. And, selfishly, I want this local business to succeed as I have found a product that I like and want continued. Until I put myself in the position of the owner or more accurately one that doesn’t want the owner to go under, I didn’t give the challenge of local advertising, or more specifically local customer acquisition, much thought. It’s the same situation that individual mortgage brokers faced until the lead aggregators came along.

The gym (or insert any undeveloped local business) could advertise on Google as well as improve their natural search; currently he appears in the Google Map listings that show on top of the organic results, but not in the organic results. Given the geographic area, i.e. the number of people and psychographics of a user, the query volume is low, so straight search could work, but it would no doubt take time. It would also mean retooling the site to be more lead generation friendly. What good does it do to send people to your main home page where a strong call to action often doesn’t fit, or if it does fit, companies don’t often build them with that in mind from the get go. Now, it becomes almost cost prohibitive for them to retool, and that even brings up another challenge in itself, where to find the right design talent.

Here is why Google sits at an advantageous situation. At the moment, one way or another it means using them, but it also shows the opportunity. You might need them, but they don’t offer what you need – both organically or via advertising. CitySearch and perhaps more so Yelp will in time also drive traffic and become the new Yellowpages. None of this, though, will come as consolation to the local business who, for now, must find a solution more offline, or do they? In Part 2, we look at how a company has potentially solved this very problem of local lead generation for, of all people, the local gym owner.

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DM Confidential
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