iMedia: Don't Slam Your Virtual Door on Consumers

Our PR strategy for FastCall411 is to focus on customer service. As part of this effort, here's an article that I recently wrote for iMedia Connection.

"Marketers need to think of their sites as doors to their business and delight in ever visitor, phone call, email or chat. FastCall411's CEO tells how."

FastCall411 Press Release - June 4, 2007

Nearly Two-Thirds of Businesses in Typical Internet and Mobile Directories Not Ready or Responsive to Consumer Calls, FastCall411 Survey Reveals

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi-content=NEWS_VIEW_POPUP_TYPE&newsId=20070605005652&ndmHsc=v2*A1178535600000*B1181192698000*DgroupByDate*J2*L1*N1000837*ZFastCall411&newsLang=en&beanID=202776713&viewID=news_view_popup

iMedia Connection: Ogilvy, MediaVest and Mindshare Weigh in on Mobile

iMedia Connection: Ogilvy, MediaVest and Mindshare Weigh in on Mobile Small screen, big future? Industry veterans discuss the current state of mobile and how the market is slated to shift... very soon. http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/15195.asp

"There isn’t sufficient local search volume to deliver enough traffic/leads to SMBs"

Greg Sterling recently posted comments on a speech given by Joe Walsh, CEO of YellowBook

http://gesterling.wordpress.com/
According to the post, Walsh said: "There isn’t sufficient local search volume to deliver enough traffic/leads to SMBs and small businesses won’t self-provision ads.

Is there sufficient local search volume? comScore estimates (or under estimates) that roughly 1 billion of 7 billion monthly searches are local (15 percent) and that 52 percent of local searches involve looking for a phone number or address. A significant number of these searches will result in a phone call – I estimate 100,000,000 calls per month. (I reviewed tens of millions of call records while Vice President of Business Development at CallSource and Jambo. Consumers overwhelmingly call when in need of a local product or service.)

The problem with local search? A very significant percentage of calls to merchants listed in today’s local directories will be made to unqualified, out-of-business, or otherwise unresponsive merchants. There IS sufficient local search volume to deliver enough traffic/leads to SMBs. We just need to funnel search to relevant, lead seeking merchants. FstCall411 taps into a vast source of currently unmonetized consumer phone calls. Calls made to the majority of the 14 million merchants listed in the local database who never answer their phone (10% have disconnected #s). 100MM calls to 14MM merchants averages 7 calls per month - not enough to get Joe Walsh excited. 100MM calls to the 10% of the 14MM that are really relevant (1.4MM) is 70 calls per month. Fire up the pay-per-call engine (and get the call connection rate high enough) and that’s $700 (at an average of $10 / call)

Will they self-provision? Walsh is right - they won’t. But send them 70 calls per month, and let the local merchant know the calls are coming from you and they’ll start calling us to sign-up.

FastCall at Mobile Marketing Forum in NYC June 6-7

FastCall is a sponsor of the MMF next week in NYC and Monday we will be announcing the results of the dialing test we did in April (posted below – “Check ‘N Don’t Go”). This trip also kicks off our fund-raising efforts as I plan the VC “dog and pony show”.

We’ve pushed mobile up to the front burner as the “fast” story goes hand in hand with mobile. If we are searching for a roofer from our cell – it’s probably urgent. The mobile browser also eliminates our need to ask the consumer for a call back number as we must do in the web browser. The caller has the phone in their hand. We essentially trick the phone into making an outbound call – and still keep the benefit of the browser initiated call. The caller can pass us info via the browser at the same time the call is made (“I need a roofer within the hour.”) Then we read the message to the roofers that we send the calls to. We pass the results of the connected call back to the caller (by browser or SMS.) The called can rate the merchant and send the rating back to us. We are working on the demo.

"Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global association that strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technology.”

We delivered our first working demo today.

Look out Google - this is a game changer!

“System and Method for Improved Directory Assistance”

I haven’t posted since April – FastCall slow blog? I’ve been on the down low partially because we were preparing to file our patent application “System and Method for Improved Directory Assistance” It was a very beneficial experience writing the application for the FastCall411 artificial intelligence engine. The process forced me to describe the process step-by-step. We have a home run here and its great to have the security and confidence of the "patent pending". Our patent attorney is a hero. He escaped to China the day after we filed. Did I force him into exile?

What's going with FastCall411 1.0?

Hi Everyone,

I am going to start blogging more of the FastCall411 product activities as we are ramping up on getting 1.0 out the door to keep you all in the loop.

