CityVoter - Making Local Media

Campaigning Best Practice?

2009-11-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

We stumbled upon this campaign video in LA for a theater company called Sacred Fools. As this gentleman states, Sacred Fools is indeed a very popular theater company in LA. In fact, they won the past two years and finished second this year. Anyway, this is a great example of how to use YouTube to get some free promotion for your business or your favorite business. Note, this video has been viewed almost 1,000 times.

The Facebook Factor in Best of Voting

2009-11-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

We just finished doing some analysis for one of our clients. It turns out that this year during their contest, Facebook drove more than 25% of traffic to the "best of" promotion. We continue to encourage this behavior by making it easy for business owners and fans of local businesses to put badges on their profiles or forward "vote for us" requests, but this data is pretty impressive.

It's important to note, and we will continue to monitor the twitter effect. This year, during that same contest, twitter drove roughly 8% of total traffic.

We've got fun things in store to make this even bigger, but hats off to local business owners for figuring out how to harness these new promotional tools to get out the vote.

Experiential Marketing CityVoter style

2009-11-17T06:21:00.000-08:00

I'm borrowing a new term I learned: "experiential marketing". Our "best of" programs have been known to get local consumers excited to vote for their favorite businesses, and we've seen business owners do some crazy things to campaign to be number one. All this buzz is something we encourage and actually support. The happiest businesses in the CityVoter network are the ones who have fun with our program and shamelessly self-promote to generate new business and give their loyal customers something to shout about (see the photo of a tanning salon with MyFoxLA t-shirts).

Since we provide business cards, mobile apps, signs, and t-shirts for our programs, we're actually allowing consumers to both vote and experience the "best of" brand. Wearing a t-shirt to express your loyalty to a local business is certainly "sensory".

Here's one definition of "experiential marketing" I found and edited a bit to fit what we're doing: Consumers have an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products, and services in sensory ways. Personal experiences help people connect to a brand. The term "Experiential marketing" refers to actual customer experiences with the brand/product/service that drive sales and increase brand image and awareness. (edited from EMF)

How local business owners should use group buying sites

2009-11-03T05:20:00.000-08:00

Local business owners get lots of people calling them to sell them advertising. If you are a CityVoter business, chances are you operate your business in a city where "group buying" advertising companies are growing quickly. There are really a lot of these companies out there. I chose to highlight a few above for your reference. They are: GroupOn, BuyWithMe, and LivingSocial. My goal is to give you a simple overview of how they work, but it's not that simple for business owners who aren't familiar with the opportunity. If you're interested in doing one of these deals, be sure to spend a lot of time on the phone with the sales rep so you fully understand what you're signing up for.

Here's how group buying deals are designed to work for businesses.

1) A sales rep will call you and ask you if you want to create a fantastic deal to drive customers to your business.

2) If you say yes, they will guide you through creating a really compelling offer. This is not a coupon, it's a one-time ridiculous deal...like half off a service or a buy one get one free or a new customers free. Think "free" or "half off". For example, lots of spas give 50% off spa services. Dentists charge only $5 for all new customers.

3) The group buying site will negotiate with you a cut of the deal. These sites make money on the "spread". For example, if you normally charge $200 for a new patient office visit and the deal you set with BuyWithMe is $50 for a limited time only. BuyWithMe will take a % of the $150.

4) You will also work with the sales rep to determine how many people are allowed to take advantage of this deal and when it is available. Once you know what the deal is, you'll have a better sense of how much this promotion will cost you. Since it costs you no cash up front, you'll need to think about how many deals your business can afford to offer.

5) Finally, the group buying site runs "deals of the day". They will email thousands of local consumers the day you want your deal to run. They will collect payment and advertise your deal on other sites. If it sells out, they will process consumers payment.

Advice:
1) These companies all vary in size and they all need to grow fast to keep consumers interested in their deals. You can negotiate and you should.

2) These are promotions. Think of these as promotional dollars. Use them WHEN it is appropriate for you business, not just when a sales person calls. Is back to school a good time? Is the New Year? Mother's day?

