The elevation of standards in local marketing imagery is creating new opportunities for local professional photographers, above and beyond events like weddings and school pictures.

A year and a half ago in September 2010, MacUser’s Dave Stevenson lamented the “Tragic Demise of the Professional Photographer,” suggesting that photographers were being disintermediated by online stock libraries and more simply, the rise of the amateur snapper. But that was months before the advent of Instagram, arguably 2011?s most celebrated iPhone photography app, and Pinterest, the first pinup darling of 2012. Both apps have become well-trafficked hubs for professional photographers. Instagram, an iPhone app, lets amateurs create interesting snapshots and portfolios by providing a variety of photo filters. Pinterest gives users the tools to create bulletin boards of visual media. The significance of both apps’ popularity is evidence of the social media pivot towards curating and displaying visual media.

Text doesn’t tell the full story, especially when it comes to local marketing. Realtors understood this first as they went out armed with video cameras and used specialized publication services like WellcomeMat to edit and present professional home listings. Airbnb, the hot social rental startup, has enlisted an army of local professional photographers to help stamp out the badly-lit photos of cluttered living rooms that made the perception of renting other people’s homes iffy (they did mine, on the right, for free and yes, the listing looks a lot more professional).

Google also created a photo shoot pilot program called Business Photos concurrent with the launch of Google Places in 2010. Last week Google announced expansion of the pilot program by offering up a directory of Trusted Photographers to shoot the retailers and restaurants that depend upon visuals for marketing. This puts Google Maps/Places in a stealthy pole position to dominate local marketing by being the main geo-location resource where retailers can upload their visual marketing media. One can imagine what’s next: video reviews from satisfied customers just like Triple D, housed on Google Places not the restaurant website.

The plight of the professional photographer mirrors a recurring pattern of Internet disintermediation. Artists first bemoan that social media produces content that competes with their specialized offering, but pivot back to relevancy when they realize their unique skills can be marketed to the larger online market.

The default local community bulletin board of Web 1.0 was Craigslist. The second generation, including Topix and Outside.In (now a part of AOL), pioneered hyperlocal news aggregation to construct a feed-based local newspaper — but these companies’ main challenge has been to nurture local conversations around news. Topix in particular has been able to develop active forums at a citywide level. The next question is whether microlocal news and forums — down to the block level — will work.

EveryBlock, now a part of msnbc.com, was the first to develop a microlocal news source, aggregating publicly available neighborhood data like police blotter reports, graffiti complaints and Yelp reviews down to a block level. The array of aggregated data include 1) Neighbor contributions 2) Public records and 3) Web based reviews and listings.

Nextdoor.com is a new social “bulletin board” startup that attempts to jumpstart membership traction by setting a minimum of ten confirmed residents to establish a neighborhood. Once set up, the community bulletin boards provide typical utility, allowing neighbors to message each other, post events and classifieds, and make recommendations.

Is Facebook the solution?
Everyblock and Nextdoor are separate destinations that users normally don’t visit daily like Facebook. And they won’t visit them daily unless their neighbors are actively contributing new content. And when users do contribute content, like posting a neighborhood event or classified, they will generally gravitate to well trafficked sites like local media publishers (including Patch), or Craigslist for wider distribution. Communities need leaders: are there enough of them in smaller block-level areas to create traction?

Everyblock and Nextdoor may need to go where the local conversational action is, Facebook. For example, microlocals could partner with Facebook and allow their subscribers to create a Facebook group for their neighborhood with all the bells and whistles (classifieds, recommendations, events listings) associated with their web application. It would much easier to create “turnkey” neighborhoods by leveraging existing Facebook networks because it’s the simple Facebook login we’re all used to.

The obvious tradeoffs for this are 1) microlocals will lose direct visitors to their websites, and thus the necessary traffic needed to sell advertising, and 2) they get into bed with an elephant partner in Facebook that can change the rules  of the game easily. One possible business model would be to charge merchants for advertising across its own platform as well as through their associated Facebook group.

