Going through my Twitter stream today (owned media) I caught a headline and video on TechCrunch that resonated a lot with my thinking lately about marketing spend and how many companies struggle with earned and owned media- and hence this blog post that you are reading (earned media).   An SEO software company, Conductor, launched a new campaign called the End of Paid Media and it’s great!

For the next week, we are putting a big focus on thinking about the Retail Industry given our Retail 150 Local Marketing Report Card research.  When watching 60 Minutes, you might think that in a couple of years most retail sales would all occur online and be delivered by airborne drone.  Instead, the industry data paints a much different picture.

Borrell Associates recently released an infographic on the local advertising ecosystem, key trends and future industry projections.  Take a look below for more info but here were my quick takeaways:

As a follow up to our post on why only 2% of local businesses think pay-per-click advertising is effective, we started getting asked why are people paying so much for it?   We were asked a lot!  With costs per click continuing to go up, why spend money on advertising vs the marketing channels that were orders of magnitude more successful?   We are examining this a bit in our upcoming white paper on The Top Digital Marketing Opportunities for 2014, coming out in December.

Last week included some BIG news about maps that you may have missed.  Despite the launch debacle, press ridicule and ultimate Tim Cook apology, Apple Maps has made big strides in taking market share from Google Maps.   It now boasts 35 million users, which is a strong number for such a new product.

We love marketing infographics at LocalVox, especially when they say good things about us.  This infographic from the Social Media Strategies Summit 2013 that was published in Social Media Today breaks down the top 25 social media tools by functional category.   We are very pleased to be included under “Social Conversation” – and isn’t that really the heart of social media marketing?

Google is new to the review game with the launch of Google+Local in May 2012 (see all Google Maps Updates and History), whereas industry leader Yelp has been focusing on reviews since October of 2004.  As a result, traditionally local businesses have been focusing on their Yelp reviews, but they should start transitioning to focus on Google+Local.  Here’s why Google is going to win in the long term (my 2 year prediction).

By 2015, companies that focus on integrated processes for local marketing will increase revenue 10-15% (Gartner).  That means that if you are in charge of driving in-store sales, you better have budget allocated for local Internet marketing in 2014.

A vacation is a great chance to catch up on all that reading that you have been meaning to do.  For many that’s fiction, poetry or political commentary, but whether it is an indictment of my workaholic nature or not, I am on a beach reading about local marketing and a great piece by Google called the Zero Moment of Truth.   It’s wonderful white paper that talks about the influence of your online brand to every traditional touch point in the marketing models of the past 20 years.