3) Create your own email list. These businesses solve a problem for a lot of businesses who cannot direct market to their own customers because they don't have their customers' email addresses. Collect your customers' email addresses. They can be a great source of new business. Offer them a ridiculous deal for referring new customers. You can afford to do this more often.

4) Use CityVoter free "Insider Deals" when you're not using group buying promotions. We want you to be able to offer deals all year that help grow your business. CityVoter's Insider Deals are a great way to promote your business. If you need extra promotion, check out GroupOn and the companies above.

An Esquire Magazine That Talks? That's just crazy.

2009-10-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

In 2005, I called on Boston Magazine repeatedly and tried to convince them that their magazine needed to not only go online with more content, but become part of the local conversation by engaging consumers to contribute their voice to the publication. The web could make that happen.

As we approach the dawn of 2010, we see Esquire making big noise about their new interactive magazine. The cover actually reads: "A living, breathing, moving, talking, magazine?" "WTF?!"
If I were publishing Esquire, I wouldn't say WTF. I would say "hold on we're just getting started", and I'd release a flurry of new ways to engage my readers and get their feedback. They seem to have surprised themselves. In the age of social media, their audience and advertisers expect this and more. It's not augmented reality, it's media's new reality.

Hats off to King5 and Best of Western Washington

2009-10-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

Last night, our media partner in the greater Seattle area, King 5, began announcing their 2009 Best of Western Washington (BOWW) winners during their Evening Magazine television program. King 5 is using CityVoter to make its BOWW annual promotion bigger, and this year it was simply huge. More than 300,000 unique visitors visited the King 5/CityVoter BOWW website in a 6 week period. These visitors spent an average of more than 6 minutes on the website browsing local businesses, voting for their favorites, and recommending places. In fact, the site accumulated more than 90,000 recommendations from voters in just 6 weeks.
This is enormous free promotion for local businesses at a time when they need it most. We very proud to be part of this success, and we're grateful that King 5 has the vision to integrate this program with its core programming. It is a best practice.

We've got a lot of exciting changes coming to CityVoter shortly. New ways to make our best of programs even better. King 5's success is a great motivation for us. It is clear local communities love this promotion and really get involved. Awareness is key, and there is still no better megaphone than local TV.

Rating Points? Local Media Means Local Engagement

2009-10-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

I talk and write a lot about how "local" is about brand and connection to a community. We've been fortunate enough to work in some cities now for more than 3 years, and we've built impressive brands in places like Sacramento, Denver, and Detroit. "A-List" signs are in windows around the city, and people know to vote every year.

Our media partners are starting to really benefit from the investment they've made in developing new brands and advertising products in their markets. Recently, we had one partner tell us "out of the more than 50 vendors I've seen this year, [CityVoter's Best Of] is one of the best opportunities I've come across." This is a city that has made more than $300K from our "best of" program.

We have also seen the fruits of McGraw-Hill's local brand start to play out in their markets. For more than 3 years now, they've been collecting votes for their A-list and running fun promos like this.
Now, they've capitalized on this brand to help promote local businesses with a new kind of advertising product. This is a great way for them to diversify their dependence on national advertisers as well as help local businesses develop new online videos that can drive business through new channels like search engines and YouTube. Read more about their approach here.

Local business contests do have winners

2009-10-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

I am not a big fan of hearing about contests, joining, and then never finding out who won (because I never do). A couple of weeks ago, we announced a contest Office Depot was running to help local business owners. As part of the prize for submitting a winning video, business owners would receive thousands of dollars worth of prizes. Sounded great, so we told all our local CityVoter business owners about the opportunity. A few weeks later, I got a very nice email from Absolute Abstract in Philadelphia telling us they won a prize worth $2000 from Office Depot. Very cool.

We also announced another contest in Dallas where CityVoter was giving away iphone gift certificates to consumers and businesses who downloaded our new "best of" city app. Today, I sent out winners' announcements, and I'm very happy to congratulate Circle Park Bridal in Dallas. They had the most number of customers download the app and email us on their behalf.