Although Patch is growing its reader base, the company still seems to be struggling with thetraditional banner ad based business modelfor three simple reasons: 1) lower local demand for banner ads due to new marketing options like daily deals, social media and SEO marketing, 2) limited readership for publications serving small local markets, and 3) outsize editorial expenses.

Here are three new ways Patch can reinvigorate its business model and bring value to local merchants:

Generate new revenue by bringing small businesses into the social marketing age.

Although local businesses’ interest in banner ads is dwindling, there is a tremendous demand among SMBs for social media marketing services. Borrell Associates predicts that local spend on social media marketing will increase seven-fold by 2016. However, social marketing (running the gamut from daily deals and Yelp to Facebook and Foursquare), has become too arcane and complex for most local businesses to deal with. As a result, turnkey solutions are being developed to take the burden off of these businesses.

Patch has the corporate resources to either build their own turnkey offering for local merchants, or package best-of-breed solutions with service partners. Instead of charging $500 monthly for a banner ad, Patch could offer merchants a subscription fee of $500 to manage their social networks and social marketing campaigns. Yes, profits from a service offering are lower than a transactional model, but Patch’s expenses can be lowered as well.

Facilitate local production of content instead of paying  journalists in each city.

Employing a professional journalist in each town to write daily content is costly. Patch seems to be streamlining editorial now, but journalists should pivot from writing local articles to becoming editorial support for local bloggers — particularly those who write articles about their work or industry. Patch currently has over 13,000 local bloggers, but this can be expanded further.

Local content about food, sports, real estate and kids activities can be produced by business owners like restauranteurs, realtors, and summer camp operators, as a means to indirectly promote their businesses. By showing small businesses how to use blog writing and social media for marketing purposes, Patch would further invite the business community into the editorial process rather than shunting it aside as a cash cow to be milked. The tradeoff of content-for-marketing will be perceived as goodwill by the business community. Nurturing small businesses into participating in social media is also a natural lead into selling them the social marketing services referred to above.

Integrate national brands more deeply into the local marketing space.

National retail brands — like Home Depot, AMC Theaters and the Gap — don’t have brand presence at the hyperlocal level that Patch covers. Patch may carry banner ads from national brands, but it could create local “Home and Garden” sections that source content about home repair and related issues, and bring in national partners like Home Depot to build social bridges between their local store managers and consumers. The social media advisory model from above then kicks in, as local Patch managers assist sponsors’ store managers in developing conversations with the community.

Dialogues develop personalized business relationships that are akin to in-store customer support, a distinct competitive advantage for any national brand because very few are capturing these conversations at a granular level. Bringing on national partners and advising them on local social marketing scales the revenue base far more easily than engaging small businesses one by one. National retailers are not the only target; sponsors can range from recruitment firms developing “career” sections to motion picture studios for entertainment.

Last month, Pew Internet published a media study on “How People Learn about their Community”. After the weather, breaking news – a real time ticker tape amalgam of Arab leaders being overthrown, earthquakes, sports scores, murders and accidents – comprise what locals look for.

Source: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Local-news/Part-2/Local-topics.aspx

So what do people look for in local news? It’s pretty mundane. Local news itself – the events coverage, the crimes, the accidents, the lifestyle stories – can by definition only appeal to locals. Ever watch the local news in a town you don’t live in? It’s an irrelevant time waster. Locals check news for items of personal connection and impact. Here is what they clicked on October 26 at the ticker tape Twitter feed of breaking Bergen County news in New Jersey @bergenctynews:

Source: # of clickthroughs on dlvr.it links displayed on Twitter account @bergenctynews and Facebook feed facebook.com/breakingbergencountynews. (posted in 2 routes means news item posted in both)

It’s easy to see the reasons why locals will click on these news items:

1) Locals click on news items of tangible impact, particularly those directly associated with the physical or financial well being of the community. FEMA assistance for Hurricane Irene, and rising pension costs qualify.

