Patent Application
20150294359
1. Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the present disclosure relate to online advertising.
2. Description of Background
Small businesses face a variety of challenges with regard to marketing their products or services via the internet. There are many online marketing channels and approaches available, but many are rather complex to master and require a degree of expertise that small businesses often do not possess. Large businesses, by contrast, may maintain multiple staff members in order to ensure effective and comprehensive coverage of the online marketing space, and sometimes even employ the services of an external online marketing firm, such as an advertisement or a search agency, to augment their internal capabilities.
A major challenge for small businesses is the proliferation of web presences and marketing channels. A web presence conventionally refers to merely a company's website which represents the company to customers from a communications and marketing standpoint. However, in addition to a website, a web presence may currently encompass numerous other venues available to a company for representation, marketing and advertising to customers. For example, businesses may establish a web presence in the form of a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a Foursquare check-in profile, a YouTube Channel, and the like.
A wide variety of web marketing solution providers may be available to small businesses. However, small businesses are often faced with a challenge of utilizing one provider for one aspect of their marketing and another provider for other aspects. For example, a small business owner may engage a local website designer to create a website, but the website designer may not have expertise in designing and executing paid search campaigns, or in buying demographically targeted ads via Facebook.
A few providers have attempted to address the complexities facing small business owners by providing end-to-end internet marketing services. Online-focused services such as ReachLocal, Clickable, and Yodle typically charge a monthly fee, and sometimes a setup fee, to create a website for clients and to spend the client's marketing budget on a variety of internet marketing channels, most notably paid search via the search engines. Other providers such as traditional Yellow Pages vendors have begun providing similar services, both as standalone offerings focused on online services and also as offerings bundled with their offline Yellow Pages advertising services. This allows the Yellow Pages vendors to leverage their geographically distributed local sales forces to sell multiple services, and allows their small business customers to obtain multiple services from one vendor.
The increasing proliferation of mobile browsers is an additional challenge for small businesses. According to a Nielsen survey, released Feb. 20, 2012, out of 20,000 mobile consumers surveyed, 48% of them had smartphones, e.g., cell phones with a web browser. According to another survey, by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions.
Businesses that serve a specific geographic area can range from small businesses that provide goods and services to one geographic area, to large ones with numerous outlets that serve multiple geographic areas. These location-oriented businesses (“merchants”) purchase local advertising services from a variety of firms (“local advertising service providers”), most notably “Yellow Pages” companies, newspapers, local, regional, or national advertising agencies. Local advertising service providers face a variety of challenges with regard to moving towards providing internet-based advertising services. Competition for merchant's dollars is high; many merchants receive calls or emails on a weekly basis from companies that provide, or purport to provide, internet advertising services, and it can be difficult to market internet advertising to merchants who have been jaded by either numerous offers, or by actual bad customer experiences.
Some local advertising service providers (such as Yellow Pages companies or newspapers) are in a unique position to perform or arrange internet advertising for merchants, in that they already have a preexisting relationship with many merchants (e.g., annual advertising in a physical phone directory), and their business model includes so-called “feet on the street,” which can include numerous local salespeople who physically meet with merchants to understand the merchant's needs, sell advertising, and deal with any service problems.
Those local advertising service providers that can successfully develop systems for providing online advertising can then leverage their geographically distributed local sales forces to sell multiple services. This allows their customers to obtain multiple services from a single vendor. Given the complex, confusing, and constantly changing online advertising landscape, being able to purchase a bundle of offline (i.e. Yellow Pages ads or newspaper advertising) and online services from a single vendor who can manage that complexity can be a significant benefit for these merchants.
However, many local advertising service providers have corporate histories that date back over a period of decades, and have often changed hands or suffered through numerous corporate mergers. Some of the IT systems and processes of local advertising service providers are antiquated and have grown over time to become extremely convoluted, sometimes involving a massive bureaucracy. Existing software may be unstructured, poorly commented, and difficult to modify; processes and procedures often require multiple approvals required for even simple changes to software and equipment configurations. For example, even a simple change such as opening up a port in a firewall for an external software service to communicate with an internal software service, which could take minutes or hours for a startup to decide upon and implement, may take a large local advertising service provider weeks or months, while the request slowly winds its way through a slow-moving bureaucracy.
Additionally, often systems are already in place (and sales people are trained) to be able to easily categorize merchants business categories and various business offerings (for instance, a merchant could be categorized as a business of type “Plumber” that provides the offerings “Toilet Repair” and “Hot Tub Repairs.” There is thus a desire on the part of local advertising service providers to utilize existing taxonomies of business categories and business offerings in conjunction with any online advertising provided by the local advertising service provider. If online advertising and offline (e.g., physical Yellow Pages book) advertising can be synchronized during the sales and setup process, costs can be reduced, a sales person need only ask for and record the prospective client's information according to a single set of schemas or taxonomies, rather than dealing with multiple separate schemas. In some embodiments, a taxonomy is a set of labels and/or descriptors. Different local advertising service providers can use different taxonomies. Taxonomies can include business taxonomies, which can include business categories, business offerings, and other categorizations for businesses and services and/or goods provided by the businesses. Taxonomies can also include location taxonomies to describe geographical locations. Other appropriate taxonomies can be used by the local advertising service providers.
Therefore, it is appreciated that there is a need for local advertising service providers to be able to augment their existing offline advertising-oriented processes, systems, and software with processes, systems, and software that can perform online advertising in a synchronized fashion.
While end-to-end internet marketing services provided by web marketing solution providers are emerging, these solution providers rely on conventional approaches to creating websites. For example, creation and setup of websites and marketing campaigns may rely on individuals designing and creating websites without any automation. In other examples, solution providers may leverage varying levels of automation to setup a desktop version of a website or otherwise to setup a desktop version of a marketing campaign.
The proliferation of web presences and marketing channels, and the additional challenge of marketing to mobile users and satisfying the unique requirements of users who access information via a plethora of differing mobile devices make the field of online marketing a daunting and complex one for small businesses.
