Speaking Sensis

Very interesting to hear about how US Yellow Pages businesses are transforming the solutions that they offer small businesses at Kelsey’s Directional Media Strategies Conference in Colorado last week.

Like us at Yellow Pages in Australia, our US peers know that marketing for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) has gone beyond simply making the phone ring. With consumers searching in more places across more platforms for products and services, SMBs need to rethink ‘set and forget’ advertising solutions and move towards a multichannel approach with more engagement opportunities. American SMBs are allocating approximately 40% of their advertising budget to digital.

With so many marketing options, this is a complex place for SMBs. Yellow Pages businesses are playing an increasingly important role in bringing these pportunities to the SMB. Insights from the conference can be found on BIA Kelsey’s blog.

We had some terrific news last Thursday night at the 2011 Australian Mobile Awards, with three Sensis brands winning four awards, including:

• Whereis® iPhone app, winner of the Navigation award category
• Yellow Pages® for iPad won the Best New Service or Application award category
• White Pages® iPad Site won the Best Mobile Expanded Services or Application
• White Pages® iPad Site won the Best Mobile Web Experience. 

Our job at Sensis is to ensure our advertisers can be found by potential customers, wherever they are and however they like to search – so mobile is an integral part of our growing portfolio of digital marketing products and services. For our products to be recognised as best in class at a new industry awards program such as the ‘Mobies’ was a real coup. 

‘Search’ and apps go hand in hand and mobile is another way we are helping businesses be found on new digital devices. Now that we have the Sensis API – we are working with the developer community and hope to see more apps in market powered by our content.  

Our commitment to help advertisers harness the power of digital marketing is well on track. Congratulations to the White Pages, Yellow Pages and Whereis teams, as well as all the other finalists at the ‘Mobies’ last week.

Carl

Thanks to the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AMCHAM) for having me along to speak at your lunch in Melbourne yesterday. I took the opportunity to share some of my views on the decline of manufacturing sector and the health of Australia’s small and medium enterprises, which are the lifeblood of Sensis.

I mentioned in the speech that we’ve just released the latest Sensis® Business Index results, and, to be blunt, they’re shocking. The SME Confidence Index has fallen from +44% in February to +15% in August. This is the third lowest level of SME confidence on record.  Sales were at -22%: also one of the lowest results on record. The Profitability Index has been in negative territory of almost four years straight. In August, it was -27%, which is the lowest result on record. And the critical lead indicator of SME sector capital expenditure was at -14%, which, again, is the lowest on record.

This is in stark contrast to the recent ABS findings that capex for the economy as a whole has grown. It’s like the GFC never ended for Australia’s SMEs and, right now, things are only getting worse.

But this is not a time to dwell. There are so many inventive, skilled and hardworking small to medium business owners out there who are overcoming the challenges in front of them. And I’m proud of what Sensis has done to transform Yellow Pages to help make marketing easy for our small to medium business advertisers.

Some of you might be interested in reading today’s AMCHAM speech, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the topics I’ve raised.

All the best,

Bruce