Speaking Sensis

Sensis’ and Yelp partner to create new opportunities for Australia’s local searchers.

Today is an exciting day for Sensis as we announce our latest ground-breaking partnership between Yellow Pages® and Yelp, the global leader in local reviews and ratings. Together we’ll work with Yelp to launch an Australian version of the Yelp website, where Aussie’s will be invited to rate their dealings with local businesses and write reviews about their experiences.

Ratings and reviews are growing in popularity in the Australian market place. Did you know that, according to the recent Sensis Social Media Report, almost two thirds of social network users (63 per cent) read online reviews before they make buying decisions? Or that they read an average of six reviews each time? Given this enormous interest, we believe this partnership will be a huge win for the Australian community.

When Yelp launches in Australia they will integrate Sensis’ Yellow Pages® local business listing data into yelp.com.au.and, tap into our leading local sales force to launch and embed yelp.com.au in the Australian market. 

Not only does this mean the launch of a leading new ratings and review website in Australia, but through the partnership, Sensis will syndicate Yelp content, ratings and reviews to yellowpages.com.au, Yellow Pages® Mobile and the Yellow Pages® iPhone application.

So our advertisers can be really excited about the opportunities this partnership presents to them in the form of a deeper way to engage with potential customers online.

Yelp is a really exciting business to work with and I’m personally looking forward to the next couple of months as we work together to bring this leading product to market.

Yelp launched in 2004 and has rapidly expanded its user-generated ratings and reviews websites across North America and Europe. In fact, in June 2011, Yelp had more than 53 million unique visitors worldwide and to date more than 20 million local reviews of businesses have been posted to Yelp sites.

We anticipate yelp.com.au will be fully operational by the end of 2011 with Sensis’ Yellow Pages® media advisors offering Yelp advertising options to customers in 2012.

Simon B

Hi.

It’s been a while since my last update. You might be forgiven for thinking I went into hibernation after the Saints lost the Grand Final back in October. But the truth is we’ve been head down putting the finishing touches on a Yellow Pages® transformation that has been more than two years in the making.

Today, I’m really proud to announce the results of that transformation to you. I’m particularly excited to say that today’s announcement isn’t just a wish list of future actions. The more than a dozen new services and countless improvements I’m announcing are all ready to roll. So is the total re-invention of our go to market strategy and stark re-focus on the needs of our customers we’re also announcing.

And I think this evolution of our strategy ticks all the boxes for our customers and shareholders. It:
• Puts SMEs in the drivers seat by taking the complexity out of building sophisticated multi-platform marketing strategies
• Makes marketing more accountable than it’s ever been
• Puts Sensis in a competitive position no-one else can match
• Helps to drive and monetise the continual growth of digital media
• Creates new revenue streams from existing customers and adjacent markets

THE DIGITAL DILEMMA

This strategy has been developed to specifically meet the needs of Australia’s SME sector.

As we all know, the Internet has created a new world of opportunity for advertisers. You only have to look at the rapid growth of search, local search, social media, video and group buying sites to know that.

But digital media has created some serious challenges as well – particularly for SMEs. What sort of marketing is right for me? How do I manage a vast range of marketing from a long list of vendors? How can I measure the impact in a clean clear way?

These challenges – which we call ‘the digital dilemma’ – are seriously holding back the SME sector’s ability to leverage digital media. For example, 55% of businesses who have the Internet say they have a lack of expertise or knowledge, and 62% say they don’t measure advertising ROI, with over half of them saying it’s either too time consuming, too hard or they don’t know how [1].

Clearly, these businesses need help to get the most out of today’s advertising environment. They need a 360 degree service that will let them reach out wherever they need to be and tailor campaigns that reach their customers no matter where they search. And that’s where Yellow Pages® steps in.

YELLOW PAGES®: MARKETING MADE EASY

Today, we’re taking the next step in our digital journey with an exciting new 360 degree local search program from Yellow Pages®. Its  designed to help SMEs find more customers more easily in this rapidly changing marketing environment.

As our posters say… its Yellow Pages®, but not as you know it.

The strategy focuses on three key areas of service – Presence, Performance and Empowerment.

