Speaking Sensis

Gangs of thugs roaming the streets with razors. Open brawls over drugs and booze. Ruthless criminals who murder at the drop of a hat.

More reasons to stay indoors and watch Masterchef?

No.

Welcome to Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s: when the grog was sly, the fights were for keeps and even a visit to the barbers was a death-defying experience.

In this look at a fascinating part of our history, Citysearch® interviews Nerida Campbell about Sydney’s early 20th century criminal underbelly and the women that ruled the roost – women like Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine.

Nerida is curator of the Femme Fatale exhibition, which is running at the Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum until April 2010.

The latest Sensis® Consumer Report recorded the largest rise in consumer confidence in a single quarter that it has measured.  Report author Christena Singh tells us why this latest bit of good news is important for the Australian economy.

It is great to see the Sensis® Consumer Report recording the largest increase in consumer confidence since the survey started exactly five years ago. This quarter we saw consumer confidence increase by 18 percentage points to 39 per cent – the strongest level we have seen in 15 months.

To see such strong increases in both consumer and business confidence is heartening, because we are now seeing consistent, strong improvements in the sentiment that forms the heart of the Australian economy.

In fact, many of the indicators of the Australian economy improve, and the much heralded “green shoots” theories abound.  The latest Australian GDP figures were positive, we are not in technical recession, and a range of other statistical indicators are telling the same story.

But what I personally find interesting in the latest data is that consumers are not basing their confidence on the fact that the Australian economy is not in recession. In fact, only four per cent of Australians currently thought that the Australian economy was growing, despite what the national accounts might say.

At the grass roots of the Australia economy, both consumers and businesses are under no illusions about the current state of our economy. What they do agree on is that over the next year they believe think things will pick up.

This is particularly important, because businesses need confidence to invest in their businesses to produce growth and jobs in the future. And business confidence depends on strong consumer confidence – on businesses seeing consumers – customers – coming through their doors.

Consumers have told us they base their confidence most strongly on employment, and in particular at the moment, job security. Some 30 per cent of confident Australians told us they were confident because they had a secure job.  This compared to 21 per cent of worried Australians who told us they were worried because of unemployment.

So it is a vicious circle to some extent – businesses base their confidence on the demand of consumers, who in turn base their confidence on businesses employing them. So if both business and consumer confidence are moving up at the same time it bodes well for the Australian economy for the next year.

You can download a copy of the latest Sensis® Consumer Report here.

Okay. So, hopefully my last article established that print isn’t a spent force in local search… it’s actually growing.

Having done that, however, I now need to change tack a bit and proffer a slightly different view: that this whole ‘print vs online’ debate is all a bit of a pointless exercise.

For the best part of a decade now, local search players of various persuasions have been running around with their chests puffed out, proclaiming to anyone who’ll listen that “my channel’s bigger than your channel”.

But the sad truth about this posturing is that it’s all pretty much irrelevant.

The bottom line is that buyers are exercising their right to choice and searching for local businesses across all sorts of different channels – like print, online, voice and mobile.

Here’s a case in point.

If we cut the print vs online usage of all the print and online services containing Yellow Pages® advertiser content, we find an interesting set of numbers(1) :

• 41% of the audience use print only;
• 32% use online only;
• 26% use both.

Clearly, in this environment, you can’t truly optimise a local search strategy by choosing between print or online (or any of the other channels).

You can only do that by choosing them all.

Or course, that’s not such an easy thing. If you start toting up the number of vendors offering local search services across all these channels, you’ll quickly find they number into the hundreds.

If you tried to deal with all of them, you could end up spending so much time finding customers that you’d have no time to serve them.

So, the ideal solution in local search ends up looking a bit like this:

1. Provide a wide range of services to buyers so they can choose the way they want to search. That can ultimately lead to a larger audience;
2. Syndicate advertiser content across as many of those channels as possible so advertisers can optimise reach and still get some sleep.

That, in essence, is what we’ve tried to do with Yellow Pages®.

When you advertise in Yellow Pages® today, you’re not just advertising in the print directories. Your advertising is syndicated across a broad network of different services that spans not only different channels but different brands as well.

This includes not only the Yellow Pages® print directories, but the yellow.com.au and whereis.com.au web sites, the 1234 and Call Connect voice services and the Yellow™ Mobile and Whereis® Mobile sites as well.

And it also includes sites from other vendors. Today, Yellow Pages® advertiser content can be searched for in Google Maps, MyLocal, LiveLocal and the new Bing Maps site.

The net result of this ‘one ad, many avenues’ strategy is that advertisers can reach out to a much larger base of potential buyers through the one campaign.

In short, the potential for more reach, more easily.

