Category Archives: Sales & Marketing Roundtable

Why Advertisers Love Directory Websites

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directory advertisersThe last several years have seen a growing shift of advertising dollars leaving the more traditional mediums of print media and moving to various areas online. Within this realm it can still be a challenge for advertisers to sift through the expanses of the internet and find the best places to spend their money online. This is where online directories have been able to gain a solid foothold in the market. Most modern advertisers see directories websites as an attractive option, the two main reasons for this are fairly simple: highly targeted audiences and easily measurable ROI.

Highly Targeted Audiences

With common uses including local search sites, product directories, membership guides, and yellow page sites online directories by nature are highly focused sites. They typically have a common focus by geographical location, industry, subject matter or all of the above. This format tends to bring people together, typically very like-minded groups of people who share the same interests and habits. This provides the ideal landscape for potential marketers and advertisers who are looking to reach a very specific type of audience to get their ads in front of.

Think Niche

Many niche businesses and industries have benefited through the use of online directories. They have made it easy to build sites with focused subject matter and relevant listings and pair them with a blog or set of articles and social media posts that are all related to a very specific industry or niche.

No longer would you need to read a national golf publication to find the best local courses and instructors in your area, instead you could a find local site like LakeNonaGolfDirectory.com and be able to quickly find golf course and instructors right in the area of Lake Nona. This level of targeting is beneficial for both the user and for potential advertisers. From the advertisers perspective they would be able to know that any ads listed on this directory site would be targeting a predominantly male audience between the ages of 35-55, who live in the Lake Nona area and are interested in golf. Gaining access to this highly targeted audience is something that many would be willing to spend their advertising dollars on.

Additionally, platforms such as eDirectory utilize a search feature. This can help potential sponsors to know exactly what keywords and phrases site visitors are searching for and which ones they would like to pay to be found under.

Let’s see an example:

There is an online directory site for Los Angeles area salons. Right off the bat, advertisers would already know that these site visitors are from or near the Los Angeles area and that they are interested in things that a salon can offer, such as beauty products, hair styling, make up, manicures, pedicures and more. Taking it one step further, the directory site owner can share with potential advertisers that the most frequently searched term on their site is “gel manicures”. This can provide a perfect opportunity for a local Los Angeles based salon to post ads related to their gel manicure pricing options and upcoming specials. Plus they could pay for a Premium listing on this directory and make sure they include “gel manicures” as primary keywords in the settings for their listing, ensuring they would show up during searches of this term.

Measurable ROI img-newsletter-how-to-monetize-3 As a marketer, web banners, sponsored content, and email newsletter sponsorships provide keen insight into the success of promotional messages, advertising offers and how responsive a given audience is to that message and offer. These are key factors for marketers and advertisers to be able to gauge their success and determine whether they find their spending to be worthwhile and something they will continue to invest in. A lack of such data can be nerve-wracking at best for an advertiser and lead to rash, uninformed decisions being made.

Luckily, this data is easily attainable through online directory site analytics and reporting, plus pairing your site with platforms like Google Analytics and Saleforce can provide an even higher level of insight. This nformation will provide a directory site owner with valuable selling points that can be shared with potential advertisers to portray the potential for success and gaining a favorable return on investment (ROI) from their ad.

How many people see the ads? How many people clicked on them? Of those people, how many people visited the ad’s website? Which pages did they click on when they were there and at what point did they abandon the site? How many people opened the email, how many people that opened that email came to the company’s site, or furthermore, how many people made a purchase because of that ad? The ways to break down and dissect the numbers into cost per lead, cost per conversion, cost per click—they’re all limitless.

Here is a good article by Forbes about the 10 Online Marketing Metrics You Need to Be Measuring. As a directory site owner, one can use these metrics to not only learn from the data and improve their site but also to gain insight on their site users and gather information that can be shared to help sway potential advertisers and sponsors to become involved with the site.