Presence involves a rapid expansion of our network to drive digital usage growth (Yellow Pages® digital usage grew by 50% over the last year) and the advertiser ROI that usage generates.

Presence begins with strengthening our Yellow Pages® Online site. We have significant deepened the content base of our business profile pages. This includes the ability to publish more of your business information, enhanced new Purely Mobile Business and Platinum advertiser products and a new video production facility. Your profile page can now also include social media feeds. For the first time, you can update your Yellow Pages® profile page real time, simply by updating your social media pages.

On top of this, we’re announcing an eye-catching new series of services that are designed to extend the reach of your Yellow Pages network even further. These include:

Yellow Pages® iPad: A ground-breaking new iPad app that combines online, print and map-based business search all in one application.

SPA Network: SPA stands for Sensis Priority Advertiser. For the first time, Yellow Pages customers can gain priority on Whereis®, Citysearch®, Voice and a range of other Sensis services which, combined, drive over 10m visits a month. We’re also expanding the reach SPA can offer with new voice products, such as IQ, the 1234 iPhone app and Sock Assist, as well as the exciting new CitySearch® iPhone app.

API: Our agreements with Google and Bing have delivered incredible value to advertisers by channeling even more leads to them. Our new applications program interface will expand on this by making it easy for developers to create new sites and apps using Yellow Pages® content.

SEO and SEM: Speaking of search engines, we’re also ramping up our SEM and SEO programs to drive even more traffic through search engines to our Yellow Pages advertisers.

Beyond this, we’re releasing a new series of products for companies focused on marketing their web sites. Today, less than 10% use search marketing. Our new ClickManager and Yellow Pages® Digital Plus services will help these businesses optimise their digital profiles.

For those businesses that want a web site, we can now offer the new SiteSmart web site creation and management service. And through our recent acquisition of Quotify we can now offer quotation services to businesses all around Australia. Already, Quotify serves buyers and sellers in 12 different product categories across its 40 sites.

Finally, we’ve also launched a new group buying site Yellow Pages® Offers. This site will give SMEs in a growing number of regions the ability to offer special deals to potential buyers.

Performance talks about the way we’re going to wrap all of these products up into a single, detailed ROI report that helps businesses makes sense of their marketing investment. Customers will be able to see how their advertising is performing… not just counting clicks, but tracking real sales leads all the way to their business. To facilitate this, we are expanding our successful metered ad program from 7,000 ads to half a million!

EMPOWERMENT

Empowerment involves the total re-invention of our go to market strategy. Customers will benefit from:

• A simplified product ladder that reduces our product range from seven to just two;

• A wide range of simple options made accessible through value bundles that help marketers personalise their marketing to meet their needs.

• A stronger focus on customer satisfaction which includes the establishment of a Customer Satisfaction Council and a focus on easy order management and a single bill.

• New sales and customer tools to make life easier, including the iPad based PrepSmart prepping tool for our people, enhanced collateral, and online Advertiser and Customer Service centres

• And all of these initiatives will be backed by a total re-alignment of our business to meet customer needs. We’ve developed a greater understanding of our customers through deeper segmentation and research and we’ve aligned everything from sales to marketing to collateral to service to the needs of our customer base.

RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE

So that’s our strategy, Marketing Made Easy, in a nutshell and it’s ready to roll. I must say that the enhanced customer value and differentiation this strategy offers, together with the exceptional commitment our people have shown, has made this one of the most satisfying programs I’ve ever worked on.

But I don’t want you to think this announcement is an ‘overnight sensation’. In fact, it is the culmination more than two years of work and planning. It began with the roll-out of our iGen system, which has made many of the initiatives we are announcing – such as pricing, bundling and improved product development – possible. And there have been a range of other initiatives, such as our growing focus on industry partnerships and the progressive rollout of our mobile services, that have laid the foundations on which today’s new program is built.

That’s what I mean by ‘right time’. The time is right to now take this step.

But what about ‘right place’? By that I simply mean that there is no-one in a better position to bring a totally holistic, 360 degree advertising service like this to market than Sensis. Sensis is already Australia’s largest locally owned online advertising company and we have more business customers than just about any other local media company. Furthermore, we have the capabilities, such as multi-platform publishing, sales relationships, brands and content to bring this incredibly diverse, but simple, marketing program to life.