And the impact of this sort of multi-channel strategy is pretty significant. The bottom line is that syndication through a range of brands and channels leads to a total potential reach for advertisers that no single channel local search solution can come close to matching.

In online, for example, there are six local search sites that individually hold more than 2% share of online traffic in Hitwise’s business directories category(2). They are yellow.com.au, whereis.com.au, whitepages.com.au, Google Maps, TrueLocal and Hotfrog .

Because of Yellow’s syndication strategy (allowing Yellow Pages® content to be searched for through yellow.com.au, whereis.com.au Google Maps as well as Microsoft’s local search sites), Yellow Pages® advertising could appear on sites that generate 64.5% of this traffic. White Pages® Online accounts for 22.5% and the other sites 13%(3) .

In other words, the multi-brand online syndication leads to a massive share of the traffic generated by these major local search sites.

But then you have to figure in print, voice and mobile as well. These add something like 15 million searches to the potential reach of Yellow Pages® advertising every week(4) .

Clearly, being able to advertise across multiple brands and channels is a major advantage in local search.

Which, as I said before, kind of renders this whole ‘print vs online’ debate as moot.

The bottom line here is that people aren’t turning into online zealots, no matter how much some wish they were.

Instead, buyers are showing their preference for choice.

The local search providers and advertisers who recognise that are the ones most likely to win.

Related links

Sensis on local search 1 – BIG

Sensis on local search 2 – GROWING

The latest Sensis® Business Index has recorded the largest rise in SME confidence in a single quarter since it started 16 years ago.  Report author Christena Singh tells us why the good news from small businesses is great news for the Australian economy.

I was at a conference earlier this year just about to present when the speaker before me, Peter Switzer, one of Australia’s most respected small business and financial commentators, put a slide up with a quote from me back in November 2007. It recounted how the Sensis® Business Index had just recorded the largest fall in business confidence for SMEs in a single quarter since the survey started more than 16 years ago.

I can remember the time well, the Australian economy was still looking to be in peak condition, Australia was heading into the last election and while the US economy was already in serious trouble, there was no serious talk that the global economic conditions would impact Australia.

The first significant indicator of economic downturn was picked up in the voices of small business, and this first steep downward movement in confidence heralded one of the most difficult times the Australian economy has experienced in recent history.

So it is great to announce the findings this quarter that the Sensis® Business Index has recorded the largest increase in business confidence in a single quarter.  It is great because this is a much needed boost in confidence for Australia’s small businesses, coming from the lowest levels of business confidence on record.

This quarter the Sensis® Business Index recorded a 17 percentage point increase in business confidence, which rose from 13 per cent to 30 per cent. Increases were also recorded in sales, employment, profitability and capital expenditure.

And while the strong improvements are very welcome, it is important to remember that all of these indicators remain in negative territory overall, that is more businesses experienced falls than increases.

There is a long way to go to see these indicators return to healthy positive territory. But the improvements are significant and hopefully signify a sustained rebound in economic conditions, with Australia’s small businesses leading the way.

Small businesses were the first to tell us of economic downturn – small businesses are now telling us that the economy is starting to turn around.

People pretending that online local search is replacing print directories are missing a far more exciting reality… that local search is growing rapidly.

For a long time now, I’ve marvelled at how online industry commentators seem fascinated with death.

As a child of the dot.com boom, I vividly recall claims of the imminent Internet-related death of many industries.

I remember having a debate with an employer in the late 90s who firmly believed that by 2005, bricks and mortar travel agents would be gone forever.

And I’ve listened for over a decade now to people saying that print media was going to go down the gurgler.

You read and hear these claims all over the place. And comments like “there is no doubt that the directory is dead” (which was recently trumpeted by an eager Australian industry identity) show that Yellow Pages® print directories are far from immune from these accusations.

You get a sense from all this doom and gloom that the local search market is static.

Not growing.

Like a pie that’s being voraciously chomped up by the new local search players.

But the reality is far more interesting… and exciting for the industry. The local search pie is actually growing – and pretty quickly by the look of things.

Take the Yellow Pages® network for example. This network includes all the different products and services that contain Yellow Pages® advertiser content.

In 2008 (1):

• Last 7 day usage of Yellow Pages® print directories grew by 4.9%. Yes, you did read the word ‘grew’ correctly.
• Online usage of local search sites carrying Yellow Pages® content (yellowpages.com.au, whereis.com.au, Google Maps and MyLocal) grew by 30%.
• Voice usage, through services like Call Connect and 1234, grew by 10%.

And ‘MoLo’, or local search sites on your mobile phone (Yellow™ Mobile and Whereis® Mobile), grew by a whopping 190% from March quarter of 2008 to March quarter 2009. Yes, it’s growing from a small base, but, at this rate, it won’t be small for long.

Clearly this data suggests that the number of buyers using local search in all its forms is growing rapidly.

