The Yellow Pages Association board of directors met yesterday in Raleigh, North Carolina to discuss—among other important topics—its future makeup.
I’m happy to report that Chris Cummings, CEO and equity owner of Marquette Group, has been re-elected chairman of YPA’s board of directors. It’s been a great year with Chris on the team, helping to drive growth and innovation for our more than 400 member companies.
The board also elected Scott Klein, CEO of SuperMedia, vice chairman, and elected Scott Pomeroy, president and CEO of Local Insight Media, as secretary-treasurer.
So it comes as no surprise that the Yellow Pages industry is increasingly adding online coupon offerings as a means of driving new business leads for its customers.
This morning, Dex One was the latest YP provider to join the trend. The company announced a new service that allows businesses to “create, publish, and prominently display unique digital coupons” on Dex One’s popular local search sites, including DexKows.com and DexKnows Weddings. Businesses can customize their coupons with unique messages, logos, and other features, according to the company.
I’m glad to see that our industry is taking advantage of this new opportunity to provide businesses and potential customers with yet another platform to find one another and complete sales.
On Friday we received news that our long-time colleague and friend Dave Swanson, chairman and CEO at Dex One, is retiring after 25 years with the company.
We will sincerely miss Dave’s leadership and the great abilities he’s shown in transforming Dex One over the past eight years from, as he put it, “a small sales agent for telephone company yellow pages with just $75 million in annual revenue, to a multi-billion dollar market leader in print, online, and mobile business search and marketing services.”
We wish him the best in his retirement – lots of relaxation, and of course, golf—and hope that he will continue to provide his valuable insight into our industry from time to time.
These days, online video is all the rage. Whether its watching a clip on YouTube or catching up on favorite TV shows on Hulu, consumers are increasingly turning to online video as a primary channel for entertainment and information.
So it’s no surprise that local businesses are also signing on to the video bandwagon in their efforts to showcase new products and services to potential customers. In fact, just yesterday we posted about how Yell launched a new video channel on its website that includes thousands of videos uploaded for free by shops, restaurants, hotels, real estate agents, and beauty salons all over London.
This morning, I came across another announcement from Dex One about its plans to continue expanding its online video services. The company said it is helping local businesses create and post videos on Dex One search sites, as well as across the web on the DexKnows YouTube channel.
Video is now a standard part of Dex One’s online Enhanced Pack service and is offered at no additional charge to clients. Local businesses can now have video, ad placement, logos and other images added to their DexKnows.com listing, which also feature user-generated ratings and reviews, e-mail and website links, coupons, and other offerings.
This week, we’ve discussed the importance of multi-platform advertising for local businesses seeking to reach ready-to-buy consumers wherever they are. Now, I’m eager to highlight the significance of inter-platform advertising opportunities as a means of generating additional visibility and leads.
On the digital front, our industry is not only expanding the reach of Internet Yellow Pages directories, we’re also partnering with a variety of popular local search sites including Yelp and Citysearch in an effort to provide our clients with more ways to reach online consumers.
Under the new arrangement, sponsored listings from YP.COM will have the opportunity to appear on CityGrid, Citysearch’s extensive local content and advertising network. The new agreement builds on an existing relationship between Citysearch and AT&T Interactive where Citysearch listings, user reviews and editorial content have the opportunity to be displayed on YP.COM.
Additionally, YP.COM advertisers will have the opportunity to place ads alongside content on Citysearch or other CityGrid publisher web properties, and CityGrid reseller partners will have access to distribute advertising across YP.COM.
This open arrangement benefits local businesses by allowing them to explore new, exciting online advertising opportunities— all within their established Yellow Pages marketing strategies.
YPA ELITE IYP®, a new proprietary industry system created with MediaTraks that allows publishers and Certified Marketing Representatives (CMRs) to facilitate national orders, graphics and artwork transmittal transactions for Internet Yellow Pages and other digital products. YPA ELITE IYP® is the Internet Yellow Pages extension of YPA ELITE®, the sole processing system for national print Yellow Pages orders, which currently executes close to 4 million transactions each year.
