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Mistake #1 in SEO keyword research
When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), I have to tell you – marketing managers make a lot of mistakes. I can easily count 20 of them. Of these, there is one mistake that I see over and over again. When this mistake is committed, it can destroy the business value of any SEO project. The mistake ...
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Conroy takes aim at Facebook
Facebook has come under fire from Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, after a memorial page for a murdered schoolboy was vandalised. Senator Conroy criticised Facebook for not being able to adequately monitor the activities of people who deface users’ pages. “I think there is a situation where people ...
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Where do all the brand managers go?
Welcome to our new section, 'Where do all the brand managers go?'. In these interviews, Liz Foster will track down the fortunes of ex-brand managers to give us a clearer picture of where they all go. If you'd like to see an ex-brand manager profiled, feel free to email sean.greaney@niche.com.au. Many years ago when ...
We can't lose the Yellow Pages...they do the best ads. "Not happy Jan"
But then again, I haven't used one for months...good article!
Sadly the Business especially under the Telstra re-ownership in 2000, who embarked on a no change, no innovation strategy that focussed back on on the cash cow which was print at the time, all of the innovative initiatives online were parked and it was one of the biggest failures of opportunity in history, both on brand on focus and consumer engagement. Funny how management back than used to demise of the Printed Encylopedia Britanica the CD as an example of what not not to do - but did nothing.
Go you good thing "google local"
PP
Media consumption is fragmenting. That’s common knowledge. For Sensis, which is in the business of connecting buyers and sellers, we recognise buyers are searching for businesses in enormous numbers, across a multitude of services and channels.
So delivering advertiser value isn’t a question of ‘print vs online’. Local search businesses need to help advertisers reach out through print AND online AND voice AND mobile AND sat nav.
If you want to deliver real advertiser value, you need to take advertisers out to where the buyers are – not where you’d like them to be.
Yellow print directories are as strong as ever. At the same time, we’ve networked Yellow advertisers so that with one ad, they can potentially be found by millions more buyers across online (including search engines), voice, sat nav and mobile.
According to Roy Morgan:
• 7 million Australians use the main Yellow print directories every month;
• 4 million use the Yellow Local directories;
• 3 million new Yellow in the Car directories are being distributed across Melbourne and Sydney (Sensis distribution data). Yellow In the Car makes Yellow more accessible to buyers by giving them a directory they can take on the road with them.
And, as a result of this network approach, Yellow advertising is automatically syndicated to:
• 1.5 million monthly users of our 1234 and Call Connect voice services;
• Several hundred thousand users a month of our Yellow Mobile and Whereis Mobile sites (mobile usage has tripled in just a year);
• 1.5 million users of Whereis satellite navigation content a month (selected headings only)
• 3.7 million online users a month through www.yellowpages.com.au and www.whereis.com. Opening up our Yellow listings so they can be crawled by search engines has delivered about 1 million incremental searches a month to Yellow Online, which is currently enjoying record usage.
• And our recent partnerships with Ninemsn and Google Maps mean that, by early next year, Yellow advertisers will be accessible by the 2.7m users of those services a month.
Blogs like this one, with its dramatic headline might build drama and tension, but they don’t do a good job of reflecting reality. There is no such thing as one channel fits all in local search. Pretending there is only leads to half-baked solutions for both buyers and sellers.
In response to other claims:
• Sensis’ contract with PMP for directory printing – as you would expect with most supply contracts pertaining to core business, it will be replaced with a new contract.
• Sensis and Google’s recent agreement – for a simple outline of this win-win agreement, go to http://www.speakingsensis.com.au
• Increase in smart phone sales – Sensis is one of Australia’s pioneers when it comes to making useful, relevant contact available from your mobile. Yellow Mobile is a prime example – go to www.yellowpages.com.au on your mobile
• Relevance of White Pages – 10 million Australians access the White Pages network each month.
• Decline in landline connections – businesses and consumers still use phones and the Yellow and White Pages offer a lot more than just phone numbers ie web addresses, email addresses, street addresses. And we’ve also just added Mobile Codes.
• Online usage – Alexa is not a representative source. www.yellowpages.com.au just achieved its fourth successive month of record traffic, more than 5 million visits, more than 3 million users (Sensis web logs).
I wonder if the same fate shall follow you as all the other company faithful?
I was with Pacific Access back in the mid 90's..... and let me tell you what a circus it became, complete with clowns, fools & even a barrel girl! that stood by the Yank that came to tell us all how to do it better.
With regard to the print product - it is in decline as people search for better marketing alternatives.
Another interesting point is that this year the amount of display adverts that we designed for your customers has strongly declined - the reason they came to us in the first place was that they were disgusted with the proofing files that were hand delivered by the sales team (so much for progress).
Denial is a beautiful thing :)
I get tired of all the traditional media slamming from all these digital evangelists.
You saw some Yellow pages outside a block of flats.
Your chiropractor has moved to google.
Wow this really is substantial research. The market research of one! hmmm
The print version is always going to be relevant, just to a smaller and smaller audience as time goes on and distribution should reflect that. You cant tell people how to do things just accommodate for it and plan for the future even it means short term dips in advertising revenue as PrincePlanet has pointed out.
My advice to Steve@Sensis is MAKE YELLOWPAGES.COM.AU BETTER. You have the brand and as you have mentioned record traffic increases but I suspect this is partly due to brand awareness. The average non-tech-savvy punters are of course going to stick to what they know when it comes to venturing into the online directories but sooner or later theyll find something better.
Ive been watching yellowpages.com.au for a couple of years at it feels quite stagnant. Predictive AJAX search results only provide short term awesomeness. Sooner or later something like yelp.com is going to hit our shores (unless theres something cool that I dont know about yet - google local is pretty solid) and make Yellow look like Altavista.
You can turnaround and say but we dont do social, but its what we want.