The MerchantCircle Blog
The MerchantCircle blog lets local and small business owners know what's going on in their marketing world. Whether it's online marketing solutions, yellow page directory statistics, business video solutions, or general merchant musings, we make sure you're informed.
Monday, March 31, 2008
If you haven't taken a look recently - MerchantCircle continues to expand and refine the web's easiest turn-key advertising solutions. We recently added LocalPlus, where you can list your business in more nearby cities. We know your business is growing and we'll help get you more customers, no matter where they live.
Also, be sure to check out our Local Directory Submission service. We'll place you on every major directory service on the web and make sure your information is correct.
Sincerely,
Kevin L.
MerchantCircle Community Relations
Labels: Local Directory Submission, LocalPlus, Merchant Circle, MerchantCircle
Monday, March 24, 2008
Being an addict isn't all that bad - and MerchantCircle has its fair share. By addict, we mean those that visit the site more than 30 times a month. Of MerchantCircle's nearly 400,000 members, 2% are labeled as addicts, while 26% are 'regulars' or those that visit at least once a month**. Many of these visitors spend time building content on their site, but also checking out what their business neighbors are up to. We previously built a news feed feature that lets merchants know when businesses in their network have built content, including coupons, ads, uploaded pictures, written blogs and newsletters.
We all want to know what everyone is doing these days. MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn are just some of the sites that have made this part of our virtual world. We believe in the power of the masses. We trust businesses with positive reviews. We trust what other people are doing. That's why we've built a section on MerchantCircle listings that show what pages other people are viewing as well. We've also made given the first-reviewer of a listing, a special notation for being the first to review.
Trust the masses - invite your best customers to review your business. And don't worry - being an addict sounds good for once!
Sincerely,
Kevin L.
Community Relations
**Quantcast data
Labels: Merchant Circle, MerchantCircle, Newsfeed
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
As our MerchantCircle membership steadily grows (currently at more than 385,000 merchants), our visitors to MerchantCircle business listings grow as well. Today, we average 5 million unique visitors and nearly 10 million page views a month! To help our merchants with the added flow of visitors to their pages, we thought it was time to enhance our maps by letting visitors get driving directions from their starting location.
Not only can customers get driving directions to their favorite businesses, they can also browse nearby, maybe for after-dinner ice-cream, a movie theater, or a place to stay on vacation. Merchants can also use the feature to meet and greet their business neighbors online, possibly cross-promote and strike up new business partnerships! The possibilities are endless… enjoy.
Sincerely,
Kevin L.
Community Relations
Labels: Merchant Circle, MerchantCircle, Online Driving Directions
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
A lot has been written about the importance of reviews in driving local traffic (here and here) and user engagement (here). At MerchantCircle, we encourage our members not only to ask their customers to write reviews but to create all kinds of fresh content to drive consumer traffic. As part of this effort, we set out to understand the relationship between content creation and pageviews.
Our analysis of MerchantCircle listings with varying degrees of content reveals:
The “Free” pageview numbers represent the relative average pageviews during January for our free members (i.e., those who aren’t buying our SEM products). The “Starter” pageview numbers represent the relative average January pageviews for our members who’ve purchased our entry-level “StarterCircle” package for $29/month.
Here are the relative pageview stats in chart form:
It’s amazing to see the value both groups derive when they take the time to create content on their listing. And for those who take advantage of every opportunity to create content, (i.e., those who have created all content types including newsletters and network ads) the rewards are huge! Interesting to note that each content type added drives incremental pageviews versus “No activity”. But, the real benefits come when merchants create multiple types of content on their listing.
We here at MerchantCircle have long believed that getting traction online requires a real investment of either time or money. Our data suggests that for those merchants who invest both time (to create fresh content) and money (in advertising dollars), the rewards are significant.
Darren Waddell
Sr. Director of Marketing
MerchantCircle
Labels: customer reviews, Local Search, Merchant Insights, MerchantCircle, online advertising, pageviews
Friday, March 07, 2008
Check out this blog post from Robert Vignoli, an entrepreneur from San Jose, CA. Robert, a massage therapist and online marketer recently discovered MerchantCircle.
Robert calls MerchantCircle "...the best choice out there for someone like a massage therapist or any small brick and mortar business who does not have the resources to get a $500 or more website built and/or have the knowledge to get that website positioned on the internet."
Read the entire post here.
Thanks for the endorsement Robert and best of luck!
Darren Waddell
Sr. Director of Marketing
MerchantCircle
Labels: Google, infoUSA, massage therapy, MSNBC, Robert Vignoli, seo, Yahoo
