City Waboo Links Business Sites to Social Networks

By Mark R. Madler

An advertising budget of $39 won’t go far for any business.It won’t get many fliers, and certainly cannot rent a billboard or buy time on television or radio.But City Waboo has a deal for you.
For that $39, Eduard Arakelyan and partner Armen Akopyan will post a company profile on their website complete with product or service descriptions, photos, contact information and a customer comment section.

Other websites can make similar claims - City Search, for example - but what makes City Waboo different is the capability to link the profile through social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook to get a company’s name out to hundreds, if not thousands, more customers.

“Were taking word of mouth and putting technology behind it,” Arakelyan said.

Arakelyan and Akopyan found their initial success through a website promoting businesses in Burbank and Glendale.

Not wanting to limit themselves to two cities, they expanded their concept nationally through City Waboo. They beta-tested the site last spring and officially launched it just before Christmas.

City Waboo has listings in every zip code in the nation with a concentration on 15 major cities with the highest populations.

The name, by the way, came in a moment Arakelyan described as an epiphany and was tested with focus groups, friends and family.

Traditional forms of advertising won’t cut it anymore as newspaper circulation drops and devices such as TiVo allow viewers to skip television commercials.

Customers find no relevance in just picking a business out of the phone book or as more likely happens these days, from a search engine.

While online advertising accounts for less than 10 percent of all ad spending, it still brought in $21.1 billion in 2007, according to preliminary figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. That is a 25 percent increase over the $16.9 billion earned in 2006.

When looking for a new restaurant, a reliable mechanic or a dentist, people generally rely on their family and friends for recommendations.

Those personal recommendations were what Arakelyan and Akopyan went after with the social networking capabilities at the site.

“When we first came out in beta last May and June, a lot of people who approached us said it was great but if they were going out to a restaurant or needed a lawyer or something they were going to ask their inner circle,” Arakelyan said.

The pair comes from an advertising background having operated Trimark Advertising for more than 10 years. Their fondness for assisting small businesses comes from having parents who are business owners – Arakelyan’s operate a flower shop and Akopyan’s a restaurant.

Even small business owners find going online is necessary for marketing and advertising purposes. Finding someone you can trust is harder.

“If you do not have a reliable vendor you can depend on that can effect the growth of your business,” said Ray Shahin, owner of Le Soleil Day Spa and Salon in Glendale who has a profile on City Waboo.

After starting the business two years ago, Shahin fired the companies he worked with to create a website. Then he found Trimark, which helped not only with the website but also business cards and other media buys.

“The business took off pretty quick from the way they built my website,” Shahin said.

In creating a profile for the site, Arakelyan stresses how the business itself gets involved, working with a marketing department that helps them refine their keywords to optimize searches and how to best describe their product or service.

“As the website grows and more and more people see their listing, more and more buzz gets generated,” Arakelyan said.

CityWaboo.com, an Internet company started by local men, is gaining favor among Web surfers.

A Burbank-based Internet search engine company is helping users navigate the often overwhelming amount of information on the World Wide Web, with a little help from their own friends.

CityWaboo.com builds upon the traditional idea of a searchable online directory, allowing users to not only hunt for businesses, restaurants and the like, but to immediately access reviews on the businesses in the results from friends who use the site. Users also have the option to search only the businesses that their friends recommend.

The site — which started as BurbankGlendale.com, a local business directory — essentially takes word-of-mouth advertising into the Internet age, said Eduard Arakelyan, president of CityWaboo, who co-founded the company along with Glendale resident Armen Akopyan.

“Catering to local businesses over the past four or five years, a lot of them were saying, ‘Yeah it’s great to advertise, but most of the business we get is from word of mouth,’” he said. “So we incorporated that into the social network on the site, where you can build your own community of friends and family and people, and you can directly search their recommended businesses.”

Growing that community has taken CityWaboo national, and now the site helps local customers patronize local businesses and provides a resource for out-of-towners who may be visiting the area.

Since CityWaboo launched at the end of December, the site is attracting about 100,000 visitors per month, Arakelyan said.

“And we’re increasing it about 5 and 10% per day,” he said. “As more search engines get us on there, and more marketing and social community aspect, it’s growing pretty rapidly, which is great news for us and the local community.”

CityWaboo has also joined up with popular social networking site Facebook.com, enabling users to view comments, ratings and recommendations from their Facebook friends.

Twenty-six-year-old Hector Ayala, who came to the United States from Spain nine years ago, has used CityWaboo for about four months and said the format is distinct from other sites on the Web.

