Posted by Jennifer Campbell Goddard, CEO
INTEGRITY MARKETING SOLUTIONS
By now, you may have heard the buzz that Integrity Marketing has acquired the market research firm, Simba Yellow Pages. If you have not been active in the yellow pages publishing industry, you may never have heard of Simba … but suffice to say that Simba has been setting the gold-standard in reliable market research and analysis for the past 25 years. Over the past several years, their focus has necessarily expanded beyond phone book publishing to embrace the local search industry. If you think about it a minute, your yellow page phone book was the first “search engine,” specializing in providing local results!
The new division will be called IMS Local Search Authority, with Dave Goddard, Simba’s editor and lead analyst, joining our team as “the voice of authority in the local search market.”
Why did we do it?
Why did IMS decide to purchase Simba Yellow Pages? In a nut shell, it just made sense. I literally ran into Dave Goddard in October 2008, when the two of us were running the Hartford Marathon. With more than 8,000 people in the race, it must have been kismet that we met within five minutes of the starting line … and have been running together ever since! When I first learned that Dave did market research in the yellow pages industry, I thought phone books and wondered who was still interested. But as the months and years passed, I came to realize that Dave’s specialty is really not so much about phone books, but rather local search. And local search is about bringing buyers and sellers together at the point of purchase. When that concept finally got through to my little brain, bells started ringing – ding! ding! ding! We have a winner!
IMS has always focused our internet marketing strategies on helping our clients dominate local search. It has always been our goal to attract qualified buyers (clients) and bring them together with appropriate sellers (estate planning attorneys) at the point of sale (your office).
The more I learned about Local Search, the more I realized that a market research firm would be the perfect adjunct to our core marketing business.
Last November I accompanied David to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was a keynote speaker at a worldwide conference on local search. While we were there, the president of MarketResearch.com, Simba’s parent company, flew in from London to meet with us. Over the course of nine long (and sometimes painful) hours of negotiation, we finally struck a tentative deal for him to spin off Simba Yellow Pages and sell it to Integrity Marketing. We inked the deal on December 31st, and are now the proud owners of a Simba Yellow Pages … which we are re-branding as IMS Local Search Authority.
What does this mean for you?
First off, don’t worry. Your IMS marketing team remains intact, with you – the estate planning / elder law attorney – and your practice as the primary focus.
It does mean, however, that we now can bring solid, reliable market research – including trend analysis and forecasts – to guide your internet and search engine marketing efforts. It means we will have instant access to the types of proprietary research that “the big boys” like Google, Bing, AT&T and Yellow Book are using to drive their strategic planning. The benefit will be huge. Your competitive advantage – as an IMS client – will be unbeatable. And it ensures IMS remains the preeminent leader providing you the most effective marketing at the best value.
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