'Net Features : merchantcircle

Facebook Tops in MerchantCircle Merchant Confidence Index

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:30:00 GMT

MerchantCircle, an online network of local businesses, released the results of its Merchant Confidence Index survey which revealed that new local ad offerings from Facebook are seeing increased pick up and may even be putting the pressure on Google and Groupon.

“Facebook and other social networks have already established themselves as important marketing channels for local businesses, and the company is effectively parlaying this popularity into local ad sales,” said Darren Waddell, vice president of marketing at MerchantCircle. “Most local merchants are working with very small budgets and tend to prefer marketing methods that are easy and familiar, so it stands to reason that many merchants will gravitate towards a well-known brand such as Facebook when it comes to trying locally targeted display ads and group buying.”

Survey finding of note include:

- Only 22 percent of merchants report having used Facebook Ads since its launch, but nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of these merchants say that they would use the service again, citing ease of use (67 percent) and the ability to start and stop campaigns (65 percent) as the top reasons for continuing.

- 52 percent responded that familiarity with the Facebook and Google brands would lead them to choose Facebook Deals or Google Offers over competitive offerings. Other reasons for choosing Facebook Deals include bigger audience size (26 percent) and better local targeting (21 percent).

- While three months ago, only 50 percent of merchants who had tried offering a group deal said they would do so again, 77 percent now say they would be willing to offer another daily deal, citing effectiveness in customer acquisition (58 percent), favorable deal structure (30 percent) and profitability of the deal (24 percent) as their top three reasons. Among those who wouldn’t offer another daily deal, 42 percent said that it was not effective in customer acquisition, 25 percent said it was too costly and 24 percent said they lost money.

- The popularity of location-based marketing services has also dropped over the past quarter. Data shows that 22 percent of businesses are using Facebook Places to market their business, while just seven percent are using Foursquare. This is trending downward from the last survey in January 2011, when 32 percent said they were using Facebook Places and nine percent said they were using Foursquare.

- MerchantCircle’s data shows that local marketing budgets continue to be very small: 61 percent of local merchants are spending less than $2,500 a year on marketing, and 73 percent have no plans to raise their budgets this year. Time is also a critical issue for merchants, with 37 percent citing lack of time and resources as their top marketing challenge.

New Mobile Merchant App Keeps Retailers Connected

Linc Wonham — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:00:00 GMT

MerchantCircle has released a new iPhone application that it’s calling the first mobile app designed specifically for local merchants. The new Merchant Mobile App enables local merchants to create, upload and manage content such as daily deals, photos and status updates across multiple social networks.

Users can also use the app to respond to customer inquiries, manage their business listing, monitor reviews and engage with their merchant networks. Built on top of MerchantCircle’s new API, the Merchant Mobile App empowers merchants to create and post content once in MerchantCircle and push directly to their Facebook and Twitter streams.

Key features of the Mobile Merchant App include the following:

•    Deals: Create deals on the fly using MerchantCircle’s pre-defined templates, monitor and manage deals and upload live photos associated with your deals
•    Showcase: Take photos of your work or business and instantly post them to your listing, including before-and-after shots that help tell your story
•    Photos: Remotely build your business’ photo gallery and post photos directly to your page
•    Brand Management: View and edit your business listing information, monitor and manage your reviews in real-time and maintain your showcase photos
•    Status Updates: Create status updates and photos and publish to MerchantCircle, Facebook and Twitter in just one step.
•    Inbox: Create and reply to email messages and new customer inquiries on the go
•    News Feed: Stay on top of all the activity in and around your network, comment on merchant updates and respond to comments on your updates
•    Connections: Manage your connections and invite new merchants to join your network

Visit MerchantCircle for more information on the new mobile app for merchants.

20 User Review Websites Critical to Small Business

Mike Phillips — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:00:00 GMT

According to an internal analysis of small business search results, Marchex – a provider of small business marketing products – found that more than 80 percent of results did not point to the websites of those businesses. Instead, they pointed to social network results and consumer reviews.

The businesses surveyed were those of restaurants, travel, legal, beauty, plumbing and automotive – all highly susceptible to consumer reviews. These businesses and similar consumer-facing companies need to be aware of where they stand in search results with their own websites, compared to the rankings of reviews and comments from social media users.

"Marchex has seen how consumer reviews are impacting the bottom line of our small business customers, and we wanted to highlight how big the impact really is," said Ryan Fritzky, Director of Small Business Product Development at Marchex.

