Tag Archives: zvents

Local Search Engine Zvents Raises $24M

Local, Search, Startups, , , , , , ,

Let me diverge from my usual contemplations to share with you some news about the company that keeps me busy, in a rare post about Zvents. Today, the local search engine announced $24M in funding, secured with Nokia Growth Partners, AT&T and NAVTEQ.

“Zvents has spent four years building a world-class local search service,” said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and founder. “This funding will enable us to dramatically scale the value of that service to our network of media partners, local consumers, and local advertisers.”

What Ethan has briefly highlighted is that Zvents is a unique local search engine. Now powering for a network of hundreds of web and mobile partners, including MSN, an index that features event listings to promote your local businesses. Simply, the company enables local businesses, merchants and retailers, and restaurants to submit both free and paid listings to the network. And most importantly, note we’re not talking about the business listings that get so much of the attention in Local Search, Zvents promotes your local promotions, weekly specials, in-store events, you spend your tight budgets to promote offline.

Let’s take the Bay Area for example, San Francisco, CA. Saks Fifth Avenue is hosting a charity fashion show and party on October 2; an event like any you might have, to be promoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, and the dozens of other local media outlets that reach Bay Area customers. I’d be generous in saying that managing such a campaign, PLUS promotion on MSN, was a mere challenge. The fact is, coordinating such a great number of outlets, let alone outlets that can effectively reach enthusiastic customers, is nearly impossible (more so, perhaps, lately?).

Yet, that’s exactly what Zvents does through its evolution of online, local promotion.

Zvents creates for local businesses the opportunity to promote their locations online in ways that match their established media buying patterns. Events motivate consumers to engage with local businesses – a fact that local advertisers have utilized in print promotions for decades. The Zvents network is an enormous online distribution channel by which merchants can distribute these proven, effective marketing messages to engage local consumers.

As you make plans for this evening or this weekend, before concerning yourself with what your friends have planned or reviews about a business, you ask a more fundamental question; “where can I best spend my time?” Your plans are shaped the special events the are being held; those sales, specials, celebrity appearances, and attractions. Local, and local search, is not about places but the nuances between place and time that matters most; that going somewhere today or tomorrow may make all the difference in the world. A difference that makes your valuable time spent, that much more rewarding. Zvents is enabling this; as much as we’ve learned, as online marketers, that Google best connects websites with customers, Zvents leverages search to connect offline buyers and sellers. Bringing marketers and local businesses, the most qualified audience imaginable: An audience that wants to engage.

The new strategic investors include Nokia Growth Partners, the growth capital arm of Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone supplier; NAVTEQ, the world leader in premium-quality digital map data; and AT&T, the largest U.S. wireless company which, through its YELLOWPAGES.COM subsidiary, is also the leading U.S. internet yellow pages search directory. And Nokia’s John Gardner reveals the greater opportunity,

“We are delighted to have led this round of funding for Zvents, enabling them to bring their world-class local search service to the converged worlds of internet and mobility,” said John Gardner, managing partner of Nokia Growth Partners. “We believe that the combination of next-generation mobile devices and powerful server-side search services will be a powerful channel to deliver local information to consumers. Zvents has found an innovative way to connect local search to the marketing needs of local merchants, offering a compelling means of driving exciting, context-based mobile experiences.”

I’d love to help you (yes, my finger is pointing at you); to help you make this holiday shopping season a success, to make it much easier to do your job by getting those events, local promotions, sales, and weekly specials, in front of engaged local customers. If dealing with just a few promotions, you can add them directly to the index yourself [insider tip, the few extra dollars to get an enhanced listing, highlights the listing in the search results throughout the network]. If managing multiple stores or dozens of classes and sales like an Apple Store, Home Depot, or Macy’s, drop me a line, add a comment, or get in touch with Zvents here.

Local Search Behind MTV Campus Daily Guides Reaches College Demographic

Fun, Local, Search, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With a tremendous amount of fanfare (I had a parade come through the office this morning), I’m excited to share that Zvents has partnered with MTV to deliver a comprehensive local search experience to Campus Daily Guides published by mtvU.

Creating a unique opportunity to reach the affluent college demographic, Zvents is powering the local search experience used by college students on 25 mtvU Campus Daily Guides. mtvU is taking advantage of Zvents’ Media Platform to provide details about millions of important college and recreational events, local promotions and sales, sports, concerts, and performers, specific to the location of each university campus. Together, mtvU and Zvents are serving up local search like it’s never been done before.

How could I possibly be more excited? One of the initial 25 includes my Alma mater, Arizona State University

“Initial 25?” That’s right, mtvU General Manager Steven Friedman shared with MediaWeek their plans to roll out another 25 campuses by year end.

