Last week while out at the Kelsey Group's ILM:07 conference, one of the recurring themes of the show seemed to be how publishers are delivering performance-based advertising solutions to advertisers that generate quality leads.  To do this, publishers must think about delivering much more than just clicks.  In many cases, they must be able to track consumer behavior across channels. 

To that effect, one major classifieds publisher is taking steps to provide a more holistic view of ROI for advertisers by implementing a suite of tools that offers much more than just reporting on clickthroughs.  Today we're announcing that Boat Trader, a classified-driven Web site linking boat buyers and sellers, will implement eStara Click to Call and Call Tracking technology across its website to help optimize advertiser listings, drive sales conversions and improve communication between buyers and sellers. The company will also be adding eStara Save & Send in the near future to extend the utility of its online listings to other electronic media, such as SMS and social bookmarks.

Ed Lee writes an interesting post for today's Get to the Point newsletter from MarketingProfs, inspired by this post, on well-designed business cards.  Ed's main point is that a well-designed business card not only serves a utilitarian purpose—it can help shape your image.

One of his reasons is that everybody reads them and saves them.  Ed's makes a valid point, but makes no mention of email signatures, which are practically the business card of their age.  Are your signatures static or do they engage recipients?

Are you linking to your blog or website from your signature?  Are you making it easy for people to call you directly, or save your information for later use?

Like business cards, email signatures convey a lot about how you market your business.  They can be much more than just passive forms of providing information.  They can, when done right, also help you engage customers.

It seems rather obvious, but a new study confirms that tracking customer buying behavior across channels can have a tremendous impact on helping companies understand and market to consumers.  A new report by Deloitte Consulting “Look Closer, Look Further: How to Build a Better Business Case for Improving Information Capabilities” finds that the more information companies have about consumer buying patterns, the better companies can make special offers.

This means that companies should be looking at customer data across channels and integrating that data to get a true sense of customer buying patterns.  However, as the author of the report, Jane Griffin, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, points out, "Now if a customer goes into a store, the retailer doesn’t necessarily have information on orders the customer may have placed online and can’t make a personalized offer based on her online activity.”  

While the influence of online research on offline sales is certain, the consumers that begin research online still need to provide context when they walk into a store.  There are companies making inroads in driving traffic from the Web to stores, and while their offerings, along with technologies like Save & Send, make it easy to quantify leads, there's still much work that needs to be done to qualify them and leverage that data across channels. Right now, when a customer walks into a store, there's no way of knowing what they're looking for or if they're a loyal customer.

Unfortunately, the same is true in many cases when consumers transition from the Web to the contact center.  Loyal customers that have already invested time conducting research online must often start over again when they move across channels to place an order over the phone.  Not only is this frustrating for the consumer, but this lack of insight inhibits the ability of businesses to offer relevant cross-sells and up-sells.  Fortunately, solutions like Click to Call and Chat, are helping to bridge this gap. However, as powerful as these communication tools can be just by nature of delivering immediate human contact, they would be less effective without real-time access to the data they produce so that companies could determine (on the fly) what offers work best.

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: