Almost all local businesses advertising in a coupon book included a website on their ad.
How many local companies promote their websites in ads, and what kind of domain names do they use?
A coupon book I received in the mail recently gives insight, even though it’s a fairly small sample size.
I opened up a coupon mailer the other day from RSVP. It bills itself as “Upscale Offers for Life & Home” and most of the coupons are for the same companies you’ll find in other coupon mailers like ValPak. Almost all are local service providers and franchisees, although there are a couple national ads for services like security alarm monitoring.
Here’s what I found:
- 29 of the 33 coupons had both a phone and domain name on them.
- 3 only had a phone number.
- 1 only had a domain name, and it was for an upcoming event.
- Of those with domain names, 100% used .com domain names. Most had a local term, such as SunSpaceTexas.com or WestlakePowerWashing.com. (I’ve seen other TLDs used in local ads, notably .co, just not in this batch.)
- Three of the ads also had a Facebook logo.
Obviously, businesses that can afford a mailer like this are more sophisticated than most. That’s why I didn’t see any @yahoo.com or similar addresses that local contractors often use.
couponpages says
Great insights.
Local advertising is an interesting space. Even before the Internet, there have always been more dollars spent on local advertising, which includes coupon mailers like the one you used, than all other advertising combined.
In spite of this massive advertising market, the strange paradox is that online advertising for local businesses is virtually non-existent, except for the tiny cost of crude web sites and the occasional deal of the day.
Google and GoDaddy have tried to get more local businesses to advertise online, but the typical local shopkeeper is still clueless about the web. So the end result is they buy a domain (usually a .com), because everyone tells them they should, and typically post one or two pages using a template provided by GoDaddy.
Although their site is crude, they know that posting their .com in their mailers and on other ads means that people can remember how to find them, maximizing the cost of the mailing.
Unless they have a vanity phone number, it’s better to promote their domain than a number. So, you could have a very small ad, promoting a crude web site, where at least they could find your phone number and address.
More savvy merchants may have more elaborate sites, giving them further reason to promote the site in the (more expensive) offline ads, but the real reason for emphasis on the site over the number is it’s easier to remember the domain than the #.
Based on that, just as a vanity 800 number has a better chance for a customer to remember than a 866 number, they would rather have a .com than .somethingelse.
BulkWHOis says
Local businesses are also prioritizing online presence
couponpages says
I’ve been serving local merchants for nearly 20 years, and the vast majority of them have zero online presence.
If Andrew visited every web site listed on those local coupon ads, he would see that only a few have anything more than a page or two of basic information.
Most of them lack even the most fundamental awareness of how to use those pages for anything more than a glorified yellow page ad.
The other interesting thing is that 99% of the ones who have an online presence only did so because somebody physically walked into their door to sell them the service.