2) Locals always click on crime (the more prurient or horrific, the more clickable) and accident news to see if they know anybody involved in theft or prostitution, or got hurt.

3) Locals will click on news that affect their family circles and societies. What school would ban Halloween?

Note that Bergen County news is also broadcast ticker tape style on Facebook, where 2,000+ locals click on and discuss the news on Facebook. Facebook is a news channel that many indie publisher ignore because Facebook seems too personal to broadcast news. But Facebook’s community intimacy could potentially evolve into forums for local conversation as more people get used to using Facebook for business and data as well as personal connection.

Simply put, we see the same consumption pattern across all Breaking News feeds we monitor. One surprising conclusion for publishers might be that providing great local content is admirable, but a ticker tape of mundane news should be incorporated to keep locals coming back to “check up”.

from: BIA/Kelsey SMBs Embracing Social Media http://bit.ly/biaklocal

Yes, BIA/Kelsey’s survey says 48% of SMBs are on Facebook. However, the more telling implication of the above chart is how SMBs don’t even use marketing methods that have been around for a while (43% on email?) or are well recognized as effective (22% with blogs, most likely abandoned). At Street Fight Summit last month, Warren Webster mentions that 50 percent of the businesses in communities covered by Patch do not have websites. Simply put, local merchants simply don’t understand the new marketing rules, and have proven they aren’t keeping up with new innovations like email, let alone Yelp, Foursquare, and Groupon.

So we have this wide open Blue Ocean opportunity to service literally hundreds of thousands of SMBs who need to develop a social marketing plan. They need a turnkey solution provider who understands their locality and their business, and is affordable. With such demand, it’s surprising to see very few social marketing agencies operating at a local level. The hurdle may be that social media marketing demands smart local human resources for hands-on engagement and the cost of procuring that talent may not scale or be too expensive in the face of small SMB marketing budgets.

Hyperlocal publishers are well positioned to support their business communities by providing turnkey social marketing services.   Brian Kinkade created Apsides Media Group to provide local social marketing that works in conjunction with his ten local media sites in Denver. As a local media publisher, he not only offers to manage the local merchants’ social marketing but also has the media distribution platform to actually implement the programs. The new business model is to create subscription revenues by providing marketing services that engages his company with the client as opposed  to selling “rate card” advertising that is transactional and doesn’t engage the client beyond a pay for play level.

Social marketing services can be outsourced, but only to companies that understand the nuances of American social and business marketing culture (that means India can’t do this yet).  Main Street Hub is one of the first outsourcing companies I’ve seen that manages local merchants’ Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Yelp presence for $200-300 monthly subscription. Main Street Hub facilitates local social marketing by enabling publishers and agencies like Apsides to offer a scalable, hands-on turnkey service that is potentially more difficult to build and maintain locally.

Now that Google+ is bonafide, get the widget at widgetsplus.com

Groupon is now offering topic specific deals, and unveiled its first real estate deal last Friday with a $25 coupon redeemable for $1,000 cash at transaction closing.

With over 163 sold over four days of a one week deal, Groupon validated the concept that home buyers and sellers will pay a nominal fee of $25 for the option to receive $1,000 cash back. Assuming Groupon keeps the $25 fee, the brokerage wins by receiving 163 potential leads, perhaps for free.

Let’s do a rough calculation. In real estate, brokerages like Dream Town support their agents with branding, marketing, and clerical support in exchange for a fixed desk fee and/or split on their commissions. They also provide leads in exchange for, say, 25% of the final fee due the agent upon closing. The coupon specifies a minimum transaction amount of $150,000. At the minimum, and assuming a 3% commission (the full service 6% commission is often divided between the seller and buyers’ agent) of $4,500, the agent will receive their commission split minus 25% lead fee. If the agent’s commission split is 50%, the agent will receive $2,250 minus $606 lead fee for a final fee of $1,644. At higher transaction values, the lead fee is proportionally higher.