Interested in developing a profitable directory? Want to discuss ideas about how to better monetize your existing site? Send an email to: marketing@edirectory.com

Marketing an Online Directory

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Marketing an Online Directory

Marketing an Online Directory

Marketing an Online Directory

Whether you have an existing directory you’re working from, or you’re using eDirectory to get your business off the ground, there are many ways to better position your site for success. While we provide our customers with a robust platform to develop an information-packed, highly interactive directory, there are many steps that need to be taken to help make your site a valuable advertising or promotional vehicle. If you want to know how to effectively marketing an online directory, keep reading this post.

Marketing an Online Directory

Marketing an Online Directory

Think Niche

When they hear the word ‘niche’ many people often think it means restricted or constrained, but niche directories are almost always the most successful. Just because your focus or scope may be narrow, it doesn’t mean your audience or pool of potential advertisers is at all limited. Let’s say I want to develop a business directory for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I want to include a list of a variety of types of businesses, shops, stores, business services, restaurants, happy hours, drink specials, events, and more. Keep in mind this will likely include tens of thousands of listings and with something this broad, I’m bound to rub up against competitors with similar directories. With a broader focus and other competitors in a similar space, my value proposition loses quite a bit of steam.

That is, I can’t offer a poignantly focused arena for advertisers to promote their business. As we’ll learn later, nearly all advertisers have a very specific type of visitor they’re hoping to attract and your value proposition should reflect that.

If we narrow this down to something on a little smaller scale, it becomes exponentially easier to compile information and I can profile my audience in a much simpler way. By changing the focus of my directory from the city of Pittsburgh to a sub-section like North Huntingdon Township, I offer a more niche, personalized resource where I stand less of a chance to go up against bigger sites like Yelp, City Search, and About.com. At the same time, however, the site still offers thousands of companies in the region a highly targeted advertising vehicle for their business or services.

The same concept applies to product directories, or services guides as well. One could try and develop a physician directory, or a wholesale manufacturer directory, but a simple search in Google for similar sites shows we’re up against many existing platforms with the same business model.

If, however, we are able to hone the focus to something more specific, like Nephrologists Directory or Beer wholesale Manufacturers Directory, we have a more personalized product to offer our potential advertisers.

After all, Bob’s Wholesale Beer Distributor is much more apt to advertise on your website than something broader, like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. In the next document of this two-part series entitled “Selling a Directory,” we’ll cover how this becomes a very powerful selling point.

Listings, Listings, Listings

It’s difficult to sell ideas or concepts; people have more faith and confidence in tangible products or solutions. It’s not easy to sell web design services if you don’t have a portfolio of sites you’ve done in the past.

Similarly, it’s difficult to sell advertisers on your product (directory) before it’s fully developed. Some of our clients, after purchasing a license, immediately pursue advertisers for an immediate ROI, before ever having developed any content on their site. While we understand our clients want to justify their spending, it’s always best to show them a fully functional, populated directory. It’s important that when you approach potential advertisers, you tell a story and physically show them how your site can help bring more visibility to their business. There’s no question that populating your listings takes work, but our industry partners such as datadepot.com provide data and listings to help fill your directory with information your visitors are looking for.

From barbershops in Santa Barbra to Nephrologists in Nebraska, Data Depot is a great resource to help get the information your directory. Content or listings are the heart of your site and without them, you make it impossible to achieve organic (natural) growth on search engines. Without organic search rankings, your website traffic from these search engines is extremely limited. Without website traffic, your directory has no value to the advertisers. Your user will likely search in two different ways, but regardless of how they search, it’s vital that we have the content in place to make sure our organic search rankings rise for searches that match our site. Let’s go back to the example of having a directory of Nephrologists. Someone looking for such a physician will search one of two ways:

“Washington DC Nephrologists”

“Nephrologist Dr. Zimmerman”

In the first search scenario, the user isn’t certain of which doctor they want to go to but relies on a directory that we’ve developed to help them find that doctor. In the other instance, we know the name and location of the doctor that we’re looking for, but we’re not quite sure of his or her contact information.

