I attended a networking/marketing for businesses roundtable near Cleveland this morning, and one of the participants at my table was trying to “sell” us on Local Adlink.
I have not heard of this type of online marketing; the individual said it’s better than Google Adwords because you don’t pay per click. Hmm? After the table leader reminded him that we are not here to SELL services, she continued to explain about Google AdWords and other types of PPC.
I was curious to know more about Local Adlink, so I began a search and found the first 305,000,000 pages contained something about Local AdLink Scams. Not what I expected, so of course I was already skeptical about this type of marketing. After more research on YouTube.com, I found 3 informative and reliable videos about what Local Adlink is and isn’t.
What Local Adlink Marketing Is Not
- Is not an SEO company
- Is not Google AdWords or PPC
- Does not guarantee top rankings on search results
- Does not guarantee position on page
- Does not put your company link on ad
What Local Adlink Marketing Is
- Uses Geo-Targeting to get your business found in targeted area (using zipcodes)
- An alternative to Google AdWords and PPC
- Has 3 levels of marketing which range from $49.95 to $199.95 per month
- Is tracked using a form of analytics
- A useful tool for displaying coupons, pictures and videos for your business without a Web address
I believe, from the videos I watched that this is not a scam, but a tool to be used for businesses that only service certain geographical areas. As an employee of an SEO firm, I would not recommend this type of marketing to clients. It is much too new, with only being in operation since November 2007, it does not convince me enough to try it or suggest it to others.
If you’re a business owner, I recommend watching the following videos and decide for yourself if this is how you want others to find you. These recommended videos are from one of the founding representatives (there are other reps too) of Local AdLink and are deemed more reliable than many.
1. Local AdLink Business Overview Part 1
2. Local AdLink Business Overview Part 2
3. Local AdLink Business Overview Part 3
Please leave your comments regarding use and usability of this service. I’m interested if it helps businesses and whether it’s cost effective or not?
I wanted to weigh in on you post about Local AdLink. I am the owner of a small marketing firm in the midwest and Local AdLink seems to be spreading here like wildfire. After several queries from our clients about the product, we decided to look in to the company to see if their product is something worth while. At a quick glance this looks like a decent opportunity to promote a companies website, but, upon closer investigation here’s what we discovered:
http://transformationmarketing.com/blog/?p=3
Your research is even more interesting and my readers will appreciate your time and diligence for uncovering the truth with this company. I’m passing your info onto many others as well. Be sure to add “Share this” so the word will be spread! Thanks for your response.
Being one who understands websites, search engines, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), I started out with lots of excitement over this service and the potential income I could generate. I understood the power of local ad searches and what it can mean to a small to medium sized business fighting for “local” exposure on the World Wide Web. I have since curbed my enthousiasm and am taking a “wait & see” approach. I’ll explain more in a bit.
After getting past the hype, I started looking under the hood. As far as I can see, there is no actual proprietary technology here. At best, this service is a web portal. Clients have to land at LocalAdlink.com first in order to search for your paid ad. They promise to push you out to the major search engines, but there is no guarentee. This is understandable since – with few exceptions – top search rankings are almost always paid in advance.
I recommend you optimize your website and/or pay Google or Yahoo for premium search results (no website required). Coincidently, the local searches Local Adlink purports to deliver can be accomplished through all the major search engines by simply adding the city or zip code in the search box.
What I have found most troubling is that (paid) geo-targeted searches within the LocalAdlink.com web portal, in particular the targeted ZIP code searches, do not always deliver the desired search results. I’m not sure why, and the question has never been answered by tech support as they have yet to return my phone calls or emails.
Now, in all fairness to the company, they have created an outstanding business opportunity. If you are a networker, you can build a large sales force and cash in on your team’s performance. Or you can build an ad agency and collect every time a client renews the service. I find both options very attractive.
But the problem remains that the service does not always deliver. Or at least not as promised. And once again, don’t expect live tech support. I believe the company grew too fast and there was no scalable infrastructure in place to meet the growth and tech support demand. Very poor planning indeed.
Hopefully, they will acknowledge they (or their sales reps) over-promised and under-delivered. Once they get their act together, the right thing to do is give existing customers free bonus ads to compensate for the rough start.
Until someone shows me otherwise, Local Adlink is nothing more than a local search web portal. Sorry.
In my opinion, what most people seem to miss about LocalAdLink is it’s target market. Sure if you are marketing SEO to larger corporations that can spend thousands per month on PPC and similar methods you would most likely not recommend the LocalAdLink solution. However they’re target market is very small biz America that have tiny ad budgets. For that group this solution makes all the sense in the world. Even the argument about how they send traffic to a LocalAdLink landing page makes not sense, because for the most part even if the business has a website it has little to no traffic flowing to it currently. The LocalAdLink system will begin to develop significant traffic back to that website and is this not the goal?
Also, in the next 60 days LocalAdLink will launch they’re i-supply.com division which will be an instant e-commerce solution and bring privately labeled virtual malls ala Amazon.com to 100,000 high-traffic websites and instantly create the largest privately owned online ad network in the world where they control 100% of the ad space. So basically, Beyond Commerce is just getting started and will be a dominant player in the online ad market and soon offline with the launch of their mobile marketing division in Q2 of 2009. They’re solution is beyond SEO to TIO (total internet optimization).
Actually, this service is still in Beta format (as of 3/15/09) and the publishing of your ad on their localadlink.com web portal is hot reliable. Not all adwords or key words will call up your ad on their web portal, nor do all of the Zip codes you pay for represent your ad.
But here is the real sign of how poorly run this company is. Try6 calling or writing tech suppport. It is completely non existent.
Perhaps they will eventually get their act together. But for now, I’d stick to Google or some other proven and reliable form of advertising.
You missed a ton of the best features. One being the pricing, I have yet seen a company that can touch theirs . I have been in advertising for over 20 years and of course worked a lot of different types. I don’t believe it should replace all of your other types of advertising but in this market the advertiser needs to shop smarter.
This product offers a page so the smaller advertiser does not have to have the expense of a website. It will give them many ways to use the page such as coupons and running videos, photos etc. The advertiser can change their page any time they wish without worry they would have to hire someone to maintain. There are fill in the blanks and videos to show them what they need to learn. They are not asking them to commit to contracts for months which drives up the price. The people who are getting local ad dollars to spend only with the companies on local ad link so brings people in to the store one more way. Keep in mind that this company has not officially launched until end of April, there are some selling who have mistaken some of the information
There is much to learn about this company. They are planning to use successful companies they already own to boost the coverage the advertiser will receive.
Partnered with others for the same reason. They are introducing I-supply so shopping can be done from here also. Plans are also in the works to go international.
And last but not least an advertiser can get money back for signing on as a brand builder. This bb would need to sell (recommend) to 2 people to sign on and so on they will get paid to do that.
Go to there official site this is a very promising alternative for small business and advertising on the Internet.
Localadlink.com or Beyondcommerce.com.