While it's fun to compete, not fun to lose, I hope it is at least a little nice to know these contests do have real winners and they're local business owners just like you. See Circle Park's Banner to the right. More fun stuff to come...

More local email newsletters at CityVoter

2009-10-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

Once we finish voting in a city, we give businesses who competed a chance to reach back out to voters with special offers to thank them for their loyalty. We've been doing this now for years, and a number of business owners are getting the hang of email marketing.

Many business owners sign up for Constant Contact each month so they can begin their own dedicated email marketing. If a business owner doesn't have an email marketing list, we help them create one with product giveaways, but also with dedicated emails to local consumers.

How well do they work? Open rates of hover around 20% and CTRs are above 3%. Since these are consumers who live in the area and who have voted on CityVoter, the engagement stays consistently high until voting begins again.

Here is one of my recent favorites: 20% off a Studio City Tattoo in LA "doesn't hurt a bit". Classic.

The Biggest Losers' Guides To Healthy Living

2009-10-16T05:37:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks on CityVoter.com, we've been profiling guides to healthy living created by the contestants of NBC's Biggest Loser. After they've been voted off the show, they come to CityVoter.com and share their secrets to where they go in their hometowns to stay focused on their fitness goals. Coach Mo recently left the show and created a guide to his hometown that included his favorite spots for food and fashion. Sean Algaier built a guide to Glenpool, OK and gave his fans a sense of what it is like to walk a day in his shoes. His guide is fantastic. Check it out here.
The Biggest Loser is one of those inspirational programs that makes healthy living feel attainable to so many people. These guides are just one more way to help people take steps to living well in their hometown.

This holiday season and catalogs

2009-10-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal today posted a story about how retailers continue to rely on unsolicited paper catalogs to drive sales. This is a very important observation for us at CityVoter since catalogs are local, measurable, and image based. They also tend to be themed for geography and season.

As the article points out, catalogs are a huge environmental issue and will likely start to weigh on consumer sentiment and perception of brands. I live in hippyville Cambridge, and as a result, I have already have begun to actively block catalogs sent to my house by using: http://www.catalogchoice.org.

Smart brands and web marketers will migrate some of these direct marketing techniques online and use social media to help. We see this as our local opportunity as catalogs tend to intersect in usage and demo with glossy city mags.

My Denver business trip

2009-10-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Denver where I was able to meet with a number of really smart digital agencies that are starting to do some really interesting work in the area of social media. I say the "area" of social media because the definition of what makes a campaign social media is really left open for interpretation.

Here's my travel list... built it all by myself. Love the new "create a list" functionality guys!

More examples of global companies going "local"

2009-10-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

Found this great blog post on more examples of large companies attempting to go local with their marketing and their messaging. I cannot imagine any campaign can escape this kind of criticism and critique, but clearly there are better ways to support local business owners and communities. Billboards and signage stoke anger and are disingenuous at best. "See we put a sign here. We know and love you."

I like the approach from Barnes & Noble, but without real geographic reach, they too fail to convince me that they're trying hard to promote local "booksellers". The menu in the image above is the entire scope of the cities where they provide local book news.

The new leading economic indicator...

2009-10-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

I have spent the past few days out in Denver and have been enjoying the snow. Yes, snow. Yesterday, it was 70 and sunny. Today, it snowed. I look forward to posting my "list" of new favorite Denver places on CityVoter.com soon. I hit some good spots thanks to our CityVoter iPhone app.

Today, while it snowed outside, I had the pleasure of attending Liberty Media's CEO Netleaders conference. They've held this event four years in a row now, and it's a chance for people who run companies in the digital space to get together and compare notes. This event focused a lot on innovation. The advice...make sure your internet company has a differentiated product and service. It also focused a lot on the economy. We heard from a leading Wall Street analyst, and he provided a lot of data. In addition, CEOs were asked to provide their take on where we are in the recovery of the economy. While everyone could point to online traffic, CPMs, and smart phone adoption as reasons to be conservatively bullish on the economy, the comment that had everyone talking was about wine. One of the entrepreneurs on a panel mentioned his restaurant is seeing an up tick in the number of expensive bottles of wine being purchased with dinner. While he said the number of people dining fluctuates a little, the amount people spend on wine only really increases when confidence increases. So, for all the Wall Street data and research, I offer you this. Wine is the new leading indicator of the economy's recovery. Buy buy buy.