If we have a list of Nephrologists in Washington DC or in the second case, Dr. Zimmerman in our directory, we’ll most definitely be a match on both of these searches. As we continue to be matched with these search terms, our search rankings will continue to increase. If we don’t have the directory properly populated with all of the data to support search terms like this, we can’t achieve the web traffic we need to gain the business of advertisers.

If you have any questions or would like to further discuss how to market an online directory, we would welcome a phone call or e-mail anytime. Reach out to eDirectory’s team and start your online directory project today.

4 Key Benefits of Responsive Design

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  1. No Need for a Separate Mobile Site:  With a responsive design you have one website and one URL. This saves you the time and money to not have to build an entire mobile website from scratch. It also saves you from needing to double your SEO efforts to cover another platform. Additionally, if you have a responsive website, you will be able to share social links for just one URL, and when the site does get shared, wherever the link is viewed – whether on a mobile, tablet, or on desktop – all of the content will be clear and easy to navigate.
  2. A Better User Experience:  You want to be able to share your site’s content with your users. Having a user-friendly site makes it easier for you to do just that. A responsive design places an emphasis on designing for the user. If visitors are browsing a site via their phone or tablet, they should be able to view all of its content as easily as desktop users. Going responsive is the most effective way to make the most of mobile and tablet traffic, and to offer visitors the best possible user experience.
  3. Google Recommends It:  That’s right, the one and only Google recommends responsive web design as the preferred way to reach mobile users. They even favor mobile-optimized sites in their search results done on mobile devices. This means having a responsive design for your site can be as good as gold when it comes to SEO.
  4. It Can Lower Your Bounce Rate:  If your site is not optimized for mobile users than chances are your bounce rate is going to be much higher than you’d like. If the content of your site can’t easily be distinguished or just doesn’t look that good then users aren’t going to stick around. However, with a responsive design the look and feel of your site will be functional and neatly organized. You won’t have to compromise on your content and your visitors won’t be looking for the door.

Check out eDirectory’s responsive design and the full list of features here.

 

5 Ways to Generate Revenue for Your Directory

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Revenue

Whether you are just getting started or you’ve been running a directory for years, eDirectory makes it easy to earn money from your site.

Here are 5 quick ways to generate revenue from your directory:

  1. Listings and Events

The Listings and Events modules make it easy to create different membership levels for your users to add their listings or events to your directory. Easily create different levels of visibility and features for each package (i.e. Silver, Gold, Diamond Level packages), showing fields like video, images, or more detailed contact information only for members who are paying more. You have full flexibility to configure and price what is in each level.

  1. Classifieds

The Classifieds module lets your site members sell anything they wish, using clean categorization and easy organization. Just like the Listings and Events modules you can control the package levels and create different options for each. Provide higher paying options to show more detailed descriptions, map views for location, photos and more.

  1. Articles

The Articles module gives your members the opportunity to contribute their own content. You can provide access to the articles by setting a price for your members who want to submit something. Sit back and earn some revenue while your members save you time and effort by creating content for you. As the site administrator you will have the control to edit and approve any new articles before they go live.

  1. Banner Ads

Provide the opportunity for your members or outside sponsors to display targeted banner advertisements on your site. eDirectory’s built-in options allow you to sell ads at different price points on the top banner (728 x 90), bottom banner (468 x 60), top right (120 x 90) and through sponsored links (180 x 66). You will have the ability to sell a spot and configure it however you wish, be that via price per impressions or for a set period of time. You can even take out some of the legwork of selling ads yourself and implement your own Google AdSense account to streamline your ad sales and start generating revenue with ease.

  1. Build Custom Packages

Develop custom sponsor packages to group any number of the above options together and offer at one set price, with discounts or special promotions. You can set up promotions such as offering a sponsor a banner at a discounted price when they buy a listing on your site. If you run multiple directory sites you can offer multi-site packages where sponsors can buy listings on multiple sites within the same order.

