Marchex, announced today that it has launched Marchex Connect 2.0, its next-generation local advertising platform.

Marchex Connect 2.0 integrates three important advertising products: online advertising, call-based advertising and Business Profile Pages, which are fully trackable branded Web pages that give advertisers an immediate local online presence.

Marchex Connect serves national advertisers who want to target locally and large businesses, such as Yellow Pages and media companies, who want to sell local advertising under their own brand to their customers. In addition, the company has formed the Marchex Digital Platform Group, uniting Marchex’s voice services, interactive marketing and platform development teams to better provide integrated local advertising products, services and analytics for its customers.

“We have invested heavily to build a performance-based, local-centric advertising platform for local resellers and advertisers that integrates online and call-based advertising products and services at scale, all supported by sophisticated reporting and analytics,” said John Keister, Marchex President and COO. “Our goal at Marchex is to accelerate the adoption of local online advertising and to deliver the highest volume of quality local leads to our advertisers at the most reasonable cost in the marketplace.”

Next-Generation Local Advertising Platform

Marchex Connect – which supports more than 65,000 local advertisers – offers a range of performance-based advertising products that can be used either as a fully-integrated product suite or on an individual basis, including:

• Business Profile Pages

Provides advertisers with an immediate branded local online presence that is fully optimized to drive click- and call-based local leads from both paid and organic search results. The optimized Web pages track and provide comprehensive reporting on all actions taken on the page, including: click-throughs, calls generated, emails sent, forms filled out, coupon, and map print outs, all of which provide the advertiser full data on their online marketing performance and return on investment (ROI). (For an example, please click here.)

• Integrated Online Performance-Based Lead Generation

Marchex Connect brings together its proven online lead generation and call-based advertising capabilities to deliver performance-based click and call lead packages that are tracked and reported. The lead packages can be on a guaranteed basis, which provides advertisers with a set number of leads, or on a budget basis, where Marchex manages the advertiser’s budget across multiple search engines and vertical and local Web sites.

• Comprehensive Call-Based Advertising Products and Services

Marchex Connect delivers comprehensive call-based advertising products and analytics, including call tracking for online and offline campaigns, pay-per-phone-call, form-to-phone, and reverse proxy, which enables all phone calls generated by an advertiser’s Web site to be tracked and reported.

• Diversified Advertising Distribution

Distribution is built according to the advertiser or partner needs and is available via all major search engines, leading local Web sites and premium vertical Web sites.

• Proof of ROI

Custom reporting and detailed analytics that prove performance and ROI for both the partner and the local advertiser.

By providing an immediate online presence integrated with call-based lead generation and numerous other trackable user actions, Marchex Connect addresses a number of the primary needs for local advertisers. It is estimated that only 1 million – out of an estimated 15 million – SMBs in the United States are currently advertising online and of the 42% of SMBs that have Web sites, the majority are rudimentary at best.

In addition, according to The Kelsey Group®, 71% of SMBs would rather pay for phone calls to their business than solely clicks to their Web site.

“The Internet is primarily a consumer research and marketing platform that drives offline transactions,” said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. “However, tracking that offline sales impact has been very challenging. The range of tools that Marchex’s new platform provides will help make the relationship between online leads and offline sales much more transparent.”

Marchex Digital Platform Group

With today’s launch, Marchex subsidiaries VoiceStar and Traffic Leader have been unified under the Marchex Digital Platform Group to leverage the Marchex Connect platform and provide integrated, locally-focused advertising services including:

• Full Advertising Campaign Management – All campaigns are managed by a dedicated team of online marketing and call-based advertising experts.
• Strategic Consulting for Resellers – Leveraging Marchex’s unique intellectual property regarding pricing and product strategies to appropriately balance and expand the total offline and online spends of an advertiser, and to maximize ROI goals.
• Sales Channel Training – Custom in-field and Web-based training programs to equip Marchex partners’ local sales forces with the knowledge and sales materials they need to successfully migrate their local advertisers’ spend online.