According to aspects of the present invention, it is appreciated that establishing and maintaining web presences and marketing campaigns and mobile-optimized versions thereof where potential customers can access information about products and services via one or more types of devices, may be a daunting task for businesses, and particularly for small businesses with limited resources.
Aspects and embodiments disclosed herein are directed to providing methods and systems for establishing both desktop and mobile-optimized web presences and marketing campaigns. Various embodiments of the present invention address the challenges described above and enable generation of web presences and marketing campaigns and mobile-optimized web presences and mobile-optimized marketing campaigns. Some embodiments may be implemented on a computer system and may provide a convenient user interface, such as a user interface for entering business information. In some embodiments, the business information may be used by a solution provider for automatically establishing desktop-optimized web presences and marketing campaigns and for simultaneously establishing mobile-optimized web presences and marketing campaigns.
According to one aspect, there is provided a computer-based method for generating a web presence. The method includes acts of accessing, over a computer network, business information, selecting a business taxonomy, selecting a location taxonomy, and generating at least one marketing campaign based on the business information, the selected business taxonomy, and the selected location taxonomy.
In some embodiments, the method further includes associating a local advertising service provider with the business information, and wherein the business taxonomy and the location taxonomy are selected based on the associated local advertising service provider.
In some embodiments, the business information includes a business brand name.
In some embodiments, the merchant information includes at least one of business name information, brand name information, and trademark information.
In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes an act of creating an advertisement including a title containing at least one of the business name information, the brand name information, and the trademark information.
In some embodiments, the method further includes associating the at least one marketing campaign with at least one web presence and at least one landing page. In some embodiments, the act of associating the at least one marketing campaign with at least one web presences includes presenting the advertisement to a user and receiving, from the user, an indication of one of a selection, an edit, or an approval.
In some embodiments, the business information includes at least one business category. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign includes looking up business category information based on the at least one business category and the business taxonomy associated with the local advertising service provider.
In some embodiments, the business information includes at least one business offering. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign includes looking up business offering information based on the at least one business offering and the business taxonomy associated with the local advertising service provider.
In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes creating an advertisement including a title containing the business offering. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes looking up a keyword associated with the business offering.
In some embodiments, the business information includes geographic information. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign includes looking up geographic location name information based on the geographic information and the location taxonomy associated with the local advertising service provider. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes creating an advertisement including the geographic location name information. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes creating an advertisement that is geo-targeted based on the geographic information. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes displaying a map based on the geographic information.
In some embodiments, the method further includes an act of activating the at least one marketing campaign.
In some embodiments, accessing business information further includes providing a user interface configured to receive the business information from a user.
In some embodiments, the marketing campaign includes at least one of a video campaign, a paid search campaign, a display advertising campaign, a paid microblogging message campaign, a coupon promotion campaign, a group purchasing promotion campaign, a social media campaign, and a remarketing campaign. In some embodiments, the social media campaign includes at least one of a social sharing campaign, a social pinning campaign, a social voting campaign, a social contest campaign, a social follow campaign, a social like campaign, and a social survey campaign.
In some embodiments, the business information includes hours of operation. In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes displaying the hours of operation.
In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes creating an advertisement including a title generated by a computer based on one or more rules.
In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes creating an advertisement including body text generated by a computer based on one or more rules.
In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign further includes an act of creating an advertisement including a generic body text.
In some embodiments, the method further includes an act of adding an analytics tracking code to at least one of the at least one marketing campaign.
In some embodiments, the act of generating at least one marketing campaign includes a further act of generating a website designed to attract organic search traffic.
Still other aspects, embodiments, and advantages of these exemplary aspects and embodiments are discussed in detail below. Embodiments disclosed herein may be combined with other embodiments in any manner consistent with at least one of the principles disclosed herein, and references to “an embodiment,” “some embodiments,” “an alternate embodiment,” “various embodiments,” “one embodiment” or the like are not necessarily mutually exclusive and are intended to indicate that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described may be included in at least one embodiment. The appearances of such terms herein are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.
Various aspects of at least one embodiment are discussed below with reference to the accompanying figures, which are not intended to be drawn to scale. The figures are included to provide illustration and a further understanding of the various aspects and embodiments, and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, but are not intended as a definition of the limits of the invention. In the figures, each identical or nearly identical component that is illustrated in various figures is represented by a like numeral. For purposes of clarity, not every component may be labeled in every figure. In the figures:
According to aspects of the present invention, methods and systems are provided for receiving business information and establishing both desktop and mobile-optimized web presences and marketing campaigns using the business information. For example, some embodiments may include creating a web page, a landing page or an advertisement based on the business information. Business information may include data regarding the business, such as business type, name, address, phone, business hours, business offerings, geographic information including one or more geographic locations such as areas served, and the like. Some embodiments may include formatting a mobile-optimized web presence and a mobile-optimized marketing campaign in response to determining the configuration or the type of a mobile device on which the mobile-optimized web presence and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign are being accessed. Some embodiments may further include applying search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to a web presence or a mobile-optimized web presence. One example of an SEO technique includes obtaining external links to increase importance attributed to a web presence by a search engine. Another example includes utilizing a keyword that is desirable for a web page to rank for in an HTML title tag.
One or more of these features may be implemented on one or more computer systems coupled by a network (e.g., the Internet). Example systems upon which various aspects are implemented, as well as exemplary methods performed by those systems, are discussed in more detail below.
A web presence may include a website and/or other online venue having an associated profile. For example, a web presence may include a social networking profile page, such as a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a Foursquare check-in profile, a YouTube Channel, a microblogging profile page, a social pinning profile page and the like. A web presence may include a search engine local places listing, a directory listing, or an internet Yellow Pages listing. One example of a search engine local places listing is Google+ Pages for Businesses, originally created to facilitate display of name, address and phone information in search engine results. A local places listing of a business may include, for example, multiple pages, customer reviews, customer testimonials, hours of operation of the business, one or more locations associated with the business, business offerings, areas served, a map and/or driving directions. A local place listing is therefore similar to a mini website.