The package builder will even allow you to offer options for offline sponsorships. For example, offer a listing plus a tradeshow sponsorship, or a listing plus a print publication sponsorship. Anything you can imagine is possible with the package builder, use it to bundle up the things you believe your visitors will want and provide them with great value.

 

Payment Collection Made Easy

eDirectory’s built-in payment processing allows for self-service checkout for your members so you won’t have to lift a finger to generate some revenue. The integrated payment gateways allow you to set monthly, yearly or a custom amount of days for each recurring payment’s renewal period. The system is also set up to automatically send out email notifications to remind your members when their renewal is due and help you to automate your revenue collection process.

 

Reminder: SEO Crash Course Webinar tomorrow at 10:00AM

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A quick reminder that we’ll be conducting a complimentary SEO Crash Course webinar tomorrow, October 10th at 10:00AM EST.

Some things we’ll cover in the webinar
-What is SEO?
-A brief History of SEO
-Black Hat SEO
-First steps to Optimizing
-It’s All About the Keywords
-On Site Optimizations
-Off Site Optimizations
-Leveraging Social Media
-How can eDirectory Help?
-Additional Resources

For those interested in learning the basics of SEO and what you can do to better optimize your directory site, this is a great presentation.

Hope to see you there!

New Webinar Dates Posted

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Check out the list of new webinar dates posted in the ‘resources’ section of our website.

A quick synopsis on each of the upcoming presentations

How to Steer Your Site to Success – an overview on steps to making your site have better potential for success. These include strategy in selecting a domain name, introductory SEO tips, engaging with your listing holders and putting the right partnerships in place to help your site

SEO Roundtable – Submit your site or watch live as your peers sites are critiqued on they could be better optimized to increase search traffic.

Free Group Training – Free of cost introductory training course conducted by Jessica Delucchi. Great for new users as well as those hoping to become a bit more familiar with the system

SEO Crash course – While a lot of people know about SEO, very few people know what goes into making your site a well oiled SEO machine. We’ll cover the history of SEO, the basics of on site optimizations as well as the best approach to launching a successful backlink campaign.

A Case for Calculated Image Name Optimization

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I work with dozens of clients on their sites, from marketing, to SEO, sales and package creation.

I was looking over the Google Webmaster Tools account for a client that’s running a local search site. They get about 20,000 impressions a month and for a niche concentrated site, the traffic is pretty good. They’ve found success in producing unique content via the blog (news aggregation) and rank pretty well on alot of their targeted search terms.

One thing I noticed on their webmaster account:
Webmaster Tools

While this is a local search site, take a look at some of the terms their ranking pretty well on, and consequently, getting traffic from:
“You Serious Clark” and “Robert Stack”

Robert Stack is the famous voice and face behind the television show Unsolved Mysteries. We’ll let this video explain the other one:

I went through the blog and found well optimized images — the only thing that can explain WHY a local search site would get traffic on these types of terms.

The image was called “you-serious-clark.jpeg” and the other was called “Robert-stack.jpeg” Two completely off topic images put in a blog in a well optimized format which is driving traffic to their site. Imagine how well this can work on more relevant, appropriate images where you’re optimizing your site on such keyword-heavy terms?

Top 5 Ways to Jumpstart Your Directory’s Search Traffic Today

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1.) It’s all about the listings. While it may be a bit difficult to generate traffic from long tail search terms via business listings, they will eventually be what bring people to your site, what keeps them on your site and what will bring them back in the future.
2.) Quick, easy and relevant back links. Find online publications, websites, blogs, forums and other relevant publications where you can market your site and what it offers. Remember, as much as it is a backlink, it’s also an opportunity to share your site with others and tell them what it’s all about.
3.) Pump out the unique content. Search engines love fresh content, so feed them what they’re looking for. Consistently publishing blog posts, articles or whitepapers is a great way to serve search engines the fresh, unique content they’re looking to index and serve up in search results.
4.) Be the authoritative voice of your space. Similar to #3, getting more involved in topics most relevant to your site’s subject matter and covering relevant stories through interviews, feature stories, grand openings, conferences, tradeshows or events. If you’re running a local search site and a Mario’s restaurant opens up in the neighborhood, a feature story about their grand opening and an interview with the owner or Chef are exactly the types of content people look for. In addition to producing unique content, you’re also producing content that is likely to get back linked. After all, how likely is Mario to post your article in his ‘reviews’ section on his website, or share the story on twitter, facebook, etc.
5.) Keep the site up to date. Out of date, inaccurate information can really damage the integrity of your directory. Keep your site up to date is huge to drawing more search traffic in. At the same time, keeping your site up to date gives your site visitors faith in publication. The more they know your site is getting updated, the more often they will visit your site.