The key contractual term for the brokerage is its ability to charge the full 6% commission for representation in redeeming this coupon. Many brokerages and agents now work for lower percentages, so that this particular $1,000 discount may be no discount at all to the consumer if they can bargain for a lower fee.

The value of this kind of couponing strategy to the brokerage, or an individual real estate agent are:

- Real estate is a highly competitive numbers game. Finding and closing highly qualified clients is a major marketing hurdle (and the reason you receive so many postcards from Realtors), and campaigns that can generate these leads quickly, efficiently and at low cost are no-brainers.

- The brokerage gets first dibs to sell its services to a likely home buyer/seller who has committed $25 to receive a discount. Surveys have shown that consumers will often sign with the first brokerage or agent they talk with.

- The brokerage can recruit producing agents by supplying them with good leads that coupons attract

There’s no downside here to the brokerage or agent who uses a couponing strategy provided they make sure the deal they offer is compliant to the real estate regulations of their state.

Distribution is key, but needs to be discrete

Groupon was able to leverage its massive distribution capabilities to sell real estate coupons in Chicago… once. The problem is Groupon can’t continue offering real estate coupons in rotation on a weekly basis for new brokerages and agents in a city without losing its cachet and creating the impression that every Realtor can offer a discount. With high demand for coupons by real estate professionals, new distribution channels will be created. I suggested several potential channels in my April 1 post Groupon for Real Estate. In my next article, I will focus on the channels.

Related article: Groupon for Real Estate

Groupon-like deals can work for real estate, but not as a typical $10 for $20 worth of product purchase. Real estate can’t be sold as a 30% off purchase price item (although they certainly tried variations of this at California real estate investment clubs in 2005). Real estate marketing has generally relied on variations of online lead generation, like providing real estate listings, in order to capture contact information. A real estate Groupon would essentially have the same mission of driving the active client out of the woodwork by providing a saving incentive.

Real estate marketing and the need to draw active clients out of the woodwork

The real estate industry is a peculiar local business for couponing because real estate transactions are solitary, even once in a lifetime events, compared to every day activities like eating out. In a nutshell, real estate marketing has been based on community networking and leveraging referrals to build Realtor brand recognition. The big hurdle is building community visibility to achieve that branding. Marketing then became a shotgun numbers game that spawned the traditional pushy  techniques that make consumers cringe. To avoid this spam stream, active home buyers and sellers now try to control who can contact them, and it makes them harder to find.

What will a Groupon for real estate look like?

One major coupon difference is that a consumer can’t assess the market value of a real estate service like a restaurant coupon. Couponing real estate services will likely require either pre-transaction interaction (“feel free to call me to discuss the details before you purchase the coupon”), and/or lead qualification processing.

I see two consumer models for real estate coupon services: 1) Nominal consumer payment upfront for redemption rights of a discounted service, and 2) No consumer payment upfront, but registered leads are qualified by the Realtor, chosen and purchased from the coupon provider. We’re using some examples below from Housetipper.com, one of the first coupon services for real estate.

1) Payment for discounted services model

At first blush, the $25 purchase fee in this ad acts like an option that locks the 4% commission offer for a specified window, say one year. However, no consumer would purchase this kind of offer without due diligence of both the Realty and their standard pricing policy (maybe they always charge 4% commission rate). The deal terms will add language to solicit the potential buyer to “contact” them with details, or to join an on-site discussion thread.

This offer works because it accomplishes two things a Realtor wants: 1) pulls a potential client into a conversation, and 2) qualified client commitment when they actually pay $25.

The business concept works because the Realtor receives leads with no out of pocket fees, and the deals provider receives the full fee revenue from the consumer. However, the business model will be inherently limited due to the small number of coupons that can be sold in a locality (more on this later).