In fact, when I look at these trends, I can’t help thinking that there’s a real elasticity in local search. It seems like the more options you give local search users, the more they search… and the more services they use.

In other words, it looks like local search users aren’t trending from one channel to another. They’re tending to use both.

And there’s a statistic that demonstrates this.

Migration means people shifting away from print. The claim is that online users have no use for print directories anymore, so they don’t use them.

So, clearly, you’d expect to see heavy (at least daily) Internet users turning away from Yellow Pages® print directories. As a result, the percentage of them using print would be much lower than for the rest of the population.

But the data actually tells quite a different story. It shows that daily online users are just as likely to use Yellow Pages® print directories as people who don’t use the Internet as often or don’t use it at all (2).

I’d draw three conclusions from this data.

Firstly, that print directories aren’t declining in the way people claim.

Secondly, that the local search audience is actually growing pretty quickly. As I said, this is a far more exciting story than the doom and gloom claimed by many in the online industry.

And, thirdly (and most importantly), if you really want to make the most of local search, your advertising needs to be everywhere… across print, online, voice and mobile.

Which is a great segue into the final article in this series – DIVERSE.

Look out for it in the next few days. Or check out part 1 of the Sensis on local search series – BIG.

In answer to the flood of questions about local search (how big is it, where do people search and so on), here’s a three part series looking at local search in Australia and the role Yellow Pages® plays. To begin with… what is local search and how big is it?

So, you just got engaged. Congratulations.

And commiserations too.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not being some sort of mean-spirited marriage maligner here. I’ve been married for a decade and it’s a wonderful institution.

But I can tell you from bitter experience that between now and your wedding night you’re going to confront a world of pain.

And you’re going to need an army of people to help you through it. Like reception centres, cake makers, musicians, caterers, jewellers, insurers, removalists, party suppliers, travel agents, florists, car hire, dressmakers, formal wear.

And that’s just for the happy day. What about the real estate agents, conveyancers, removalists, insurers and goodness knows what else you’ll need as you start your life together?

One of the most common ways Australians find these products and services is through local search. The world of local search includes services like Yellow Pages® or White Pages® directories in print, online or mobile, voice services like 1234, online mapping / local search sites like Whereis.com.au, Google Maps, the local search section Microsoft’s newly launched Bing and so on.

Local search services are like giant buying guides. They help people search for suppliers of the products and services they need. They support purchase decisions by helping people find, assess, compare and contact the right supplier.

Often (but, admittedly, not always) in their local area: which, to state the obvious, is where the term local search comes from.

Now, local search is a seriously popular way of buying. About 60% of the Australian population (over 10 million people) use one of the more popular print or online local search services every month(1).

And this usage is often concentrated around significant life events, like the aforementioned marriage, leaving home, buying a house etc. To give you an idea of what I mean, over 78% of people who built or bought a new home or apartment in the last year use local search every month. That’s over 17 percentage points more than the general population(2).

And because local search users are basically looking to complete a sale, the likelihood that they’ll contact a business is very high. In fact, 90% of Yellow Pages® searches result in a call being made(3): a conversion rate (in advertising speak) that is virtually unmatched by any other form of advertising.

Given this level of performance, it’s not surprising that local search has an enormous advertiser base. There are, for example, over 300,000 Australian businesses advertising in the Yellow Pages® today.

Businesses just like these…

So, clearly, local search is big. Big usage. Big potential return on investment. Big advertiser base.

But it’s also different. Advertising in local search is a totally different experience to virtually all other forms of advertising.

And there’s a simple reason for that. While most other forms of advertising interrupt consumers, local search is a service they consciously access – an information service full of advertising that actually helps them make decisions.

This makes local search unique in four very distinct ways.

1. Local search is very much a small and medium enterprise form of advertising. It’s about local businesses reaching out to local buyers. It is one of the most popular forms of advertising among Australian SMEs.
2. Local search drives direct contact, not purely brand equity. It can convert to things like calls, visits… customers, rather than purely brand outcomes like awareness.
3. Broadcast advertising – like TV, print display ads, outdoor etc – relies heavily on emotional appeal. Local search runs on informational appeal. The things that make local search campaigns work go beyond strong differentiators and calls to action. Simple pieces of information like phone numbers, opening hours, brands and products sold, credit cards taken, testimonials and so on can potential contribute massively to the impact of local search advertising.
4. And local search is directly comparative. People look at competitive ads and compare them, which doesn’t generally occur in broadcast advertising. So you potentially need to think far more about competitors’ ads than you do in other forms of advertising.

So that’s a brief primer on local search. Keep an eye out for the next episode – GROWING – early next week.

UPDATE: Part 2 – GROWING – is now online. Check it out here.