What Should the YP Publishers Do?

By Greg Sterling

picture-11Inspired in part by Chris Silver Smith’s post yesterday I’d like to invite any and all to make suggestions regarding what measures — general and specific — the yellow pages publishers should take to improve the outlook for the industry.

Those who would like to provide guest posts on this blog are welcome to. Others can either comment or email me suggestions. I’ll compile the list and republish them.

This is no time for schadenfreude but instead for constructive suggestions. Put yourself in the CEO role at one of these publishers. What would you do?

Now’s your chance to help/second guess/etc.

4 Responses to “What Should the YP Publishers Do?”

  1. Will Scott Says:

    You rock Greg!

    This is definitely going on my to-do list for a guest post.

    Will

  2. Greg Sterling Says:

    Sure. Thanks

  3. 212Degrees Says:

    Most critical thing would be to replace the current YP CEO’s with true multi-media experienced CEO’s. The fossils are still at the gate. RHD recently promoted a online savvy individual to their SVP Corporate Strategy post. Smart move. While the current fossils may be saying that they are “aggressively” pouring resources towards emerging media solutions to secure some of the bleed of customers and revenue, their comp structure and the comp structures for their key asset, their sales channel, still remain slanted to driving legacy business. Their sales channels can sell (and believe it or not, renew and upsell) new emerging media products. It’s been proven. But today, the afore mentioned factors, still only drive per unit sales of online products at an average of one unit, per rep, per month. Average spend at $225′ish. That’s really scary with the current demand out there.

  4. Karolizki Guy Says:

    There’s a real solution – it works, it’s proven and it’s the only online solution dedicated to the Directory Publishing Industry. The WebsPlanet solution for online directories attacks the problem from two angles. Firstly, WebsPlanet offers directory publishers a Directory Front-end that enables them to build and maintain their own website with advanced features and a high level of customization. This eliminates the hassle of creating this infrastructure in-house, and hands over the heavy lifting maintenance to WebsPlanet, for those who prefer to focus on the real business of making money.
    Secondly, WebsPlanet got a Site Building Suite that enable publishers to build websites for their advertisers that are scalable, and range from one-page, promotional websites to fully customized, highly advanced, interactive websites, based on their individual business requirements. The advantages of this offering are, well, too many to mention here, but in a nutshell, it’s a low-cost solution that will grow with the advertisers while grabbing that all important advertiser loyalty. And the cherry on top…WebsPlanet’s Central Management Tool means that maintenance and upgrades to the hundreds and thousands of advertiser websites is done centrally – to muss, no fuss, no aggravation.

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