And, of course, we also have the print directories which you might note haven’t been mentioned so far. Our print directories continue to deliver millions of real leads to Australian businesses every day. As such, they remain a powerful source of advertiser ROI and competitive differentiation for Sensis. We’ll be working to maintain that position into the future.

CONCLUSION

So, that’s it. A comprehensive and exciting new commitment to our customers. Powerful, but simple, new ways to help Australia’s SMEs make the most of today’s changing marketing world. A bold new long term growth strategy for shareholders.

That’s what we mean by Marketing Made Easy.

See you next time.

[1] Sensis eBusiness Report, August 2010

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com commented recently that, “we build new tools and these tools change behaviour” which I found rather interesting. Whilst Jeff probably wasn’t referring to the park assist button in my car which means I’ll never have to reverse park again (god bless technology!) he could easily have been referring to the ubiquitous iPhone revolution on our doorstep and the apps that are fundamentally changing the way we access information.

Virtually everything is now available via an app and don’t they make life easier? Touch an icon, get the info you want.

Enter Whereis® Navigator, which recently launched an iPhone app allowing Telstra customers with iPhones access to the premium GPS navigation product at the tip of their fingers. The Whereis® Navigator product includes features like voice guided turn-by-turn directions – basically turning your iPhone into your very own personalised nav device. Pretty cool huh?

As someone with absolutely no sense of direction I’m a huge fan of navigation technology and it seems I’m not alone – thankfully!

We have just completed a study about Australia’s navigation habits and it looks like Jeff Bezos is on the money when it comes to navigation – technology has indeed changed consumer behaviour. Australians are passionate about GPS and the many benefits it provides; security on dark lonely roads, time-saving by avoiding traffic or finding the nearest and cheapest fuel are a few examples of how us Aussies are relying on the technology today. This change in behaviour means more people are throwing out their old printed maps and street directories and embracing GPS technology in all its forms – built-in car systems, portable navigation devices and, of course, on mobile.

So next time you’re in the car wasting time stuck in traffic, or aren’t sure where the nearest petrol station is as your gauge gets closer to hitting empty- remember you now have easy access to Whereis® Navigator.

Whereis® Navigator is free to download. Charges may apply if users elect to continue use of Premium Features.

Whereis Navigator is free of all data charges on the Next G™ network. Once you have downloaded the app, data usage is free for both standard and premium features.

Restrictions on driver use exist in some States and Territories and you should check local rules.

Sensis’ experience of its successful foray into the mobile space was presented at the recent Digitech conference in Sydney – and it proved to be a significant reality check for someone like me.

As a web analyst for Sensis’ mobile websites and Android/iPhone applications, I am a mobile fanatic, but even I was taken aback by the overwhelming interest in the medium, with a flurry of questions throughout my presentation and many fascinating follow-up conversations.

And if the number of Twitter followers and re-tweets of the event is any indication, mobile has become way more interesting to many more people in recent years. 

Why you ask?

Well, it’s no wonder. Reports from the recent Mobile Marketing Association Forum showed that there are six times more mobile devices in Asia compared to PC’s and by 2012, Disney projects that 50% of its engagement will be via mobile devices

Also:

• 40 million in China pay to get news alerts;

• 1 in 3 Google searches are mobile in nature; and

• The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has more than 200 per cent mobile phone penetration. That’s the world’s highest, which means that on average everyone in the UAE has at least two mobile devices. 

And the list goes on!

Mobile’s unique ability to connect businesses with consumers has been expounded upon frequently over the past few years, but it’s really in 2012 that we’re finally seeing the much heralded tipping point in terms of usage. Sensis’ mobile portfolio continues to see outstanding growth and in May it saw 3 million visits during the course of the month.

So what makes mobile so unique?

Firstly, mobile is one of the most personal devices we have. It reaches us in our sleep and wakes us up. It is permanently connected and if there is one thing that we carry with us at all times, it is more than likely to be our mobile phone.