A web presence may also include, for example, one or more name/address/phone business listings on various websites. Examples include data provider listings and mapping service listings. For instance, data provider services such as Infogroup, Axciom, and Localeze data cleanse, de-duplicate, and update listings that are then relayed to various websites. Map data provider services such as Mapquest, Navteq, and Teleatlas perform a similar function for mobile navigation information. Vertical-oriented business listings sites such as, for instance, Justia, Martindale, and Bestlawyers perform a similar function for law-oriented websites.
In some embodiments, a web presence may include one or more web presences as described herein. Aspects of the present invention are directed to generating and maintaining one or more web presences and mobile versions thereof, from simple listings all the way through dedicated web pages and even a company website.
Establishing a marketing campaign or a mobile-optimized marketing campaign may include exposing one or more advertisements to one or more end users, based on some criteria, with some exposures resulting in an action by the one or more end users. For example, an action by the one or more end users may include a click of a mouse or other input device on a portion of the advertisement.
A marketing campaign may include a landing page. A landing page may be a web page specifically designed to be linked to one or more marketing campaigns, with the intention of improving the probability that a user may take some action when they visit the landing page via an advertisement, rather than visiting a more generic page or an overall web presence.
A marketing campaign may include an advertisement associated with the web presence of a business, and may further be associated with a landing page such that clicking on the advertisement may direct a customer to the landing page. Components of a marketing campaign, for paid search marketing campaigns, may include keywords, groupings of keywords, ads, and display and destination URL information to connect advertisements with landing pages.
A marketing campaign may include one or more of a video campaign, a paid search campaign, a display advertising campaign, a paid microblogging message campaign, a coupon promotion campaign, a group purchasing promotion campaign, a remarketing campaign and the like. It is to be appreciated that a marketing campaign may target other emerging marketing channels or online advertising venues. One example of a paid microblogging message campaign may be based on a microblogging platform such as Twitter, which provides capabilities for advertisers to purchase promoted postings (sponsored tweets), in addition to the common practice of paying individuals such as celebrities, either directly or through a third-party, to issue a promotional tweet from their account (paid tweets).
A marketing campaign may include a social media campaign, including one or more of a social sharing campaign, a social pinning campaign, a social voting campaign, a social contest campaign, a social follow campaign, a social like campaign, and a social survey campaign. For example, social voting platforms such as Digg and Reddit allow users to post content which is then voted up or down by other users. Social networking platforms such as Facebook and Google+ allow users to vote, similarly, but only by voting up (e.g., Facebook's “like” button or Google+'s “+1” button are up votes). Social check-in platforms such as Foursquare allow advertisers to provide promotions and coupons when users physically check-in to a location. Group discount sites such as Groupon allow advertisers to provide group discounts to users. Social pinning websites such as Pinterest allow users to pin pictures from web pages into collections, in a fashion akin to scrapbooking. While social pinning is a relatively new area where monetization approaches have not yet appeared, a social pinning campaign as used herein may include paid pins, for example, paying individual users to pin content into their accounts, and sponsored pins, for example, paying Pinterest to feature pinned content on the social pinning site. These advertising approaches would be akin to paid tweets and sponsored tweets. Social platforms may also be used to perform surveys or initiate contests.
Marketing campaign channels, such as some described above, may provide web presences that businesses need to claim or create. For example, web presences associated with marketing channels may include profiles, and increasingly complex description pages that may eventually evolve to mini-websites similar to Google+ Pages for Businesses. Claiming or generating a web presence needed by a marketing channel may include associating the web presence with a business, and verifying the association with the business, for example via email, phone, or postcard verification. Web presences associated with some marketing channels may differ from other types of web presences such as a business's website. For example, marketers may be very limited in the information they can input and the display format of web presences associated with some marketing channels. Furthermore, with some web presences, marketers cannot add additional content or pages, and they may not have the option of inserting analytics tracking code that they control into their web presence for tracking. Therefore, in these cases, marketers may have to rely on the trustworthiness of the service hosting the web presence for performance reporting.
As used herein, marketer and user may be used interchangeably and may include a user of the systems and methods disclosed herein, an entity on whose behalf a user is acting, or any entity associated with online marketing, without limitation. In one example, a user may be a business owner, a merchant, or a representative of a small business. In another example, a user may be at least one of a web marketing solution provider and a business representative purchasing a web marketing solution from the provider. In another example, a user may be a local advertising service provider purchasing a web marketing solution and/or providing a web marketing solution to a business representative.
It is to be appreciated that embodiments of the methods and apparatuses discussed herein are not limited in application to the details of construction and the arrangement of components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the accompanying drawings. The methods and apparatuses are capable of implementation in other embodiments and of being practiced or of being carried out in various ways. Examples of specific implementations are provided herein for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to be limiting. In particular, acts, elements, and features discussed in connection with any one or more embodiments are not intended to be excluded from a similar role in any other embodiment.
Also, the phraseology and terminology used herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting. Any references to embodiments or elements or acts of the systems and methods herein referred to in the singular may also embrace embodiments including a plurality of these elements, and any references in plural to any embodiment or element or act herein may also embrace embodiments including only a single element. The use herein of “including,” “comprising,” “having,” “containing,” “involving,” and variations thereof is meant to encompass the items listed thereafter and equivalents thereof as well as additional items. References to “or” may be construed as inclusive so that any terms described using “or” may indicate any of a single, more than one, and all of the described terms. Any references to front and back, left and right, top and bottom, upper and lower, and vertical and horizontal are intended for convenience of description, not to limit the present systems and methods or their components to any one positional or spatial orientation.
Computer System
Various aspects and functions described herein in accord with the present invention may be implemented as hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software on one or more computer systems. There are many examples of computer systems currently in use. Some examples include, among others, network appliances, personal computers, workstations, mainframes, networked clients, servers, media servers, application servers, database servers, web servers, and virtual servers. Other examples of computer systems may include mobile computing devices, such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants, and network equipment, such as load balancers, routers and switches. Additionally, aspects in accord with the present invention may be located on a single computer system or may be distributed among a plurality of computer systems connected to one or more communication networks.
