Chris Smith, who used to be with Idearc, writes today’s Locals Only column at SEL in which he makes a range of specific recommendations to directory publishers. Here’s his list:
- Come up with some way to stop distributing books to people who no longer use them.
- Make it clear on your phonebook covers how you’re making up for the environmental impact of the books, if you must continue to blanket-distribute.
- Get industry usage statistics to be rock-solid and dependable.
- Step up your public relations game!
- Add tracking phone numbers to every single YP ad, and let advertisers see the results.
- Drop the cost of print advertising!
- Bundle, bundle, bundle!
- Time to get Internet and mobile savvy!
- Fix your damn data!
- Merge yourselves.
Some of these things are being done to varying degrees today. It’s an interesting and thoughtful discussion, however, and worth a look.
Another idea might be to develop more direct outreach to SMBs and involve them directly in product decision-making in a similar way to what Google is doing with mobile.
January 6, 2009 at 6:03 am |
As I said in the Sphinn comments, the shame of it is that all these guys acquired very capable online marketing companies.
In the case of RHD, the acquired company had a viable product unto itself.
The biggest problem is the myopia. Or as someone I heard speak recently said, the fear of trading offline dollars for online pennies.
My old buddies Bill and Don used to use a graph in which online revenues rose while print declined which we called the fishtail graph. Turns out that it was wrong.
After the intersection point the print decline was gradual on the slide. In real life it’s fallen off a cliff.
Will
January 6, 2009 at 2:47 pm |
Chris has really thought this through. Perhaps the great stumbling blocks of accurate and detailed industry-wide (all three majors and Yellow Book) usage numbers can be overcome. One thing for sure, the current process is leading to failure.
I admit sentiment clouds my judgement but I would hate to see this venerable industry collapse under the weight of debt service and disappear with a weak online presence as it’s vestige. It is time for dramatic decisions and action.
Joe
January 6, 2009 at 3:00 pm |
Hope you’re well Joe!
January 6, 2009 at 5:30 pm |
Good thoughts.
I take it you all work for online companies and the amount of $ being spent on YP, Newspapers, and billboards is still holding you back. Maybe if you write enough smear notes that it will help get the bubblegum chewing youth that spends their entire existence on there computers insyead of going out and meeting people and having real conversations with real people.
There is definately increased and growing demand for online services, but if you listen to you everyone must be flying to work on laser ships that burn air insyead of fuel and all the animals in the forest are safe. Get real- Just because you do not want a newspaper or a phone book does not give you the right to answer for me and many others who use them and hate having to go to a computer and wait for it to come on and then type in information to get what I want. I admit that sometimes this is very useful but when you need something quick and local the I and many others prefer having the ability to look at my paper or Yellow Pages. We all need to stop cutting each others throats and get some American Patriotism for our heritage.
January 6, 2009 at 5:53 pm |
Greg, thanx for your comments.
Will Scott, I think you’re dead-right about the myopia, and the seemingly-lost potential.
I don’t believe the potential is all-lost yet — it’s still possible to turn this stuff around, and I hope my list can help some with that.
Joe, you’re right — the problems with the numbers can be overcome. I participated in criticizing the usage figures earlier last year, because I perceived that advertisers weren’t believing them, and I thought this was contributing to faster loss of revenues than necessary. I’d hoped that the criticism would challenge people to improve, but I hadn’t really considered the emotional impact it had on people within the industry.
Frankly, I’ve been pretty stunned at the decline of the YP companies. When I joined Idearc (then GTE and later Verizon) over a decade ago, it was pointed out that it had been a strongly-performing stock for something like 80 years. While past performance is not an indicator of future performance, it’s still hard to absorb and process the paradigm shifts which have happened and brought on this painful tipping point we’ve seen over the past couple of years.
For the sake of stockholders at very least, it is indeed time for dramatic measures.
Mikel, you couldn’t be more wrong. Ad revenue paid to offline media is in no way holding back the successes of online businesses. In the current economy, online businesses have also been seriously hurting, but I think most analysts would generally agree that the advent of the internet increased overall business and commerce rather than being solely at the expense of offline businesses.
Mikel, you should further note that the Yellow Pages companies also have substantial internet sites and revenue attached to them — so, they are doing business in both offline and online media.
It doesn’t have anything to do with whether I/we desire to use offline media or not (in fact, I’m a Luddite when it comes to books, and I will always want to have a hardcopy in my hands as opposed to ebooks).
To do business effectively, one needs to acknowledge what’s actually happening in the marketplace and adapt to it. Railing against the trends rarely will ever result in turning the tide back around. By stating what we perceive to be going on in the marketplace, and making informed recommendations to assist the businesses involved (including the yellow pages companies) to effectively profit from the trends, we’re not attacking anyone.
January 6, 2009 at 8:33 pm |
[...] Should the YP Publishers Do? By Greg Sterling Inspired in part by Chris Silver Smith’s post yesterday I’d like to invite any and all to make suggestions regarding what measures — [...]
January 6, 2009 at 9:59 pm |
Chris,
I don’t want to seem like some sort of technophile. In fact, when we lived in the suburbs, the phone book was quite useful.
– It was, however, an underscoped independent YP which only covered our little area –
That said, the rate of update you mention in the article is a killer. And, as the online experience shows us it doesn’t have to be complete and accurate data. It just has to look like complete and accurate data.
So perception is the thing.
Google local is sometimes like the “Male Answer Syndrome” as expressed best by the Cliff Clavin character.
If I’ve got 10 slots I want to put something in them even if it’s not the right answer.
There are elements of Yellow Pages I love — most importantly, you know where you stand. But when I talk to Yellow Pages CEO/CTO types and they tell me about their cool anti-scraping technology I cringe.
There is still a demographic of both buyer and seller for whom the Yellow Pages are wholly appropriate.
And when you consider the cost of acquisition of a lead vs it’s value there’s a lot of spread to work with for the publishers.
They just have to pull off the blinders and look at the right value proposition.
Will
January 8, 2009 at 9:37 pm |
You could (nearly) accomplish numbers 1-9 by assigning a call tracking number to every ad (#5):
1. Call tracking data could identify heavy usage households (and non-users). The data would also reveal true service areas based on calling patterns.
2. Distributing books based on household usage would lead to a lighter environmental impact.
3. Usage data would be rock solid.
4. The improved results would naturally lead to improved public relations
5. **Add tracking phone numbers to every single YP ad, and let advertisers see the results.**
6. The usage data enables performance pricing. Some prices will fall, and others may increase, but all will be ROI-based. (a side benefit will be better service from local businesses as the data will identify which business are more responsive to calling consumers.)
7. Lead-based pricing makes bundling much easier.
8. Bundling enables Internet and mobile distribution (and is savvy)
9. Assigning numbers to all advertisers will identity disconnected numbers, and other indicators of poor service, thus improving the data.
January 11, 2009 at 4:50 am |
[...] Of course, it may all turn around. Who knows? [...]