|
|
[Manoj]: Please give us a brief description of the Local Connect Network and how your publishers will leverage it?
[Jeff Ferguson]: Local.com’s Local Connect™ is a private label platform that allows qualified regional media publishers to add a local search business directory to their websites within a few days and at no cost. Once the platform is deployed, because of its unique, SEO-friendly architecture, we can quickly help the publisher drive new traffic and new online advertising revenues through local search. Because of this, Local.com has the largest network of independent, private label local media properties in the U.S. based on the number of partner sites, according to The Kelsey Group.
For instance, we just partnered with The Dallas Morning News and A.H. Belos’ Press Enterprise to provide its Local Connect™ private label local search solution to http://www.dallasnews.com/ and http://www.pe.com/, respectively.
[Manoj]: Tell us more about Local Promote™.
[Jeff Ferguson]: Local Promote is Local.com’s subscription advertising product that rovides local businesses with premium placement at the top of targeted search results in specific categories and geographic regions. It allows these small businesses to reach new customers and get ahead of their competition. It offers businesses, which usually wouldn’t have the time or staff to put this kind of campaign together, the ability to get involved in online advertising with little effort and little cost. With Local Promote, we provide businesses the ability to build their own branded web pages where they can post company logos, photos, company taglines, and special offer links. Then, we automatically submit the businesses’ listings to the other major search engines and even offer advanced call tracking capabilities to measure the campaign’s success.
[Manoj]: What has the growth of Local.com been like for the past year?
[Jeff Ferguson]: Local.com has experienced consistent growth over the past year. You might have seen that the company had a great second quarter, reporting record traffic of 63 million monthly UVs, record organic traffic exceeding 29 million monthly UVs, and monetization yielded record revenue and a larger-than-anticipated adjusted net income. It’s been an exciting time to join the company and be a part of such fantastic growth!
Local.com also appointed a new Chief Technology Officer, Michael Plonski, who held executive positions at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and the Tribune Company.
[Manoj]: If I was a small business listed in your directory, what kind of reporting would I receive?
[Jeff Ferguson]: We provide data on clicks and impressions for each business location, plus call tracking is also available including how many calls received, the duration of the calls, calls answered, etc. Besides educating these businesses on the success of their campaigns, it’s in our own best interest to show the business the ROI of working with Local.com.
[Manoj]: How does Local.com plan on leveraging Social/Mobile strategies in the near future?
[Jeff Ferguson]: In 2007, we launched Local Mobile, which is an ad-supported local mobile site that provides users with easy access to directory services and search results for local businesses, products and services, complete with maps, driving directions, click-to-call, and much more. We’re also looking into a few new mobile avenues to take advantage of some of the recent advancements in mobile technology.
On the Social side, we’re testing a few strategies on a small-scale on Twitter and Facebook to determine where Local.com can fit into this emerging marketplace. We’re not timid about entering this arena, but we realize that these areas are more of a discussion than a lecture and we want to make sure we have the proper balance of humanity and technology before we open things up a bit more.
These new channels lend themselves to a lot of opportunities for providing hyper-local information to an audience that already is hyper-local; but we want to make sure that they are really asking for help from us before blurting out all the answers from our listings.