Citizen journalism and local sites like Patch and Everyblock

2009-10-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, we saw a couple bigger media companies (AOL and MSN) spend interest and money in start-ups (Patch and Everyblock) who are pursuing the citizen journalism space in neighborhoods or what people like to call hyperlocal content. There are lots of companies in this area, but the ones I pay attention to are Patch, Outside.in, and Everyblock.

There is clearly a big push toward creating original local content and doing it in a way that is scalable (low cost). This is not new, and it's a logical evolution of the personal blog space. What's interesting is that the quality of this local content is improving and there are going to be standards and rating systems that will help filter out the rambling nonsense and identify thoughtful commentary or investigative journalism.

To that end, I believe it is more interesting to watch the other companies that don't fall directly into this space, but who are doing very interesting localized journalism. See ESPN's Dallas version here, see Huffington Post's Chicago version here, and Plum TV covers high-end destinations. They will rely heavily on a video product which in my mind is key. I don't believe the mass market (or more importantly advertisers) have discerning tastes when it comes to the written word, but they certainly know and like when they see beautiful talent, a slick graphics package, framed photography, and a steady camera.

We play in this market because we want to provide premium local content around photo and video based "best of" lists, local guides, and lifestyle and entertainment features. The stuff local magazines do and need to do more efficiently (low cost).

At a corporate level, broadcast groups need to pay attention to these macro citizen journalism trends. This is not high school sports coverage, this is all areas of content. This is most certainly the local broadcasters' turf and local stations cannot and will not compete piecemeal for this opportunity. It requires a new operating model that cannot be figured out in the trenches of day-to-day.

Funny web survey feature

2009-10-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

I hate captchas (above) as much as the next guy...but when I saw this question (below) as part of a verification system on an online survey it struck me that perhaps computers were regressing...if a computer can be used to formulate an advanced hedge fund trading algorithm, couldn't a bot learn to do simple math? (Psst...the answer is 5).

Flash Websites In And Around Philly

2009-09-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've been reaching out to a number of advertising and marketing agencies in Philadelphia in advance of a trip I'll be making there shortly to help plan our Hotlist year-3 celebration. I stumbled upon this firm about an hour outside of Philly in New Jersey and wanted to share their website with you:

http://www.1trickpony.com Spend a few minutes clicking around. It's very clever. I love the bus. I think you can even buy a belt buckle.

I also dig this one: http://www.redtettemer.com. Bold.

Flash is a wonderful technology in the hands of people who know how to use it.

More than 3 Million Votes and counting...

2009-09-22T06:22:00.001-07:00

Today, CityVoter announced in a press release that we have passed an important milestone for the company and for our partners nationwide. We've verified more than 3 million votes on behalf of local businesses and media companies. We stand by the results of our contests because we go to great lengths to make sure votes are valid and there is no ballot stuffing. People are encouraged to get people to vote for them, but we make sure votes are legitimate so our contests are fun and fair.

Why is this big news? We only had 2 "best of" city contests in 2006 when we launched our website. This 3 Million number represents a huge amount of engagement, growth, and energy in our cities over the past 3 years. For example, we just finished our 3rd year of voting in Detroit and they had more than 180,000 official votes. We just finished our 3rd year of voting in Denver and they had more than 109,000 official votes. We're smack in the middle of our 2nd year contest in Seattle, and that city is cooking with more than 86,000 votes. Year-over-year, media brands are building social media experiences with CityVoter that really engage their local audiences.

We're proud that people are passionate about local businesses and take time to register to submit their vote. We're even more proud that they take time to write recommendations to help others. In San Diego, our year three contest yielded a 76% increase in recommendations from the year before. And in Indianaopolis, we had 100% increase in recommendations. This is tens of thousands of recommendations in just a few weeks.