For example, various aspects and functions may be distributed among one or more computer systems configured to provide a service to one or more client computers, or to perform an overall task as part of a distributed system. Additionally, aspects may be performed on a client-server or multi-tier system that includes components distributed among one or more server systems that perform various functions. Thus, the invention is not limited to executing on any particular system or group of systems. Further, aspects may be implemented in software, hardware or firmware, or any combination thereof. Thus, aspects in accord with the present invention may be implemented within methods, acts, systems, system placements and components using a variety of hardware and software configurations, and the invention is not limited to any particular distributed architecture, network, or communication protocol. Furthermore, aspects in accord with the present invention may be implemented as specially-programmed hardware and/or software.
Various aspects and functions in accord with the present invention may be implemented as specialized hardware or software executing in one or more computer systems including the computer system 102 shown in
The memory 112 may be used for storing programs and data during operation of the computer system 102. Thus, the memory 112 may be a relatively high performance, volatile, random access memory such as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) or static memory (SRAM). However, the memory 112 may include any device for storing data, such as a disk drive or other non-volatile storage device, such as flash memory or phase-change memory (PCM). Various embodiments in accord with the present invention can organize the memory 112 into particularized and, in some cases, unique structures to perform the aspects and functions disclosed herein.
Components of the computer system 102 may be coupled by an interconnection element such as the bus 114. The bus 114 may include one or more physical busses (for example, busses between components that are integrated within a same machine), and may include any communication coupling between system placements including specialized or standard computing bus technologies such as IDE, SCSI, PCI and InfiniBand. Thus, the bus 114 enables communications (for example, data and instructions) to be exchanged between system components of the computer system 102.
Computer system 102 also includes one or more interface devices 116 such as input devices, output devices, and combination input/output devices. The interface devices 116 may receive input, provide output, or both. For example, output devices may render information for external presentation. Input devices may accept information from external sources. Examples of interface devices include, among others, keyboards, mouse devices, trackballs, microphones, touch screens, printing devices, display screens, speakers, network interface cards, etc. The interface devices 116 allow the computer system 102 to exchange information and communicate with external entities, such as users and other systems.
Storage system 118 may include a computer-readable and computer-writeable nonvolatile storage medium in which instructions are stored that define a program to be executed by the processor. The storage system 118 also may include information that is recorded, on or in, the medium, and this information may be processed by the program. More specifically, the information may be stored in one or more data structures specifically configured to conserve storage space or increase data exchange performance. The instructions may be persistently stored as encoded signals, and the instructions may cause a processor to perform any of the functions described herein. A medium that can be used with various embodiments may include, for example, optical disk, magnetic disk, or flash memory, among others. In operation, the processor 110 or some other controller may cause data to be read from the nonvolatile recording medium into another memory, such as the memory 112, that allows for faster access to the information by the processor 110 than does the storage medium included in the storage system 118. The memory may be located in the storage system 118 or in the memory 112. The processor 110 may manipulate the data within the memory 112, and then copy the data to the medium associated with the storage system 118 after processing is completed. A variety of components may manage data movement between the medium and the memory 112, and the invention is not limited thereto.
Further, the invention is not limited to a particular memory system or storage system. Although the computer system 102 is shown by way of example as one type of computer system upon which various aspects and functions in accord with the present invention may be practiced, aspects of the invention are not limited to being implemented on the computer system, shown in
The computer system 102 may include an operating system that manages at least a portion of the hardware placements included in computer system 102. A processor or controller, such as processor 110, may execute an operating system which may be, among others, a Windows-based operating system (for example, Windows NT, Windows 2000/ME, Windows XP, Windows 7, or Windows Vista) available from the Microsoft Corporation, a MAC OS System X operating system available from Apple Computer, one of many Linux-based operating system distributions (for example, the Enterprise Linux operating system available from Red Hat Inc.), a Solaris operating system available from Sun Microsystems, or a UNIX operating systems available from various sources. The operating system may be a mobile device or smart phone operating system, such as Windows Mobile, Android, or iOS. Many other operating systems may be used, and embodiments are not limited to any particular operating system. The computer system 102 may include a virtualization feature that hosts the operating system inside a virtual machine (e.g., a simulated physical machine). Various components of a system architecture could reside on individual instances of operating systems inside separate “virtual machines”, thus running somewhat insulated from each other.
The processor and operating system together define a computing platform for which application programs in high-level programming languages may be written. These component applications may be executable, intermediate (for example, C# or JAVA bytecode) or interpreted code which communicate over a communication network (for example, the Internet) using a communication protocol (for example, TCP/IP). Similarly, functions in accord with aspects of the present invention may be implemented using an object-oriented programming language, such as SmallTalk, JAVA, C++, Ada, or C# (C-Sharp). Other object-oriented programming languages may also be used. Alternatively, procedural, scripting, or logical programming languages may be used.
Additionally, various functions in accord with aspects of the present invention may be implemented in a non-programmed environment (for example, documents created in HTML, XML or other format that, when viewed in a window of a browser program, render aspects of a graphical-user interface or perform other functions). Further, various embodiments in accord with aspects of the present invention may be implemented as programmed or non-programmed placements, or any combination thereof. For example, a web page may be implemented using HTML while a data object called from within the web page may be written in C++. Thus, the invention is not limited to a specific programming language and any suitable programming language could also be used.
A computer system included within an embodiment may perform functions outside the scope of the invention. For instance, aspects of the system may be implemented using an existing product, such as, for example, the Google search engine, the Yahoo search engine available from Yahoo! of Sunnyvale, Calif., or the Bing search engine available from Microsoft of Seattle Wash. Aspects of the system may be implemented on database management systems such as SQL Server available from Microsoft of Seattle, Wash.; Oracle Database from Oracle of Redwood Shores, Calif.; and MySQL from Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara, Calif.; or integration software such as WebSphere middleware from IBM of Armonk, N.Y. However, a computer system running, for example, SQL Server may be able to support both aspects in accord with the present invention and databases for sundry applications not within the scope of the invention.
In addition, the method described herein may be incorporated into other hardware and/or software products, such as a web publishing product, a web browser, or an internet marketing or search engine optimization tool.