The partnership significantly extends and improves the value of a new advertising vehicle for local merchants. We’ve learned from Google that search reaches consumers as no medium before, bringing to advertisers a revolutionary advertising opportunity that allocates budgets to contextual, behaviorally targeted search results. You spend to advertise against highly qualified traffic; the perfect model for promoting a website. Heretofore however, local search has been limited to enabling local merchants to only highlight their own business listing, reaching consumers looking for that business. Effective when someone wants to find your business, to be sure, but not the game changing search experience delivered through the major search engines; not the ability to search for everything locally. Zvents is making that change, adding local promotions and event listings to the search index, enabling local merchants to reach local consumers with sales, promotions, and events. And now, with mtvU, to reach students as they look for the things they want to do.

Read more about the partnership and opportunity for you as a local advertiser with Reuters, Senior PaidContent.org Correspondent David Kaplan, or The Washington Post. To get started promoting your local business, find your college campus or learn more about local promotions through Zvents.

Win a flip video camcorder from me (Zvents) at Search Engine Strategies San Jose

Conferences / Events, Search, , , ,

I’m sure every one of you will be in San Jose next week at the McEnery Convention Center for Search Engine Strategies, the leading search optimization and marketing conference. Co-organized and hosted by respected search authorities Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Strategies is the leading forum for search and marketing information in an environment which allows us to network, debate, and discuss industry trends.

Ask.com’s CEO, Jim Lanzone, will be there, presenting the exceptional Ask3D interface, as will Google’s Marissa Mayer to share their insight on personalized and “universal” search results. (As you know if you’ve kept up with me, I’m a fan of the former and on the fence with the latter)

Zvents will be there sharing how you can work with us (for free) to benefit from:

  • Increased SERP share of voice

  • Traffic to your website and in-store

  • Tools to easily find, share, manage, & promote your retail, business, and sponsored events

  • Incremental reach through syndication with Zvents’ partner newspapers and media sites

Track me down at Zvents’ booth #330 and enter for a chance to win a cool flip video camcorder or send me a note and let’s connect (paul_l_obrien at yahoo dot com).

Marketing with Zvents – SEO and Shopping in One

Local, Search, Surplus, Web 2.0, , , , ,

The announcement has been made, not long ago I left HP to join the brilliant group of folks creating a remarkable event search technology at Zvents. Considering yourselves Mr. and Ms. America (not Mr. and Ms. Marketer), I’d be remiss (and not doing my job) to not mention that Zvents is where you want to go to discover things to do; as an index of concerts, festivals, classes, parties, activities, and movies, users turn to our temporal and location based search technology to find out what’s going on, when, and where. Give it a shot; it truly is an impressive engine even aligning restaurant and bar recommendations with events for a complete experience.

The real question for you is how to leverage the platform to promote your products or services. When we think of events we typically think of those I’ve listed above, popular activities in which one can attend or participate. We easily overlook the fact that many of our more traditional daily activities are functionally events and therefore relevant to our product. Consider that your consumers shop during sales or line up around stores for new product releases. New home buyers visit open houses to evaluate opportunities and car dealers regularly hold special events to move vehicles off the lot. We attend conferences and seminars throughout our workday to stay on top of the latest developments and continue our education with classes of personal interests. Sales, new product releases, classes, showings, these are all events that should be promoted through Zvents as Williams-Sonoma, for example, is doing now.

As Zvents’ audience looks for things to do this weekend, their attention can turn to things you have going on in stores.

  1. Submit your store location if it is not already indexed
  2. Enter sales, product releases, in store classes, or celebrity appearances; events that attract customers
Feel free to even just get in touch as we can upload or index events in other automated ways.

The marketing opportunity is not limited to retailers. My friends from Toshiba are a preferred brand at Circuit City; releasing a new Tablet PC is just the kind of event that will drive enthusiast demand to the store. Find the Circuit City locations and announce the date of the release. And if consumer products can promote events related to the product itself, why can’t they feature endorsed or sponsored events to promote their brand? (The Wizard of Oz, by the way, is one of my favorite conspiracy theory movies)

We all know the first destination to which most of our audiences turn to find something. A Google search for Barnes & Noble in Long Beach returns a paid BN result, a Google map and some local results from Universal Search, and there, 2nd in the SERP, a link to Barnes & Noble Long Beach at the OC Register. As a search technology, SEO is critical and Zvents content is highly optimized to ensure the best search experience with comprehensive and relevant integration with the engines. The content you submit to Zvents is so well optimized we’ll often get your brand / your store / your event, very prominent placement.
“But that is OCRegister.com not Zvents isn’t it?” Zvents even throws in promotion of your events through major newspaper and internet partners throughout the country.

With Promotion of your event, SEO, inlinks to your site, and distribution through other major publications, check out Zvents. I’m sure you’ll fall in love with discovering things to do but you’ll also discover a new marketing channel.