2) Free but transparent lead generation model

The coupon purchase price may dissuade many potential clients from inquiry if they have to actually pay. One way to bring more leads to the table would be to create a free offer, say, a free home inspection if a client signs a listing agreement (note the fine print can cover the Realtor’s out of pocket risk by stipulating that the rebate for home inspection be paid at closing). More potential clients will sign up for the deal without financial commitment.

The transparent lead generation system is a new concept in delivering leads. Once a lead registers, their name, email address and phone #, and if applicable, their social media profiles like Linkedin are presented to the Realtor. The Realtor can choose to either green light or red light the lead, and will pay a specified green light fee, like $25, to activate contact.

The traditional intermediary based lead generation systems that harvest email addresses from website inquiries and sold blind in bulk, are generally stale and poor quality; a 3% hit rate is doing well. Transparent lead generation systems reveal potential clients to due diligence and assure qualification, even to the point of Realtor contact with the lead before green lighting. Coupon providers can work on an honor system because any Realtor who would try to side deal with a client to avoid paying a fee would make an immediate unethical impression.

Final hurdle – distribution and scale

The biggest hurdle with real estate couponing is building an effective subscriber base for deals.

1) In today’s economy, the number of people in the market for real estate is small

2) Subscribers only subscribe when they are in the market, a very short window. And how will they find the real estate coupon, when limited deal revenue won’t support supplemental marketing campaigns?

3) Real estate is inherently local, the coupon provider can’t market locally in every city (unless they are Groupon) so the marketing effort will fall on the Realtor and local media. This is a lot of resource coordination, and Realtor “sharing” the deal through Facebook won’t likely tip a deal into significant numbers.

Solution to Scale

Coupon providers will need to augment their distribution through affiliate relationships. For example, deal syndication networks can be developed with real estate listings sites like Trulia or Zillow, brokerages, and hyperlocal networks like Patch and the Breaking News Network that can distribute deals locally. Scaling will require a coupon provider to collect in aggregate enough small fees (much smaller than traditional Groupon yields) to cover centralized operating expenses. Building national client offerings from housing related retailers like Home Depot will also support scale.

Based on my work with the real estate industry, I see enthusiastic demand for real estate Groupons from Realtors, as well as mortgage brokers, insurance and other real estate related services. And why not? Realtors will try any free or cheap marketing opportunities that enhance their lead quality.

Social commerce won’t be just the playground of Internet giants Groupon, Google and Facebook. White label social commerce platform providers will allow any publishing entrepreneur to easily build social buying applications.

In my previous post, I discussed how the success of social commerce hinges on media distribution – how to get social deals noticed by consumers. For startups, it’s now challenging to build a vanilla Groupon clone in cities where Groupon and other competitors have market share simply because the markets are already mature. Nevertheless, this is not the social buying end game; social commerce is a blue ocean that will spawn opportunities. I’ll be delineating these opportunities on Daily Deal Media.

The next stage of social buying will be the development of niche categories. For example, golf is a perfect “Groupon-able” item:

- Tee times are perishable, ideally every hour should be booked.

- Golf courses in the Sun Belt need customers all year round. In colder climes, courses need customers in early spring and late fall. Golfers will purchase a deep discount greens fee coupon that expires on May 31 on the off chance the weekend weather is nice (San Francisco has been warmer this January week than it usually is in July)

- Golfers are enthusiastic about their hobby. Hook them on discount greens fees, and get local sporting goods stores to offer discount equipment and balls.

Finally, niche group buying can be localized. I expect a number of regional / state / local golf social buying systems to launch across America because there are low barriers to entry. A deal syndication marketplace will evolve to expose an inventory of golf deals that can be shared across these systems. Organizations like the PGA could become involved in branding.