Example System Architecture
An example system in accordance with aspects of the invention can be seen in
The distributed system 200 includes a system 202. The system 202 may be a personal computer, a network appliance, a mainframe terminal, PDA, tablet computer, or any other computer system known in the art. The distributed system 200 may also include a user interface 226 for allowing the user to interact with the distributed system 200 and/or the system 202. The user interface 226 may be configured to access information from a user. The information may include, for example, business information, such as the name, address, contact information, and offerings of a business. The user interface 226 may be configured to communicate with the system 202 over a computer network.
The system 202 includes a web presence generator 204 and a mobile-optimized web presence generator 206. The system 202 may also include a database 208. The system 202 may be configured to store user data, such as business information that may be used by the web presence generator 204 and the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206, in the database 208, or in another memory location so that it may be accessed at a later time. The database 208 may also store one or more data repositories as shown in
The web presence generator 204 is configured to generate a desktop version of one or more web presences disclosed herein. Web presences may be generated based on information stored in the database 208 and/or information received from the user interface 226. The web presence generator 204 may further be configured to activate or deploy the one or more web presences that are generated. The web presence generator 204 may further be configured to add an analytics tracking code to one or more web presences. An analytics tracking code may be used, for example, to track the performance of a web presence, such as the number of visits to a web page, or particular actions by a user such as conversions. Conversions may include, for example, product sales occurrences, product sale units, product sale amounts, contact form submissions, or phone calls.
Still referring to
The mobile-optimized web presence generator 206 may further include a subsystem (not shown) configured to determine a configuration of a mobile device, such as a height, width, or an orientation, and may further be configured to format a mobile-optimized web presence in response to determining a configuration or a type of the mobile device. The system 220B shown in
In some embodiments, the system 202 may be configured to check screen height and width and make a determination that based on those dimensions, a mobile web browser is being used, and even to discern the orientation of the device, such as landscape or portrait. For example, some embodiments may be configured to identify an orientation of iPhone and Android smart phones by checking screen height and width. In other embodiments, the system 202 may include javascript code to determine screen orientation. For example, Apple iPad does not currently change height and width numbers when its orientation is changed, necessitating the use of javascript code to determine screen orientation.
The mobile web presence generator 206 may further be configured to activate or deploy the one or more mobile-optimized web presences that are generated. The web presence generator 206 may further be configured to add an analytics tracking code to one or more mobile-optimized web presences. In other embodiments, the system 202 may be configured to activate or deploy the one or more web presences and the mobile-optimized web presences. The system 202 may further be configured to insert tracking codes into one or more of the web presences and the mobile-optimized web presences created by the web presence generator 204 and the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206.
The distributed system 200 includes a network interface 214 that may be configured to allow the system 202 to communicate with other systems 220A and/or 220B and/or the user interface 226 over a computer network, for example, the Internet. In some embodiments, the system 202 may be configured to communicate data, such as user data via the user interface 226 and/or data from another system 220A and/or data from the database 208 stored in a format such as CSV, XML, delimited file, flat text file, or other format.
The system 220A may be associated with or controlled by an entity that provides a marketing channel, such as Google, Facebook or Twitter. In some embodiments, the system 202 may be configured to communicate with the other system 220A through the network interface 214 by using an Application Programming Interface (API) 216. The API 216 may be an interface implemented by a software program on the system 220A, thereby allowing the system 202 to interact with the system 220A over the network interface 214. In one example, the API 216 may be a Google AdWords API. Software that is configured to interact with the API 216 may be implemented on the system 202.
In some embodiments, the system 220A may include a system associated with or controlled by an entity that provides an aspect of a web marketing solution. For example, system 220A may include a system that provides templates that may be used by system 202 to generate one or more web presences.
The system 220B may be a computer system or a device for accessing the one or more web presences and mobile-optimized web presences established by the system 202. In one example, the system 220B may be a desktop computer. In other examples, the system 220B may be a mobile device of a customer accessing the web presence, landing page or marketing campaign of a business.
In some embodiments, the system 202 may be a distributed system. For example, each of the web presence generator 204, the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206 and the database 208 may operate on a different computing system.
As used herein, business information may include data that may appear in one or more web presences, landing pages, marketing campaigns, and mobile-optimized versions thereof. Business information may be provided by a user and/or accessed or received via a computer network. For example, a sales person may enter information on the business, such as name, address, phone, business hours, geographic information including one or more geographic locations such as areas served, and the like, as well as business type information via the user interface 226.
Business type information may include business category and one or more business offerings. Examples of business category include plumber or auto repair. A business offering may define business products or services at a more granular level than business category. Not all businesses in the same category may offer the same business offerings. For instance, one business with a business category plumber may perform the business offerings toilet repair, faucet installation, and faucet repair, while another in the same category may perform the business offerings toilet repair, broken pipe repair, water heater installation, and water heater repair. Business offerings in some cases are tied to business categories but in some cases a business may perform business offerings outside of what is typical for their business category. For instance, a company that logically belongs in the business category marketing consulting services may, in addition to performing business offerings such as search optimization services and paid search management services, could also provide a business offering intellectual property consulting services which may otherwise fit better under a legal services or engineering services business category.
Referring again to
One or more of the web presence generator 204 and the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206 may further be configured to apply other SEO techniques. SEO techniques may include, but are not limited to, targeting each page to one keyword, optimizing keyword density in text on-page, optimizing HTML meta-tags and obtaining external links to improve a page's score and to obtain keyword-rich anchor text, known to be a relevance signal used by search engines. For example, a small business that provides security services in Rhode Island may want to rank highly for the term [security ri]. Hosting the business's web presence on the domain securityri.com, and provisioning DNS services to resolve that domain to the business's server IP address may aid in ranking higher for the term [security ri]. Obtaining anchor text on external websites, in links such as:
<a href=“http://securityri.com/”>Security RI</a>
where Security RI is the anchor text of the link, may further improve organic search rankings.