What’s Buzzing in the World of Online Directories – Top 5 Types of Directories

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One of the best parts of my job is seeing the creativity people bring into our software. The ideas entrepreneurs and businesses have to run sites that user our software are sometimes nothing short of mind blowing. From some of the biggest publishers in the world, to directories of certified mold inspectors, the truth is, we’ve seen it all.

A lot of people will call us or write an email outlining their idea and how they would use eDirectory power their site. What many people don’t often ask is, “What are the most popular kinds of directories” or “What are some of the most successful types of directories you see.” While some of the most successful sites using our software seem to often times be the most niche and obscure, there have been a trend of types of directories that are gaining traction.

1.) Green Directories – Everything today is about being more conscious of our carbon footprint, and most importantly, recognizing our environmental ignorance for the last few thousand years. Hybrid cars, solar powered buildings and shopping bags, much of our world is focused on green-powered products and online directories can serve as a great resource to connect people with all that is green. Whether that is businesses, products or events, eDirectory’s software has powered countless numbers of green directories. This trend isn’t going anywhere, either.

2.) Local Search Sites – Still perhaps the most popular use of our software, local search sites and portals are on the rise with the buzz and growth of local search. We’re seeing local search site owners compete with newspaper and other print publishers in their market.

3.) Magazine Directories – if you run a magazine, online directories can not only provide an additional revenue stream to your business, it can also provide a valuable tool to your site visitor. Supplier/Vendor/Parts-Acccessories and other industry-related directories are becoming increasingly popular with magazine publishers.

4.) Dispensary Directories – with the growth of medicinal marijuana dispensaries in states like Colorado and California, we’re starting to see a significant increase in dispensary-related directories that help patients find nearby facilities.

5.) Legal Directories – in addition to other professional directories, one that seems to always be most popular are legal-related directories. The trick here is developing these types of directories in either a limited geographic region or with a limited scope of practice.
Examples: Pittsburgh Attorney Directory or a Nationwide Medical Malpractice Attorney directory. Either a thin vertical focus or thin geographic focus.

If you’re interested in discussing your directory idea or strategy, shoot an email to marketing@edirectory.com

Case Study – American Ceramic Society’s Implementation of eDirectory to Increase Member Engagement

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It’s not too often we have the opportunity to talk about the work we do with non profits and member-based organizations. When you think of online directories and the implementation of eDirectory, you often think of local search sites, buyer’s guides, yellow page sites, dining guides or vendor/supplier directories that are focused on driving traffic and generating revenue.

While most of our users are focused on revenue and site traffic, non profit organizations use eDirectory as a way to improve member engagement. Most not for profit industry organizations, like the American Ceramic Society, have a strong editorial presence in their field, producing magazines, journals, yearly reports and other online content. The other facet to their organization is very much member focused. These organizations work to understand issues going on in their industry that may be causing their members pain, and providing the resources and tools to help advance the industry as a whole.

When I learned that the American Ceramic Society was using our software, I was interested in sitting down with their Director of IT and Web Services, Scott Freshour, to understand how eDirectory worked within their organization. I found that after developing an internal system, and working with one of our competitors, they came to us to try and develop a advertising and marketing vehicle to their members, but also, develop the foundation for a directory that would also be printed to a paper-based directory.