Local Advertising Journal's Nick Stamoulis talks up the benefits of pay-per-call advertising in this post.  For those of you interested in learning more, we encourage you to check out this Webinar we hosted over the summer with Superpages.com.

By Robyn Rose, VP of Marketing, Superpages.com and John Federman, CEO, eStara

With the Yellow Pages print and online directories, local search and mobile local search converging, advertisers are now obtaining leads from multiple sources. More savvy consumers are adapting to the Internet, and the importance for marketers to integrate their online and offline information is clear.

It is critical for advertisers to begin advertising in the local search space, and delivering quality leads through local search is clearly a way to convince advertisers to do so. Many people identify local search as being associated with service-based businesses – plumbers, pizza places – but the reality is that it incorporates major product categories, including automobiles and jewelry.

For a local or national business, it is important to advertise at all stages of the consumer buying cycle. Also, advertisers must key-in on the advertising geography – especially at the stage when a consumer is deciding to contact the business or purchase a product and/or service. For example, national companies should focus on distributing leads to local franchise locations or retail outlets, and small- to medium-sized businesses should focus on the various products they carry or the services they offer.

For Superpages.com advertisers, exposure to consumers in various platforms is enabled through strategic partnerships, thus providing leads from consumers via online and mobile searches. Although money is being spent online, 97 percent of U.S. retail spending is still spent offline according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Much of the transaction, especially in the local space, takes place offline.

Publishers and agencies are leveraging call tracking and monitoring programs to improve performance across local and national channels and close in on that “last mile” to conversion. Extending the utility of online ads through services like click to call and save & send allows consumers to connect with businesses immediately or save directory listings in their preferred format for later use. More importantly, these services provide granular ROI data for marketers to prove performance to their advertisers.

Consumers have buying power in the local search space, and compared to the average Internet buyer, the local search buyer has a higher buying power index according to comScore. The value of local search and the importance of measuring the quality of a lead are paramount for any online and offline advertising campaign to be successful.

Cross-posted at Local Search Guide. 

John Federman writes a piece for the Media Post Performance Insider blog this week that looks at some of the advantages of incorporating call tracking in search and online marketing.

According to the story, thanks to call tracking, marketers, publishers and advertisers benefit from a new level of accountability in both online and offline campaigns:

Next week in Denver, search marketers will gather for the SMX Local & Mobile conference.  One of the major challenges with local and mobile search marketing lies with tracking: Although people search for information online, most purchases are still made at brick-and-mortar stores. This session focuses on techniques for measuring the effectiveness of your local and mobile search marketing campaigns regardless of where the ultimate conversions occur.

On October 1, one of the conference's panels will cover the issue of tracking clicks and calls to conversion.  eStara's Cid Jenkins will join a panel of experts, including executives from AOL, Keyrelevance and DoubleClick to discuss best practices and trends in this space.

We hope to see you there. 

DM News today is running a profile of Superpages.com's pay for calls program that looks at how the company leverages call tracking to support its advertisers.   According to Robyn Rose, vice president of marketing for Superpages.com, “Local search is about connecting consumers with businesses in the most relevant geography for the consumer.  Local search is frequently about an offline transaction made with a service-based business or at a retail store. Consumers are getting smarter, and while research is done online for products and services, the majority of transactions still occur offline.”

Pay per call is one way to reach local consumers and provide better exposure to local small and midsize businesses and local locations of regional and national businesses,