The landing page generator 230 is configured to generate a desktop version of one or more landing pages. The mobile-optimized landing page generator 232 is configured to generate one or more mobile-optimized landing pages. The marketing campaign generator 234 is configured to generate desktop versions of one or more types of marketing campaigns as described previously. The mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236 is configured to generate one or more types of mobile-optimized marketing campaigns. Landing pages, marketing campaigns, mobile-optimized landing pages, and mobile-optimized marketing campaigns may be generated based on information stored in the database 208 and/or information received from the user interface 226. Mobile-optimized landing pages may be generated independently from landing pages generated by the landing page generator 230. Furthermore, mobile-optimized marketing campaigns are generated independently from desktop versions of marketing campaigns.
The landing page generator 230 and the mobile-optimized landing page generator 232 may be configured similarly to the web presence generator 204 and the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206, respectively. In some embodiments, the landing page generator 230 may be included in the web presence generator 204, and the mobile-optimized landing page generator 232 may be included in the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206.
The landing page generator 230, the mobile-optimized landing page generator 232, the marketing campaign generator 234 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236 may be configured to activate the one or more landing pages and marketing campaigns and mobile-optimized landing pages and mobile-optimized marketing campaigns. In some embodiments, activating may include deploying on a system 220A as shown in
The mobile-optimized landing page generator 232 and/or the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236 may further include subsystems configured to determine a configuration of a mobile device, such as system 220B, and to generate one or more mobile-optimized landing pages and marketing campaigns accordingly. In other embodiments, the system 202 may be configured to determine a configuration of a mobile device and to communicate the configuration to each of the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206, the mobile-optimized landing page generator 232 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236.
Still referring to
In some embodiments, generating a marketing campaign and a mobile-optimized marketing campaign by the marketing campaign generator 234 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236, respectively, may include generating an advertisement. The advertisement may include business information. For example, the title of the advertisement may include the business name, a business offering or a geographic location of the business. The advertisement may also include other business information, such as hours of operation, a map, and driving directions. The advertisement may be specifically formatted for presentation on one or more mobile devices. The advertisement may be geo-targeted to a geographic location served by the business (e.g., targeted for presentation only to consumers who are located in and/or interested in one or more geographic locations).
In some embodiments, at least one of the marketing campaign generator 234 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236 may use an algorithm to create a title and/or a body text of an advertisement. In other embodiments, at least one of the marketing campaign generator 234 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236 may be configured to create an advertisement incorporating a generic body text.
Still referring to
Generating a marketing campaign and a mobile-optimized marketing campaign, such as paid search advertisements, may include applying one or more best practices or optimization techniques. For example, a search keyword may ideally be placed in the title of the advertisement, or may have certain words capitalized, or may include a strong “call to action”, and so on.
By way of example, a business named “Foo Plumbing”, with a web presence located at “http://foo.com”, may be in a business category plumbing and may provide a business offering toilet repair. The business offering toilet repair may be associated with a number of keywords related to toilet repair. For instance, potential customers who are online searchers may tend to type brand names of toilets they need repaired. Therefore, american standard toilet repair may be identified as a potential keyword for advertising. An example advertisement or creative may then include the following title, display URL, and two body lines:
American Standard Toilet Repair
www.foo.com/toilet-rep air
15 Years Of Success and Experience.
We Can Fix It—Call Us!
Some embodiments may utilize formula-built creatives. An example advertisement title based on a simple formula that prepends the business offering to the phrase “Done Right” might read, for instance “Toilet Repairs Done Right”. Other more complex formulas may involve singular/plural transformations, other word stem transformations, rules, regular expressions, multiple steps, and the like.
Other considerations for generating online marketing campaigns may include landing page design, bid optimization, campaign organization, and identification of which keywords to target.
The system 202 in
The system 202 may be configured to obtain a domain or register a domain name and may be configured to provision a domain name system service to resolve the domain. The system 202 may be configured to host one or more web presences, landing pages, marketing campaigns, and mobile versions thereof. In some embodiments, the system 202 may be configured to host one or more of the web presences, landing pages, marketing campaigns, and mobile versions thereof on a same domain or a same subdomain.
In one example, a small-business-targeted taxonomy may contain 500 or more business categories and 2000 or more business offerings. In some embodiments, an initial set of business offerings may be available within the database 208 and the taxonomy may be expanded over time.
In some embodiments, the business category/business offering repository 410 can include multiple taxonomies. For example, in some embodiments, each business category/business offering taxonomy can be associated with one or more local advertising service providers. For example, a local advertising service provider can have an existing business category/business offering taxonomy the local advertising service provider uses for an offline local advertising service. For example, a local advertising service provider, such as Yellow Pages, can use a taxonomy as described above, with a business category of plumber providing business offerings of toilet repair, faucet installation, and faucet repair for an offline categorization of businesses for advertising. A different local advertising service provider can use a different taxonomy, such as a business category of plumber providing business offerings of toilet repair, broken pipe repair, water heater installation, and water heater repair. Alternatively or additionally, different taxonomies can include different business categories. Alternatively or additionally, different taxonomies can categorize businesses in different hierarchies or subcategories.
The system 202 can allow a local advertising service provider to generate one or more of a web presence, a mobile-optimized web presence, a landing page, a mobile-optimized landing page, and marketing campaign, and a mobile-optimized marketing campaign for a business, such as a business for which the local advertising service provider provides offline local advertising, for example, through one or more of the web presence generator 204, the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206, the landing page generator 230, the mobile-optimized landing page generator 232, the marketing campaign generator 234 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236. The local advertising provider can specify a business category/business offering taxonomy from the business category/business offering repository 410 that relates to the taxonomy used by the local advertising service provider.
In some embodiments, the system 202 can correlate the multiple taxonomies. For example, the system 202 can correlate the business offerings of some or all of the taxonomies for common or similar business categories. For example, the system 202 can combine all the different business offerings for the business category of plumber to include toilet repair, faucet installation, faucet repair, broken pipe repair, water heater installation, and water heater repair.
