When we started Clickable, we decided to only create products or features that deliver measurable ROI, either by driving profit or by saving time. With this disciplined approach, we effectively 'built the business backwards' - by strictly listening to the customer, and watching the data. As a result, we recently entered the local advertising market with Clickable Platform. Platform is the first white-label solution that allows online advertising resellers to rapidly scale online advertising and lead-generation programs profitably to a full continuum of local businesses.

As we developed Platform over the past year, we became intimate with market forces that are hindering the growth and long-term sustainability of the local search advertising industry. To better understand the challenges and shed light on the opportunities, we’re thrilled to release today a new research report authored by Borrell Associates, a research and consulting firm that tracks local ad spending. We commissioned this analysis of the economics of local online advertising to help strengthen the performance of search advertising for small and local businesses.

We’d love your feedback on this research, which you can download for free. We present many conclusions and insights, and we’re extremely interested in your frontline feedback to incorporate into the products we build for our own customers and partners.

Key findings from the Borrell Associates report:

• Local Search Advertising Is A Massive Opportunity: Locally placed search advertising in the U.S. is projected to grow 30 percent over the next five years, from $4.1 billion in 2008 to $5.3 billion in 2013.
• Winners Will Adopt Scalable Technology And Recalibrate Their Economics: This growth will be led primarily by advertising service providers that adopt scalable technology infrastructure and recalibrate their economics to allocate more customer investment to search media spend.
• Customer Churn Is A Major Challenge: Many online advertising resellers and affiliates, who service local businesses, churn half their customers within a year’s time, and some lose as many as 90 percent. This often is due to missed expectations and a lack of return on investment for local-business customers. 
• Success Requires ROI, Easily Understood: Critical points for local advertising success include correctly pricing advertising products for local businesses, and devoting a greater percent of their investment to advertising on their behalf. Most important, advertising products and value must be easily understood by local businesses. That requires a shift from selling Web site clicks to selling measurable leads and phone calls.
• Tools, Simple Reporting and ROI Central: Affiliates and resellers of search advertising who do not invest in sophisticated technologies will continue to see high levels of customer attrition. In response, new affiliates and resellers who optimize and scale SEM advertising performance through simple software tools and reporting - that clearly communicate and deliver value - will be poised to capture a larger share of the local advertising marketplace.  
• Managing Customer Expectations, Retention & Up-Selling Key To Growth: The most successful local search advertising service companies will not only manage expectations through simple reporting and greater ROI, but by migrating customers to higher average monthly media spends.

Again, the report is downloadable for free, and we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section below. And if you’re interested in learning more about our Platform and partner program, you can contact us here.

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The Great Pay-Per-Click Scam!

Most businesses do not get the results they want from SEM because they have nothing to say, say what they do say poorly, and don't listen.

Their websites are poorly designed; their products and services are not better than their competitions'; they don't communicate well using large font sizes (much less audio and video); they don't use text, photo, audio and video testimonials well; they don't pay attention to Social Media Optimization strategies; and they don't have automated or effective CRM or sales systems. Most SEM companies don't help businesses do any of these things well.

Many technology companies that sell individual services do not tell business owners, "Gee, the problem is You," and give internet advertising a bad rap. I hear, "I hired this company to advertise online and we got a few clicks but no leads," all the time. Well....duh!

"The Great Pay-per-Click Scam" is that Search Engine Marketers know all about their own Churn rates but still keep selling their services, instead of forcing every advertising to go through some kind of market research, strategic positioning, usability, copywriting, and sales training bootcamp!

Hey Dave, platform sounds pretty slick - when is it actually available?  Seeing the press release in April made me think it was coming soon.  

Join us for a Free Webinar on June 11 As David posted on Monday, we just released new research that examines

Thanks for your question, the Clickable Platform is live, and in use today – we actually started building the product last year with leading media companies.  Clickable's white label solution powers large-scale online lead generation/search engine marketing for local business advertising customers. Clickable does all of the work – search engine marketing campaign development, conversion (phone and e-mail tracking) set-up, management and reporting – all under the partner’s brand, to their targeted customers.

Hopefully this adds some clarity.

Warm regards,

David

Co-Founder & CEO

Clickable, Inc.

This really good feature

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