I'm very happy to share the news and congratulate our partners and the CityVoter team for keeping true to our mission. There are many online contests that trade integrity for web site traffic and let people vote as many times as they want. We remain focused on discovering the "best of" every city by encouraging people to share their genuine recommendations. Business owners appreciate this and tell us all the time. They love reading all the great feedback from their fans and friends...as of today, we all have more than 3 million reasons to say thank you to their loyal local customers.

Does this taste local to you? Mmm sure does.

2009-09-21T14:26:00.001-07:00

"Your taste. Your town." That's what Frito-Lay's potato chip display reads at my local deli. I've been meaning to collect more photo examples of this, but I tend to have one hand on the steering wheel or one hand on my son when I pass a great example of national advertisers trying to extend their brands locally. For example, there's a billboard I see every day heading home from Citgo gas. It says "Loyal. Local. Like it should be." Not sure what that means, and I'm not sure how my taste in potato chips can be more Boston-ish than Atlanta-ish, but I certainly understand WHY brand advertisers want to connect more deeply with local consumers. We're helping that happen online and in-store. We just need a billboard.

CityVoter's local social media campaigns defined

2009-09-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

CityVoter believes all brands are publishers – especially online. To help brands surround their products and services with quality, dynamic, and local content, CityVoter develops and promotes localized “best of” contests that engage consumers to vote for and share recommendations about their favorite local businesses. We develop a series of white-labeled mini-sites where consumers vote for art museums, salons, gyms, and more than 100 other categories. More importantly, we activate local markets through email and viral marketing. Our engagement model gives brands an immediate online presence as well as point-of-sale and email marketing reach in the markets and content categories they care most about. An example of our “best of” campaign for FOX Television in LA is here: http://myfoxla.com/hotlist and an example of a "best of" campaign for Nature's Cure is here: http://naturescure.everydaydecisions.com. The by-product from all of this is great free promotion for local business owners. That's positive engagement.

Bing now has advanced image search

2009-09-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Bing is Microsoft's new search engine. It is designed to compete with Google and give you a whole new way to find things on the Internet. I'm starting to like it. I really like their new image search. It is much better than Google's because I found it more consistently provides the correct CityVoter link to local business photos.

Below is a screenshot that does a great job capturing the essence of CityVoter. You have a photo of Bristol Brewing Company in Colorado, Corona Cigar Company in Orlando, Muskego Country Club in Milwaukee, and Franco Ristorante in Philadelphia.

Check it out when you have time.

If I were a small business owner

2009-09-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

If I was a local business owner, I would be too busy in this economy to worry about how the internet is changing and effecting my business. I would hear from my friends or my customers that I need to be on Facebook. I would say I am, but they would say, "no, you need to set up a separate account for your business." I would say, "why? who wants to be friends with a business?". I may give it a try, but I would struggle to log in as my business because my browser keeps my cookies and I would post family photos to my customers. I'd be embarrassed but I'd figure that out. Ultimately, I would see that my business way lonely, and I'd feel badly for leaving it there unattended and unloved.

I would see a review written about me on Yelp or CitySearch, and I'd feel helpless and want to fight back. Who was this person writing about me? Why are they so mean? I'd assume it was probably a competitor. They're so jealous. I'd get angrier and really want to fight back but I wouldn't know how. So I'd probably write something nasty to the website and even post my own review saying the other reviewer was wrong. We'd go back-and-forth in public...and eventually the reviewer would have the last word, because that's how those sites work.

Someone would tell me to sign up for Twitter. I would and realize, wow that was easy. Then I would stare at my screen and wonder what should I write and why. I would be confused that people are following me and unsubscribe because I don't like being followed especially by people in other countries who have very explicit photos. Hmm...

What small business owner has time for all of this? Not me.