Here’s a list of niche social buying opportunities with examples:

Thematic and cultural

• Mothers’ groups and women focused services (Plum District, Juice in the City)
• Teens (surprised not to find any)
• Men focused services (Thrillist / from Yipit blog)
• Cause funding services (Causeon)
• International (Exclusively.in)
• Ethnic groups (JDeal for Jewish)
• Professional businesses – real estate, legal, accounting
• Green (Gathergreen)
• Adult services (Exoticdeals)

Product

• Electronics
• Software (Appsumo)
• Beauty (Beautylish)
• Beer, wine and liquor (Daily Wine Deals)
• Luxury goods (Gilt)
• Clothing / kids, women, designer fashions (Beyond the Rack)
• Etsy modeled hand made and vintage products
• Houseware (Housewaredeals)
• Books and eBooks
• Jewelry (Sharkstores is building a product based portfolio)
• Watches (Chronoshark)

Expect brand retailers like BevMo or Pottery Barn to develop social buying systems.
Sports

• Golf / mini-golf (GroupGolfer, Golfon)
• Winter sports, ski resorts
• Sailing and water sports
• Sports and health clubs
• Fishing
• Bowling
• Billiards
• NASCAR and racing
• Go carts
• Sporting goods

Travel & Tourism

• Travel deals – (Travelzoo)
• Theme parks
• Casinos and gambling
• Local things to do / bookings / events (365 Things to Do Austin Deals)
• Vacationing, tours, ballooning, sky diving
• Wine tours

Hobbies

• Classic hobbies – coin and stamp collecting, comics, trading cards
• Restaurants and foodie (Restaurant.com)
• Beer & wine (Daily Wine Deals)
• Home and garden
• Music
• Musical instruments
• Karaoke
• Gaming and social gaming

Resources: Yipit deals directory, Daily Deal Media deals directory

This article originally appeared at Daily Deal Media. I supplemented the original article with new projections for daily deal revenue growth from investment firm Needham & Co.

The term “social commerce” was rarely discussed until Groupon’s massive 1/2 off coupon they sold for the Gap:

Social media provided everybody with a voice. Social media however changed the rules of commercial engagement by discounting, even denigrating the sales pitch; it changed the focus of online marketing from direct advertising to a social review and sharing system. Social commerce ushers in a socially acceptable transactional model by offering a consumer incentive in the form of  a “deal” rather than a blatant ad.  Groupon succeeded by delivering this new advertising product down to the mom & pop merchant, something no online service accomplished before on a massive scale, including the industry best positioned to do this – the mainstream media. It simply opened up a brand new local advertising channel.

What’s the linchpin to social commerce success? Groupon has proven that it’s distribution.

Only two years ago, the main channels for local advertisers were mainstream media – newspapers, radio and TV – and PPC search. Channels are on the verge of proliferating – along with social buying systems, add mobile channels like Facebook Deals, and more the elaborate check-in associated systems from Yelp and Foursquare, and finally channels being  developed by merchants themselves via branded Facebook pages and self service couponing like Groupon Stores.

These new ad channels are paradigm shifting “revenue multipliers”, analogous to the VCR augmenting the revenue base of motion pictures in the 1980′s (Wall Street financed movie studios and many films were literally produced on video pre-sales) or e-commerce in the mid-90′s. Revenue multipliers attract New New Thing levels of funding, as evidenced by this month’s investments of $1.5 bn into Facebook, and like, $1bn into Groupon. Massive funding is used for building infrastructure. Facebook and Groupon notwhithstanding, we’ll see Google, Yahoo, AOL, mass media, ad agencies and any industry working with SMBs focused on building localized armies to escort businesses into social commerce like it’s the last frontier.

Addendum:

On January 24, Business Insider published a Needham and Co. revenue projection on the size of the local daily deals sector that  confirms the concept that daily deals is a new revenue multiplier for local advertising spending.

Social commerce’s profound power is in tying the local internet, mobile and media together into an integrated business model.

In the next few posts, I’ll discuss how social commerce allows anybody to develop a marketing voice, and how the masses will take to social commerce in the same way they adopted social media.