Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

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Legal Battle Over Print Yellow Pages Placement Shows Continued Value

Friday, January 22, 2010

Recently on this blog, we’ve focused on the growing importance of online and mobile opportunities for Yellow Pages companies and their small business advertisers. Recently,  SuperMedia (formerly Idearc) emerged from bankruptcy with a commitment to developing those areas of its business.

But in Baltimore this month, the continued importance of print Yellow Pages as an marketing medium became clear after a legal battle emerged over which local law firm would be allowed to advertise on the back cover of this year’s directory.

The dispute, though unfortunate because it involved an error on the part of the local directory publisher, nonetheless emphasized the high regard small businesses still hold for print Yellow Pages.

Read more on the BIA Kelsey blog.

January 22, 2010 | 1 Comment
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Search Engine Land Gives Companies Tips to Manage Profile on Internet Yellow Pages

Thursday, November 12, 2009

I came across this article on Search Engine Land today from product marketing expert Lore Weimann, “Protecting Your Brand On The Online Yellow Pages” advising business owners to review their listings online and take a few steps to ensure they “get the best exposure on local yellow pages search” for their brands.

Weimann’s tips include:

  • Running a search of your top generic terms on the popular yellow page search pages and make note of the results including yellowbook.com, yellowpages.com, and superpages.com.
  • Being sure to advertise on your top terms.
  • Controlling your resellers and/or affiliates so that their advertising efforts, ad copy, and offers, are consistent with your own.

While I agree with this advice, I think it also highlights the need – more than ever – that yellow pages representatives provide informed marketing counsel to their customers.

As an industry, we’ve spent the last year transforming our approach to a more customer-centric consultancy model. Taking that extra half hour to walk through the what’s and why’s of a robust online search program really helps our customers achieve the maximum results online.

As Weimann notes – the local search space is growing every day. It is also changing by the minute, and the more guidance we can offer to deliver results in an integrated print, online and mobile world, the better.

November 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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BIA/Kelsey: Small Businesses Using Social Media for Marketing

Monday, October 26, 2009

Following up on our post about advertisers’ growing interest in social media, I wanted to share this new study by BIA/Kelsey that finds small and mid-size businesses are increasingly leveraging social media in their marketing approaches.

Here are a couple interesting stats from the research:

  • 32% plan on including social media in their marketing strategies during the next year through social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Specifically, 9% are currently using Twitter to marketing their brands.
  • 39% plan to include customer ratings or reviews on their Web sites, 23% plan to incorporate video on their sites, and 31% plan to include links or ads placed on social networking sites or blogs.
  • The use of social media is more prevalent among younger businesses: 16% using social media have been in business for three years or less, while only 2% using social media have been in business for more than 11 years.

Social media is continuing to attract larger online audiences. Facebook’s U.S. growth increased by 8.6% in September 2009 to 88.3 million visitors, according to an analysis by InsideFacebook.com, which tracks Facebook’s self-reported demographic statistics for the U.S. market. Twitter had 23,5 million U.S. monthly users in September 2009, up more than 700% from its unique audience in September 2008, according to Compete.com, a web analytics company.

At Kelsey’s DMS conference last month, social media was a big topic of interest, and I think the findings of the survey show why.  A third of small businesses plan to include social media next year, and it’s only likely to grow from there.  This important shift in how newer companies are prioritizing their marketing strategies is a sign of bigger things to come, and a critical trend for Yellow Pages companies to consider.  After all, shouldn’t we be there when the consumer comes looking for information?

October 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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Local Search Plays a Role in Healthcare

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

In my “Locals Only” piece on Search Engine Land this week, I take a look at the national healthcare debate and the continued importance of local search to connect individuals and families with the right medical professionals.

Regardless of where national health care is headed, all Americans share the same challenge: finding good healthcare providers. According to a recent study by Knowledge Networks, 14 percent of all Yellow Pages usage, or roughly one out of every seven, is related to healthcare. In 2008, there were 2.4 billion references to healthcare headings.  And in recent years, there has been a proliferation of vertical Web sites that offer local search tools, ranging from Angie’s List and City Search to webMD Physician Finder.