Here's what was done this past Friday when Richard and I met with the vendor who's working on 1.0:


1) We tested the backend of the application where we dialed x numbers of "merchants" to see who eventually got to take the customer. We experienced a few kinks where "all" the merchants got to talk to the customer at the same time but by the time we were done we were able to get 1 merchant to talk to the customer.

2) We also decided on the initial customer experience we would move forward with which basically is that FastCall411 will dial the merchants first and once it finds a merchant, FastCall411 will dial the customer and connect the two.

3) We talked extensively on how to solve the connection problem between the merchants and the customers.

4) We also reviewed the reporting requirements for FastCall411 and added a few more tracking elements.

5) We are targeting to have the 1.0 UI done by Friday and we will be working the IA person this week to flesh this out.

6) 1.0 is currently targeted for July.


Rashmi

Check 'N Don't Go? - Still Listed on Goog Despite Disconnected #

Yesterday I posted about Check n Go. This was a merchant we dialed last week and found a disconnected number. I Googled this yesterday, called, and the number did not connect (Google said "You could not be connected with (818) 881-8400" I tried again today and Check N Go is still listed on Goog despite the disconnected #.

Check 'N Don't Go?

We Dialed 5000 Merchants to Test Merchant Response

Last week FastCall411 executed a test of merchant response. We dialed 5000 merchants: various categories, in LA, around 1:30 pst. Our test revealed that 36% of the merchants we called were willing to accept a call from a consumer with "an immediate need for service".

I searched Google and found one merchant who's number we found to disconnected in our test:
Check 'N Go
17236 Saticoy St, Van Nuys, CA
(818) 881-8400

I called using the Goog click to talk (within local search). I will go back tomorrow to see if the merchant is still listed. Goog now knows that the merchant is closed. Let's see what happens.

Notes on LAVA, Google Keynote

I attended the annual LAVA Investment Capital Conference (Los Angeles Venture Association) Wednesday at the Biltmore downtown.

The lunch keynote speakers were SALMAN ULLAH Director of Acquisitions and SEAN DEMPSEY Principal, Corporate Development at Google.

Salman claimed that Goog responds to almost all email inquiries from prospective partners / M&A candidates. He said they don’t return phone calls because they don’t do phone well. Of he didn’t mean FASTCALL411-type phone, but I think it’s an interesting comment.

Salman and Sean outlined the Goog corp dev world. They spent quite some time on offline – print, radio and TV. Offline is clearly a big area of growth for Goog. Not all of the offline biz model will be pay-per-call, but surely some will (fair to assume none will be pay-per-click – at least for the foreseeable future). They also said they acquire companies with great teams and who have domain experience in areas were Goog does not. The other sessions were interesting - I will try to post some more notes later.

User Experience, Results Page, Beta

Our #1 goal is to focus on the consumer experience. How do we make the messaging and service compelling to the consumer. Focusing on copy, graphics, and user experience.

What ad units will bring users to the site? We put some ideas into the a demo showing FastCall411 as a "widget" within a partner site.

Our plan is to buy keywords (Google SEM) to drive traffic to the results page (plumber, Los Angeles). We can then begin to measure consumer response. Our goal is to begin this testing in June.

Let me know your thoughts.

Empirical evidence on merchant calls

I wonder if there is a way to collect empirical data on the number of times a merchant is called in a day. For example, for Plumber John, can we find out how many calls have been made to him?

Now, I know that it is almost impossible to get this data out of a regular phone company, but what about the VoIP providers, like Vonage? Perhaps they would be more amenable to providing aggregate data. Vonage is doing so bad financially they would do anything for a few dollars.

What is FastCall411?

FastCall411 is a mobile and local search application with the industry’s most relevant results and first effective business model.

FastCall411 Objectives

"FastCall411's objectives are to aggregate local search in order to build the industry's largest inventory of calls. To utilize the industry's most effective methodology to locate and sell local merchants. To create a better local search experience when a consumer is looking for a service provider; better local advertising results when a merchant wants new business; and a better partnership model by creating more valuable results between consumers/businesses. We will extend these objectives to include mobile search, directory assistance and other input devices.

To accomplish the first (consumers) we have built a simple product that the consumer can use with a near 100% satisfaction rate. To accomplish the second (advertising results) we are going to deliver relevant, "hot" leads, and will be able to track those results so that we can target and approach the businesses most likely to advertise. To accomplish the third, we will negotiate premium distribution with local search sites, newspaper web sites, Internet yellow pages as well as with offline media such as print, direct mail, radio and TV.