“I use other kinds of websites like CitySearch, but I also use Facebook and Myspace.com . but this combines them,” he . . said. I use it for convenience. I can have friends and talk to them, and at the same time I can find new restaurants and read reviews.”

In turn, Ayala faithfully submits reviews of restaurants and other places he has been to steer them in the right direction, he said.

And businesses can benefit as much as consumers, as smaller local companies can achieve a larger presence through the website and positive chatter among users, Arakelyan said.

By Chris Wiebe
Burbank Leader

CityWaboo is bringing you an exclusive new feature that enables you to take pictures from your favorite businesses and share them with the CityWaboo family. Make sure you snap some shots that captivate the atmosphere, your favorite dish, before and after pictures of something you had repaired, anything that relates to your experience. Then upload your pictures to the businesses profile page. Now, everyone can live vicariously through you and your experience.

Originally from North Carolina, Amber Brashear comes to CityWaboo as the Marketing Director. Brashear has extensive experience in Sales and was the former Associate Producer of On-Air Promotions for Fox Sports/FSN in Los Angeles. She has also worked extensively in various niches of the entertainment industry from music to television and promoting. She comes on board ready to launch new marketing strategies for CityWaboo.

CityWaboo is making headlines with its introduction of their new facebook application! The following is the latest press release released on their new feature.

NEW LOCAL SEARCH SITE OFFERS MARKETERS GRASSROOTS FORUM
FOR WORD-OF-MOUTH CAMPAIGNS TO CREATE POSITIVE BUZZ
FOR LOCAL BUSINESSES

CityWaboo brings Yellow Pages to life with ratings, reviews and recommendations to drive traffic to local businesses; simultaneous CityWaboo application launch on Facebook^® Platform enables users to easily find and share reviews with their friends.

BURBANK, Calif., March 11, 2008 – Word-of-mouth marketing has become supercharged in the age of the Internet, as companies turn to online local search portals to reach consumers in their local markets. CityWaboo (www.CityWaboo.com) is the latest tool available to marketers looking to harness to power of social networking and grow their businesses by creative positive buzz.

CityWaboo is a community-built city guide that lets users get recommendations, reviews and ratings from friends and others about everything from restaurants and bars to car washes and dentists. No matter what people are looking for, chances are there is someone who can tell them where to go.

CityWaboo is a word-of-mouth Mecca that enables consumers to connect, be in the know and stay one step ahead. In just a few clicks, users can tap into their friends’ recommendations and the community’s pulse on all kinds of local businesses.

Recent studies show that the Internet has become the number one way consumers find out about businesses in their area, with people going online to find out where to go for a variety of products and services. Studies also show that consumers value the opinions of others, with more than 75 percent of people saying they listen to what other people have to say.

One of the more influential sections of CityWaboo is the friends’ favorites section that combines one of the most comprehensive commercial listings database in the country with a social networking platform to get the scoop on local businesses from their friends. CityWaboo members can look up a business listing in the main directory, or get recommendations just from their friends. Users have a large business directory at their fingertips as well as their own personal directory to the best places in town from their friends’ lists of favorites. If they are looking for the best pizza place in their city, they can search their friends’ favorites and in seconds find out where their “inner circle” thinks the best pizza can be found.

A CityWaboo application is also available on Facebook Platform for more than 60 million active users of Facebook, the popular social utility that offers an efficient way for people to stay connected with their friends and the people around them. Facebook users can add the CityWaboo application and view comments, ratings and recommendations from their Facebook friends, as well as view friends’ list of favorites to find out the best places to eat, shop and hang out. Facebook is currently the sixth most-trafficked Web site in the United States.

CityWaboo offers advertisers a variety of marketing packages that can be customized to meet the specific needs of each business.

“Consumers are savvier than ever before, and smart business owners are adapting their marketing efforts to reach people using more credible and grassroots methods,” said Eduard Arakelyan, president of CityWaboo. “CityWaboo offers advertisers access to the influencers, the people who other people turn to for advice and recommendations.”

Armen Akopyan, co-founder and creative director of CityWaboo, added that “unlike other sites that just let users post ratings and reviews, CityWaboo is about recommendations and favorites and people telling other people where to go, which provides a very fertile ground for marketers to implement grassroots campaigns.”

Through the CityWaboo site and its Facebook application, users can send information about local businesses to their mobile phones with a single click, as well as keep track of all their favorites on a customized CityWaboo homepage. Listings include full profile of business listings with contact information, business hours, pictures, videos, promotions, products & services, maps and driving directions.

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