The Wall Street Journal quotes Google SVP Susan Wojcicki saying that the local ad market is her biggest “focus”:
“That is my biggest focus,” said Ms. Wojcicki . . . “How can we enable you, when you’re walking around, to find out the best local offers around? As an advertiser, how can I find out if someone saw my ad and went to a store? The local market is a huge market, we’ve always wanted to be in it.”
She also says that online has been too difficult for SMBs to date:
“For small businesses, they don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “You need to create a model that works for them. And it needs to be easy for them to sign up. On the back end, everything needs to just work for them.”
She also implies that mobile will be used as a cornerstone of the overall local strategy:
“Mobile will enable us to do things we’ve never done before,” said Mrs. Wojcicki. “Being able to close the loop will be a huge opportunity.”
And confirms that in separate comments recorded by the NY Times:
“The phone is incredibly important for local commerce,” she said. “It’s not quite developed yet, but seeing where users go and check in for offers has a lot of power. Before we didn’t know that they had arrived in a store. Making ads more relevant based around that is an interesting opportunity for small businesses.”
Over at Internet2Go I wrote yesterday about a case study that Google had exposed where Offers were used in mobile AdWords to drive in-store visits:
In their ad, the company [Adidas] offered customers 15% off purchases made in an Adidas store of $75 or more. Interested users could store the offer either via email or SMS. In addition to the coupon, the ad also provided a phone number and map of a local Adidas store, giving consumers all they would need to go in-store, redeem the offer and make a purchase . . . With a click-through rate 28% higher than their past mobile advertising, the mobile Offers Ads campaign doubled in-store coupon redemption and increased the average in-store order value.
But the most recent evidence of Google’s increased seriousness about local is its apparently failed $5+ billion bid for Groupon.
December 8th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by UBLorg and SMBinfo, shoppetweets. shoppetweets said: Google Exec: Local Is Our ‘Top Focus’ http://ow.ly/1amavG [...]
December 8th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Nice post, Greg.
Good to get verification from Google stating as such. For those who have been watching the mobile local space as keenly as I, you can tell that their focus has shifted, especially with their failed acquisitions of Yelp and Groupon. You know they are hot and heavy in this space.
Most business owners still aren’t using the tools to help them, yet. They will eventually!
Great blog, it’s part of my daily reading.
@teedubya
December 8th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Thanks
December 8th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Greg: If Google is really focused on Local they should concentrate on two internal areas, IMHO:
1. Increase customer service responsiveness to the smb’s. Give real customer service. Its been lacking for years. It drives SMB owners nuts with regard to the bad information, quircky algo’s, difficult to follow directions, weak/indecipherable communications, etc. One only need to go into the forum for Google Places/Business owners to see the volume of problems
2. Fix problems. This goes hand in hand with the above mentioned issue. Today I noticed reviews in one of my accounts from City Search were missing. It was confirmed by one other reader on Mike Blumenthal’s blog. We both commented on the 2nd blog piece about missing Trip Advisor reviews. Google reps said they had become aware of the world wide missing Trip Advisor Reviews and were working on it.
Reviews come and go. Its a bug. Address it.
On very direct issues concerning money….I noticed I have a variety of Google Tags on different accounts. On 2/3 of them right now I have problems. They aren’t showing, Google dashboard isn’t delivering information. Cripes we are paying for these things. We aren’t getting results. Fix it.
The only times Google surfaces with corrections to these endless myriads of problems is when they face huge embarrassment as with the issue of the brutal eretailer who was feasting off of high google rankings, was threatening customers, and was written up in the NY Times Sunday business section.
Start fixing problems before they harm and hurt people. Start fixing problems before they cause business ruin. Its nice to know Google wants to zoom into Local and place themselves in a position where they can scarf up billions of dollars of advertising. Be accountable first.
December 9th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Thanks Dave . . . yes: Google seems to have persistent customer service issues that Mike B. continues to identify. Wonder if this is simply staffing or reflective of a larger attitudinal problem.
December 9th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
I’m 99.99% sure its more than attitudinal, its a corporate decision to limit assistance. The other day I was showing someone with decades of tech experience the interactions within the google places forum for smbs.
He called the lack of responsiveness unprecedented. He had never seen anything like it. Technical services REQUIRE a level of customer service. Its in their nature and has been that way for decades. Google doesn’t deliver it.
December 9th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
You’d think with their willingness to buy a sales channel now (e.g., Yelp, Groupon) that there would have been an internal cultural shift.
January 4th, 2011 at 12:49 am
[...] has had the opportunity to own social local market for a couple of years, but now Google “Google Exec: Local is our Top Focus – Dec 8, 2010” and Facebook “Facebook’s Emily White details Local Efforts – Dec 10, [...]
January 4th, 2011 at 8:54 am
[...] has had the opportunity to own social local market for a couple of years, but now Google “Google Exec: Local is our Top Focus – Dec 8, 2010” and Facebook “Facebook’s Emily White details Local Efforts – Dec 10, [...]
March 1st, 2011 at 3:05 pm
[...] Mar 2011 There is a growing interest in local social markets and big names such as Facebook and Google have already rolled up their [...]