So I'd go to Google and search the internet for help with the Internet. I'd see search engine optimization companies and consultants. I'd see word of mouth marketers and reputation managers. I'd see digital mavens and gurus and social media conferences. I wouldn't know where to begin...so I'd sign up for Google. That must be safe. That must be what all the other businesses are doing. I'd get an adwords account. I'd spend a few nights reading how it works and I'd set my budget. I'd start getting lots of clicks on my website but I wouldn't know if more people are visiting my store. I would question whether or not I was spending enough money to get results. Google's business center would make some helpful suggestions: spend more and don't run your ads in cities where you don't have a business. I'd try this advice and get more clicks, but still wouldn't be able to tell if more people were coming into my store.

This all brings me back to my first point: If I was a local business owner, I would be too busy in this economy to worry about how the internet is changing and effecting my business.

At CityVoter, we speak to thousands of business owners each month. We worry about promoting their local businesses, so the local business owners don't have to. We've begun using Twitter to promote our contests and our businesses, and we're about to launch new features that make our coupons/insider deals even better. We're even promoting our winners' photos on the iphone app. I would love your feedback and suggestions on what else we can do. It doesn't need to be this hard. You've got a business to run. Give us some great photos...we'll do the rest.

LA Email Newsletters Get a FaceLift

2009-09-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

Next week, we'll be launching new and improved dedicated email newsletters to our 30,000 plus subscribers in that market. Our new email is designed to showcase one great offer. It's been working extremely well in Dallas, Indianapolis, and Houston so we're looking forward to seeing the response when Los Angeles customers feast their eyes on their local deals.

A CityVoter dedicated email: reaches opt-in consumers, can be targeted to people who voted in particular categories, showcases recommendations written by real customers, and has one terrific offer.

Exhaustive directory versus local best of lists

2009-09-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

David Mihm, a writer for Search Engine Land, kindly mentioned CityVoter in a recent article he wrote, and he gave our website credit for doing a great job helping Google maps find and showcase local businesses. He also pointed out that our website is limited because we don't do a good job of providing a longer list of business categories to help small businesses categorize themselves correctly. In his article, he mentions it was hard to find a good place to list a company that specializes in "Environmental Services".

It's a valid point, but it's purposeful. While we welcome all kinds of businesses so people can recommend their favorites, our site is designed to focus on the categories consumers are most passionate about: arts & entertainment, beauty, fashion, weddings, restaurants, health and fitness, etc. We're about best of lists. We focus on these categories and use our voting to filter these lists down to the most popular top 5 businesses in each category. This does not provide a valuable exhaustive directory, it provides an invaluable cheat sheet of must dos/eats/visits.

What if I'm passionate about my environmental services vendor? You can tell us, but we're going to try and stay focused on what we're best at. While we provide useful advertising for contractors, plumbers, and other service vendors, who want to reach local consumers, we would expect consumers to use Angie's List or the Yellow Pages to locate and research those professionals.

We remain stubbornly focused on our core at CityVoter because we believe there is too much noise on directory and review sites to help people use these sites for things they are most interested and passionate about. SEO experts continue to battle us on this by putting their plumber clients in our burger categories, but fortunately our contest and monitoring services work hard to highlight and filter the most popular businesses.

Thanks for the mention, David. Now...if you can just convince KATU or KPTV or KGW to launch their best of Portland, we'd be all set.

Detroit's 4 The Best List is The Best

2009-09-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've been speaking with a lot of ad agencies recently, and they all make up clever words for their services: Socializming, WOMing, exBrandocity, Momania, etc.

Anyway, I have big news, so I want to make up a word too. "Defraudulizing". It's something we do to make sure when people in a city are done voting each year, we have the most accurate "best of" list possible.

The big news...we just finished defraudulizing Detroit (Phony word and alliteration = two points) and it's official: Detroit crushed it. In year 3, WDIV, our partner, collected more than 180,000 votes in two months. That's a new CityVoter record.

More than 65% of voters took time to leave a recommendation for someone else. That's more than 80,000 recommendations this year alone. We'll be announcing winners shortly, but CityVoter and WDIV are enormously proud of our 4 The Best list. It is a wonderful feeling to know we were able to generate all this publicity for local business owners.

Congrats to all the businesses who participated. And congrats Detroiters...this is a phenomenal resource for people trying to discover something new and fun about the motor city. Thank you Heather and team for all your hard work.