This means that local healthcare professionals or practices wanting to build a clientele of patients will need to take stock of all the tools available to you, from print yellow pages, internet yellow pages, city listings sites and local search verticals to determine which will reach your intended audience.

You can read my full piece at Search Engine Land here.

October 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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Nielsen: Social Media Ad Spending up 119% in 2009

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Internet Yellow Pages partnerships with social media was a hot topic at DMS this year, so this caught my eye this week: According to a new study from Nielsen, online advertisers are quickly ramping up spending in social media as consumers devote more time to the space.

The report found that social network and blogging sites accounted for 17% of user time spent on the Internet in August 2009, three-times the percentage of time spent on the sector a year ago. The spike generated a 119% increase in ad spending on top social media sites, from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to about $108 million in August 2009. The share of ad spending for social media with regards to total online spending has more than doubled, from 7% in 2008 to 15% in 2009.

While overall online ad spending dropped year-over-year in many sectors, social media ad spending increased in every industry in August 2009. Top sectors included:

  • Entertainment – up 812% on social network sites vs. up 40% on all sites
  • Travel – up 364% on social network sites vs. down 11 percent on all sites
  • B2B – up 184% on all social network sites vs. down 8% on all sites
  • Automotive – up 178% on social network sites vs. down 26% on all sites.

“In the past, advertisers had significant concerns with social media advertising,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen’s online division. “The considerable increases we’ve seen in ad spending over the past year suggest that many of these concerns have subsided or been addressed.”

October 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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Americans Kick Off Fall With a Trip to Local Pharmacy

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Every month we take a look at interesting headings data.  Since cold and flu season begins as early as October, we thought it would be appropriate to look at the  ”Pharmacies” heading this month.

As it turns out, “Pharmacies” ranks 17th out of more than 4,000 headings and generates 129 million references annually, with the highest frequency coming in October and November. Yellow Pages are one of the primary resources for consumers, in fact, 90 percent of Yellow Pages users who refer to the Pharmacies heading followed up with a purchase with 19 percent of sales generated from new customers.

In addition to October being the highest usage for the Pharmacy heading, it is also American Pharmacist Month, as stated by the (APhA). The month-long observance is a time to recognize pharmacist’s significant contributions to health care and the commitment to patient care in all practice settings from around the country.

Pharmacies know that Yellow Pages advertising will reach the local consumer at the precise moment they are ready to make a purchase, thus generating qualified leads. These purchases, based on local Yellow Pages display ads, result in more than 175 sales per year and over $38,000 in sales revenue for pharmacies. In addition, the average return on investment received from these local display ads at the pharmacies heading is $11 of sales revenue for every $1 spent.

October 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
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Tight Credit Markets Continue to Impact Small Businesses

Thursday, October 8, 2009

I recently ran across a Wall Street Journal piece about the credit crunch’s continuing impact on small businesses.

Of course, there’s been significant talk about economic recovery lately, and the government had made a number of moves to unfreeze credit. So it might be easy to think that our small business clients see a light at the end of the tunnel. But Meredith Whitney, CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, LLC, warns that we’re only about halfway through this credit crisis, and this is bad for small businesses.

“Since the onset of the credit crisis over two years ago, available credit to small businesses and consumers has contracted by trillions of dollars, and that phenomenon is reflected in dismal consumer spending trends. Equally worrisome are the trends in small-business credit, which has contracted at one of the fastest paces of any lending category. Small business loans are hard to find, and credit-card lines (a critical funding source to small businesses) have been cut by 25% since last year.”

She also says that home equity loans are still hard to come by, which means even less money available to small business owners through that credit line.

Since a critical component of our business is helping other businesses generate leads and grow sales, these predictions should be top of mind for all of us.

Our sales teams in the field working with business owners must understand that their advertising resources might continue to be tight for some time to come. As always, that means the responsibility is on us to demonstrate value and ROI to our clients. Now more than ever, we must present solutions that address the specific objectives of individual businesses, and we must demonstrate that those solutions help our clients achieve their goals – however idiosycratic they may be.