Share of Voice®, an interface that will enable publishers and CMRs to conduct detailed directory analyses for client and marketing purposes faster and more cost effectively. This new system will assist local and national sales channels in assessing the competitiveness of their clients and providing a high quality media planning tool to grow and defend Yellow Pages revenue. YPA is uniquely positioned to provide this tool as a result of its Directories Online system which encompasses more than 7,000 Yellow Pages directories.
I’m happy to report that the industry feedback we’ve received on these offerings so far has been extremely positive. Both publishers and CMRs across the country understand the importance of facilitating continued Yellow Pages growth by creating new, innovative systems that will deliver quality advertising opportunities and results for our clients. They are looking to YPA to continue to anticipate the marketplace and provide new services that increase productivity and streamline existing processes.
In fact, Dex One is already up and running and we expect to announce several major online publishers will be coming aboard in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned.
Today is the final day here at BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplace 2010. I’m glad I had the opportunity to hear so many great speakers and learn about the innovative approaches and strategies various companies are using in local search space.
Our friends at the BIA/Kelsey are keeping the outside world up-to-speed on all of the sessions via their blog, Local Media Watch. Some interesting posts include:
Urbanspoon CEO Jay Herratti talks about his company’s popular local search iPhone app, which has been downloaded 9 million times. Interestingly, since CitySearch bought Urbanspoon last year, the company’s Web site has shot up 220% to 7 million unique monthly users.
Dex One is once again partnering with a popular online local business listing and review site in an effort to enhance the listings on its own Internet directory, DexKnows.com.
Now, the company is entering into a distribution agreement with Citysearch—the online local media company— that will give Dex One advertisers the option of having their listings appear across CityGrid, the largest content and ad network for local, in addition to DexKnows.com. According to this morning’s release, the agreement expands Dex One’s online distribution network of industry-leading partner sites by giving consumers exposure to Citygrid’s 140 million unique users across the Web.
I think these recent announcements represent an interesting approach by Dex One in which the company is looking to leverage the success of its online competitors to gain new visibility and value for both its local business customers and its regular users.
This month, we’ve talked frequently about how Yellow Pages companies are increasingly taking advantage of new opportunities to market local businesses via vertical Web sites. According to a recent BIA/Kelsey study, 25% of online consumers now use vertical sites prior to making a purchase.
So it’s no surprise that this morning, Dex One announced the launch of DexKnows Weddings (dexknowsweddings.com), a new content-rich, wedding-specific Web site dedicated to offering advice, planning services, and vendor information to a leading Yellow Pages demographic: soon-to-be brides and grooms.
The new site will include hundreds of wedding-related videos from local businesses, a social networking community for brides to chat about wedding plans and offer suggestions about local vendors, wedding tips and secrets from celebrity wedding planners, and thousands of original articles including tips, recommendations, and how-to guides.
According to the release, Dex One’s new weddings site is the first in a planned series of life event or industry-specific products targeting specific customer segments.
With spring just around the corner and the wedding industry about to kick into high gear, we look forward to checking out DexKnows Weddings and to seeing what other vertical sites the company launches in the coming months.
In my article posted on Search Engine Land this week, I discuss how advances in digital offerings are presenting small businesses with a growing range of possibilities for where to spend their ad dollars. Additionally, I discuss how owners these days are faced with the difficult task of determining how to link old and new initiatives into cohesive strategies that deliver the strongest rates of return for their businesses.
Since the start of the year, we’ve shared announcements from several major Yellow Pages companies including SuperMedia, Dex One Corp., The Berry Company, and Yellow Pages Group about new services, partnerships, and acquisitions that provide small business with the means to combine the most recent digital marketing possibilities with traditional print and online options that they’ve used for years.
Today, it’s not just about Internet Yellow Pages, which millions of small business already know and use. I’m also talking about new vertical web sites including digital coupon sites, shopping comparison sites and user review sites that are among the latest drivers of local leads and are increasingly being added to the portfolios of various Yellow Pages companies.
For my thoughts, check out my Search Engine Land column here.
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