The system 202 can allow the local advertising service provider to include some or all of the correlated business categories and/or business offerings from the taxonomies other than the taxonomy associated with the local advertising service provider. Alternatively or additionally, the system 202 can provide businesses with an option to include correlated business categories and/or business offerings. Alternatively or additionally, the system 202 can search on some or all of the correlated business categories and/or business offerings when presented with a search keyword. For example, if a user searches for a business offering not included in a taxonomy associated with a local advertising service provider, businesses listed under the local advertising service provider can still appear in search results through the business offering correlation. For example, the Yellow Pages can use a taxonomy that does not include water heater repair as a business offering for plumbers. In some embodiments, by correlating the multiple taxonomies, the system 202 can return plumbers listed under the Yellow Pages for a search of “water heater repair.” In some embodiments, the system 202 can correlate the multiple taxonomies and still provide for searching and/or associating with specific taxonomies. The keywords associated with the business offerings as described above can be associated with one, some, or all correlated business offerings.
In some embodiments, the system 202 can present business offering to a business so that the business can specify which business offering the business actually offers. For example, a plumber can specify a business category of plumber and receive all the business offerings correlated from the multiple taxonomies in the business category/business offering repository 410. The plumber can then specify which of the business offering the plumber is willing to offer. In some embodiments, businesses can add a business offering or business category to the taxonomy if a desired business offering or business category is not listed. In some embodiments, a business offering or a business category can be added to a taxonomy if a threshold number of businesses request the business offering.
When a user purchases a web presence and/or a marketing campaign, such as search engine marketing, the user may select business offerings that they are most interested in targeting via the user interface 226. The user interface 226 may be used to display available business categories and/or business offerings to a user, based on data in the business category/business offering repository 410.
The database 208 may further include a location repository 420. The location repository 420 may include a location taxonomy. The location taxonomy may define geographic locations hierarchically. For example, a location hierarchy may include Country, State, Region, City/Town, and Postal Code. A location hierarchy may also include aliases and other common names to be used for navigation and targeting. In some embodiments, a user may select, from a location repository 420, one or more geographic locations in which they want to target their advertising.
In some embodiments, the location repository 420 can include multiple taxonomies, similar to the business category/business offering repository 410 described above. For example, in some embodiments, each location taxonomy can be associated with one or more local advertising service providers. For example, a local advertising service provider can have an existing location taxonomy the local advertising service provider uses for an offline local advertising service. For example, a local advertising service provider, such as Yellow Pages, can use a taxonomy that divides local regions by postal code. A different local advertising service provider can use a different taxonomy, such as dividing local regions by township.
Also similarly to the business category/business offering repository 410 described above, the system 202 can correlate multiple location taxonomies in the location repository 420. For example, local regions that overlap can be correlated, such as a city/town and postal code. The correlated taxonomies can be used in a manner similar to the correlated taxonomies of the business category/business offering repository 410.
The database 208 may further include a campaign template repository 430, as shown in
The database 208 may further include an ad repository 440, as shown in
The database 208 may further include an image repository 450. The image repository 450 may include an image library with one or more images available in the library for each business offering in the taxonomy. The image repository 450 may include logos, pictures of business locations, pictures of clients, pictures of the business in operation, and so forth.
The database 208 may further include a page content repository 460. The page content repository may include a set of descriptive sentences that may be used, for example, to populate a website and/or a landing page such as a search engine marketing landing page. The sentences in the repository may include text specific to one or more business offerings. In some embodiments, the sentences in the repository may be selected according to one or more algorithms and inserted into one or more landing pages or web presences. In one example, the sentences in the repository may be randomly selected.
The database 208 may further include a merchant attribute repository 470. Merchant attributes may include merchant-specific text chosen or supplied by a merchant, a user, or a marketer to describe specifics about a business and/or service. Examples of merchant attributes include “Free Parking Available in Rear,” “Open 7 Days a Week,” “Open until 8:00 pm on Thursdays,” etc. In some embodiments, the merchant attribute repository 470 may provide a limited number of choices, for example, 10 to 20 generic merchant attribute examples and 3 to 10 category specific merchant attributes. A user may be presented with generic and category specific attributes to select from. The system 202 may be configured to allow a user to enter merchant attributes using any combination of predefined repository-based examples verbatim, edited variations of the repository-based examples, or attributes entered as free-form text. The system 202 may be configured to allow merchant attributes to be modified by a user, for example via the user interface 226. In some embodiments, the merchant attribute repository 470 may be configured to store business information or any other business specific data provided by a user of the system 202.
In some embodiments, the database 208 may be configured to receive input from external sources, for example, a user input device having a user interface 226, and format that input into the information to be stored by the database 208. Data stored in any of the repositories in the database 208 may be used by the system 202 and one or more of the web presence generator 204, the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206, the landing page generator 230, the mobile-optimized landing page generator 232, the marketing campaign generator 234 and the mobile-optimized marketing campaign generator 236 in
The database 208 may be a relational database or any other method of storing data known in the art, such as XML, flat file, or spreadsheet, or other location in a computer memory. The database 208 may be a commercial database product, such as IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Openbase, Sybase, or other database product. The database 208 may store textual information and/or binary information, and may store textual information as plain text, or may encode it in binary or other format.
The user interface 226 may allow the user 510 to select, input, vary, or adjust business information. For example, the user interface 226 may allow for the selection or input of a numerical value, such as through a text box, slider, pull down menu, or other element for receiving input. In some embodiments, the user interface 226 may allow for some business information to be selected or adjusted graphically, for example, on a graph or chart. In some embodiments, information may be entered by a user into a text box on a webpage via the user interface 226. In other embodiments, a user may upload a file that has previously been populated with information. In other embodiments, the system 202 may maintain a database of potential inputs, such as business offerings and geographic locations, and the user may select inputs from the database.
In some embodiments, the user interface 226 may allow for a rule-based scheme to be controlled. For example, the user interface 226 may allow the user 510 to enter one or more rules or conditions for establishing the one or more web presences, landing pages, marketing campaigns and mobile-optimized web presences, landing pages, and marketing campaigns.
One or more web presences, landing pages, mobile-optimized web presences, and mobile-optimized landing pages may be generated by the system 202 in
Referring again to
The user interface 226 may further include a function to view a reporting dashboard. A reporting dashboard may be configured to report to a user information regarding the performance of one or more web presences, landing pages, marketing campaigns, and mobile-optimized web presences, landing pages and marketing campaigns associated with the user's business. In one example, the dashboard may include information regarding a user's account, unique visitors, Contact Us form submissions, and clicks associated with paid ads.