October 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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Cultural Exchange: YPA’s Neg Norton to Speak at EADP in Prague This Week

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

This week, Neg Norton, president of the Yellow Pages Association, will be speaking at the European Association of Directory Publishers (EADP) Annual Congress in Prague. The EADP congress is the biggest event in Europe dedicated to the directory publishing industry and is expected to draw over 300 attendees.

In his address, “Strength, Courage & Opportunity: The Yellow Pages’ Game plan for Success in a New World,” Neg will be discussing the future of the US industry and what it will take to stay successful in these seas of change.

I think this opportunity really highlights something that we’ve been talking about this year: the fact that we’re all in this together.

Although the European markets are different in many ways, the issues and opportunities currently facing EADP members are very similar to those that YPA members are facing here – media fragmentation, new consumer media habits, changing demographics, new technologies, the tight global economy and evolving environmental movements.

To that end, I think that the EADP has lined up a dynamic list of speakers and topics that US audiences would also be interested in, including:

An Update of the Economic Situation in the Media Industry – A broad economic overview narrowing to the media and directory industries

  • Julian Moore, Head of Media Sector Advisory, RBS, Global Banking and Markets

People Search and Social Networking – Monetizing the Growth

  • Dr. Clemens Riedl, director, studiVZ Ltd
  • Valérie Shwartz, Director, Voice Services and Mobile Internet Business Units, PagesJaunes, FR
  • Geoff Avard, Chief Strategy Officer, Sensis, AU

Leveraging 100 years of Experience in Directory Publishing

  • Peter Buxton, Buxton Independent Consulting, DE
  • Jim Easton, Director, AMR International Ltd, UK
  • Neal Polachek, CEO, The Kelsey Group, US
  • Jesper Simonsen, Partner, JS Consulting ApS, DK

If you aren’t fortunate enough to be heading to Prague, you can see Neal, Neg and a host of others at the Kelsey Group DMS09 next week in Orlando. These are the kind of opportunities that everyone should try to take advantage of, after all our collective future is right around the corner.

September 16, 2009 | 1 Comment
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Simmons Findings Show Value in Print and Internet Yellow Pages Ads

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Some advertisers believe that advertising in both print and Internet Yellow Pages is redundant. The thinking is that they will reach their target audience by advertising in either one or the other. But according to the Simmons, Spring, 2009 data, that is not the case. Print and Internet Yellow Pages are in fact complementary products. Therefore, advertising in both products expands the reach for advertisers.

According to Simmons data, only about 7 percent of those that sought out a heading in the print directory also looked at that same heading on the Internet Yellow Pages. The data show that advertisers reach different sets of customers through print than through Internet Yellow Pages. Consequently, the benefits of being in each product are additive – there is virtually no overlap.

On the other hand, 21 percent of those that sought out a heading in the Internet Yellow Pages also looked at that same heading in the print directory. This suggests that advertisers that place ads only in the Internet Yellow Pages may lose potential customers by not being in both print and Internet.

The bottom line is that these results suggest that businesses can generate more leads by advertising in both and could miss out on sales opportunities if they choose not to.  Print remains the “dominant” medium of the two products based on user behaviors, but Internet Yellow Pages usage is growing quickly.  Businesses should consider how they can best leverage both into their marketing mix.

September 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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Back-to-School Puts ‘Child/Day Care’ Heading to the Test

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

More than 12 million children under the age of six in the United States are in some type of child care arrangement every week while their parents work, according to The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA). The organization reports that, on average, children of working mothers spend 36 hours every week in child care.

As the nation heads back to school, parents of newborns, toddlers and younger siblings are learning a valuable lesson: The expense of full-time child care can cost twice the national average for in-state college tuition at a public university, estimated at $6,585 per year by Trends in College Pricing, 2008. And finding the right child care can be well worth the effort, not just the expense.

YPA data indicates, the “Child/Day Care” heading, receives 51 million annual references. The heading receives the most usage in September by 18-to-34 year-old women who have lived at their current address for less than five years and the majority of heading users (71 percent) are “first time purchasers” or new to the facility that they choose.

Sixty-seven percent of parents are in a search mode when they utilize the heading, meaning that they have not yet made up their mind on a child care facility. YPA research also tells us that 92 percent of users with a decision to make, and no name in mind, consider 6.6 ads on average.

September 2, 2009 | 1 Comment
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