Increasingly, however, every business is being reviewed by consumers. Oftentimes the reviews and ratings might not even be justified. So, not only is it important to know where you stand on these sites but also to have resources ready to speak out (or type) on your behalf. That means recruiting brand advocates. Of course, the best way to do that is to provide quality experiences for your users and to respond quickly to any problems before they become viral hate campaigns.

Some obvious places to look for your small business reviews are social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.com, and Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo Local, City Search and Local.com. Below are a dozen more places where your business or products might be getting reviewed.

InsiderPages.com
Mainly focused on rating those in the medical and health care field. Insider Pages also features reviews on restaurants, beauty and home & garden.

MerchantCircle.com
MerchantCircle focuses on promoting businesses by using online user reviews via a pseudo paid advertising system. Businesses can create their own local coupon book.

JudysBook.com
Judy's Book provides review guides to users, such as "Top 10 Auto Mechanics" and so on. Businesses can create their accounts and get help with promotion and SEO.

AngiesList.com
Angie's List is a paid service for consumers to get certified, unbiased reviews of local businesses. It is a large and trusted network, claiming more than one million members.

TripAdvisor.com
As the name suggest, TripAdvisor helps users filter travel destinations via user reviews. A must-know for travel businesses.

OpenTable.com
Because OpenTable.com allows users to make reservations immediately, good reviews on this site can help restaurants take advantage of the convenience factor.

BBB.org
The Better Business Bureau is a relative newcomer to the user review scene but its trusted reputation makes it a must-monitor for every business.

Buzzillions.com
Buzzillions' focus is products -- electronics, computers, sports equipment, clothing, etc. Manufacturers and retailers would be wise to research their products here.

Epinions.com
Part of the Shopping.com family, Epinions solicits reviews on just about anything a person can buy online -- from autos to office supplies.

Wize.com
Wize reports "the best & worst products" by matching products based on consumers' needs. The main focus is electronics and appliances.

PowerReviews.com
In tandem with Buzzillions, PowerReviews looks to connect consumers with reviews about the producty they care about, through SEO, mobile, social networks and more.

SiteJabber.com
SiteJabber provides reviews of websites as a whole. Obviously, every online property should make sure good things are being said about them, or find a brand advocate to get the ball rolling. They claim more than 450,000 people search websites for reviews every month.

Be sure not to miss Website Magazine's May edition, where we tackle the subject of crisis control for online businesses! Subscribe or renew now and get a free copy of our new book, Web 360!

For Merchants, Facebook's Value Can't Be Beat

Linc Wonham — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:16:00 GMT

Two new studies conducted independently of one another have arrived at the same conclusion – that Facebook marketing pays off for small businesses on the Web.

Daily deals site ChompOn has attempted to determine the actual short-term values that different social media marketing actions bring to businesses, with some interesting results. The company analyzed the conversion rates of websites for which it ran deals and marketed through Facebook and Twitter, calculating the gross revenues that each social action brought to the sponsors of every deal.

ChompOn determined that the action with the highest value was a Facebook Share, worth $14 apiece to the gross revenues. Facebook Likes were the next valuable action at $8 apiece, followed by Tweets at $5 and Twitter Follows at $2. What the study admittedly could not quantify was the longer-term value that these social marketing actions provide companies in terms of customer loyalty.

Those are pretty impressive returns for what are essentially free marketing channels, which brings us to the study conducted by MerchantCircle – the largest online network of local business owners in the U.S. The quarterly Merchant Confidence Index survey of more than 8,500 small and local business owners reveals that Facebook is now the most widely used online marketing method for local merchants, overtaking the top spot from Google.

Facebook marketing among local merchants jumped from 50 percent to 70 percent in the past year, followed by Google at 66 percent and Twitter at 40 percent. Another 32 percent of local merchants said they use Facebook Places for location check-ins, compared to just 9 percent that have used Foursquare.

An important note to take away from the MerchantCircle survey is that because 75 percent of respondents said they lacked sufficient knowledge of mobile marketing strategies, only 15 percent of local merchants are presently engaged in a mobile marketing campaign.

MerchantCircle Instant Website

Administrator — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:19:00 GMT

Local business network MerchantCircle announced its "Instant Website" service. Users will be able to select a customized web address through the MerchantCircle platform and instantly create a website under that domain name. Included in the monthly service, MerchantCircle provides all web hosting and content creation tools (for developing coupons, blogs, images, newsletters), with business information automatically pulled and updated from their MerchantCircle listing onto a separate website.

The Instant Website product from Merchant Circle will be offered for between $14.99 and $6.99 per month depending on the number of web addresses selected.