Exemplary Process
Having described various aspects of a system for establishing one or more web presences, mobile-optimized web presences, landing pages, mobile-optimized landing pages, marketing campaigns and mobile-optimized marketing campaigns, the operation of such a system is now described.
A process according to one embodiment is described with reference to
Process 800 includes accessing business information in act 810. Business information may be accessed, for example, by the system 202 shown in
In act 815, one or more web presences may be generated, for example, by the web presence generator 204 in
In act 835, one or more mobile-optimized web presences may be generated, for example, by the mobile-optimized web presence generator 206 in
Any of the acts in process 800 may include using a database 208 as shown in
In act 830, a marketing campaign generated in act 825 may be associated with a landing page generated in act 820 and may also be associated with a web presence generated in act 815. Similarly, in act 850, a mobile-optimized marketing campaign generated in act 845 may be associated with a mobile-optimized landing page generated in act 840 and may also be associated with a mobile-optimized web presence generated in act 835. Furthermore, acts 815, 820, 825 and 830 are independent from acts 835, 840, 845 and 850. Therefore, in some embodiments, one or more of acts 815, 820, 825 and 830 may be performed substantially in parallel with one or more of acts 835, 840, 845 and 850.
In the exemplary embodiment in
In some embodiments, process 800 may include checking screen height and width of a device accessing generated content, such as the system 220B in
Process 800 may further include applying one or more search engine optimization techniques, as described previously, in one or more of acts 815, 820, 825, 835, 840 and 845. Process 800 may include looking up one or more keywords associated with a business offering provided in act 810. In some embodiments, looking up keywords may be performed in one of more of acts 815, 820, 825, 835, 840 and 845. In some embodiments, one or more of acts 815, 820, 825, 835, 840 and 845 may further include inserting keywords associated with a business offering into their respective generated content.
Generating a web presence, a landing page and a mobile-optimized web presence and a mobile-optimized landing page in acts 815, 820, 835 and 840 may further include creating a web page in HTML or any other format. The web page may include business information or keywords associated with the business information. For example, any one of acts 815, 820, 835 and 840 may further include generating an HTML tag and inserting a keyword in the HTML tag, wherein the keyword may be associated with business information. For example, keywords associated with a business offering may be inserted into a title tag of an HTML page.
Generating a marketing campaign and a mobile-optimized marketing campaign in acts 825 and 845 may further include creating an advertisement including business information or a keyword associated with the business information. For example, the title of an advertisement may include one of a business name, business offering, geographic location, or a keyword associated with a business. In another example, an advertisement may include a map based on geographic information associated with a business. In some embodiments, the advertisement may be geo-targeted to a geographic location served by the business (e.g., targeted for presentation only to consumers who are located in and/or interested in one or more geographic locations). In some embodiments, one or more of acts 825 and 845 may include creating an advertisement by using an algorithm to generate at least one of a title and a body text, and may include creating an advertisement by using a generic body text.
In some embodiments, process 800 may include inserting an analytics tracking code into generated content in any one of acts 815, 820, 825, 835, 840 and 845, thereby allowing a user to track the performance of one or more generated content.
In some embodiments, process 800 may further include an act of hosting content generated by any one of acts 815, 820, 825, 835, 840 and 845, and may include acts of registering a domain name and provisioning a domain name system service to resolve the domain.
A process according to one embodiment is described with reference to
Process 900 includes accessing business information in act 910. Business information may be accessed, for example, by the system 202 shown in
In act 915, a local advertising service provider can be associated with the business information, for example, by the system 202 shown in
In act 920, a business taxonomy is selected. The business taxonomy can include the business category/business offering taxonomy described above. The business taxonomy can be selected based on the local advertising service provider, such as a business taxonomy used by the local advertising service provider for offline and/or online advertising. In act 925, a location taxonomy is selected. The location taxonomy can include geographical information as described above. The location taxonomy can be selected based on the local advertising service provider, such as a location taxonomy used by the local advertising service provider for offline and/or online advertising.
In act 930, a marketing campaign is generated, for example, by the marketing campaign generator 234 of
Any embodiment disclosed herein may be combined with any other embodiment, and references to “an embodiment,” “some embodiments,” “an alternate embodiment,” “various embodiments,” “one embodiment,” “at least one embodiment,” “this and other embodiments” or the like are not necessarily mutually exclusive and are intended to indicate that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment may be included in at least one embodiment. Such terms as used herein are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Any embodiment may be combined with any other embodiment in any manner consistent with the aspects disclosed herein. References to “or” may be construed as inclusive so that any terms described using “or” may indicate any of a single, more than one, and all of the described terms. Furthermore, it will be appreciated that the systems and methods disclosed herein are not limited to any particular application or field, but will be applicable to any endeavor wherein a value is apportioned among several placements.
Where technical features in the drawings, detailed description, or any claim are followed by references signs, the reference signs have been included for the sole purpose of increasing the intelligibility of the drawings, detailed description, and claims. Accordingly, neither the reference signs nor their absence are intended to have any limiting effect on the scope of any claim placements.
Having now described some illustrative aspects of the invention, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the foregoing is merely illustrative and not limiting, having been presented by way of example only. Numerous modifications and other illustrative embodiments are within the scope of one of ordinary skill in the art and are contemplated as falling within the scope of the invention.
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §120 as a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/826,032 titled “METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR TAXONOMY-DRIVEN MARKETING CAMPAIGN CREATION FROM A REPOSITORY,” filed on Mar. 14, 2013 which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/599,630 titled “METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ESTABLISHING A MOBILE-OPTIMIZED WEB PRESENCE AND A MOBILE-OPTIMIZED MARKETING CAMPAIGN,” filed on Aug. 30, 2012. Each of these applications is hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 13826032 | Mar 2013 | US |
| Child | 14750405 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 13599630 | Aug 2012 | US |
| Child | 13826032 | US |