In fact, did you know that half of all Finnair passengers check in via their mobile device? And that in Kenya, there are more mobile banking accounts in than other account type.

Available at the point of creative impulse, mobile measures its audience accurately (by some estimates ten times more accurately than other media). Sophisticated tools allow Sensis to measure all high value usage activities we are delivering to advertisers and functions such as seamless click-to-call provides directions, allows details to be saved to contacts, advertiser photo galleries views and listings sharing with friends to name a few.

Mobile use will continue to grow.  In fact, Mobile usage now makes up 12 per cent of all digital usage, which is double last year’s share.

Yellow Pages® Mobile continues to deliver an outstanding experience for users. For businesses that continue to invest in the mobile space, this is good news for them. And for those business who are sitting on the fence, perhaps it’s time you searched for this, or followed this list.

In his first blog for Speaking Sensis, Sensis Group Manager for Yellow Pages® Online & Mobile Product Simon Betschel announces that the latest release of Yellow Pages® Mobile has gone live.

I am excited to announce that the latest release of Yellow Pages® Mobile has gone live, featuring improvements for our advertisers and users.

The release is the culmination of many months work from the mobile development team and it delivers user and advertiser features.

Premium advertisers will be able to include a business logo, image gallery and a new text descriptor. 

Advertisers will also have access to new online and mobile combined summary reports that will demonstrate any improvements to return on investment resulting from extended customer reach.

For users, the new features are mainly targeted to high end devices and focus on improving search accuracy and aligning the online and mobile user experience.

The changes include:

Auto-suggest Type, Name and Location – reducing the number of keystrokes required to enter a search term on a mobile, and time to task for users.  To support this and the search changes, the team developed Hint Text which can also be reused across other mobile sites;

New Maps for iPhone, iPad and Android – now users can pinch to zoom and swipe to pan.  This now takes maps to a world benchmark position for mobile browser based maps;

Seamless Click to Call – enabling calls on high end devices to be actioned immediately and capturing these metrics to report back to our advertisers; and

We will also be releasing new versions of our iPhone and Android apps, and providing iPad support.

This has without a doubt been the largest release of Yellow Pages® Mobile since its inception three years ago and demonstrates just how far internet on the mobile has come in that time.

Sensis was the “book-ends” to the Australian newspaper’s Business section on Monday, with a feature interview with Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst (read it here) on the front page and a piece with Chief Operating Officer Gerry Sutton (read it here) in the Media section on the back page.

Both pieces touched on the opportunities digital media was providing Sensis and its Yellow Pages® business, with the focus squarely on the iPad as the latest digital device to take the media industry by storm. As discussed by Bruce and Gerry, the exciting prospect for the iPad is the value Sensis can help deliver to end users and ultimately our small and medium sized business customers.

Add to that the impressive strides Sensis has made with its presence in other digital channels such as online, the iPhone, Android devices and Telstra’s T-Hub, and you can see how technology is opening new worlds and chapters for Yellow Pages® and its users and advertisers.

The revolution mobile technology is bringing to the way people find, buy and sell reminds me of the proverb “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.

What brought this to mind was a recent survey that found that maps are one of the most popular applications on mobile devices today. The comScore MobiLens survey identified an almost 70 per cent jump in the use of mobile mapping and direction services last year. In February this year, it found that more than 21 million people in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy used their phones for navigation.

If maps are such a useful and in demand application, it’s easy to understand why they are now a key selling feature for someone upgrading their handset.

No wonder Nokia is advertising free navigation on all of its new smartphones as a way of winning back market share lost to iPhone, Blackberry and phones with Google’s Android system.

In 1997, Sensis (then Pacific Access) kicked off market research into the concept of enhanced map routing from the static maps found on the Online White Pages® and Yellow Pages® sites.

The objective of this research was to understand how people planned journeys, used maps and their features, and what information would be required to provide a great experience. At the time this new technology was seen as a great feature to encourage usage of our online directories and also allowed us new page impressions on which to sell banner advertising.

The basics back then are much the same as today. People told us they wanted information about the best route and one that incorporated local knowledge. They told us that they wanted location specific information and really only needed help for parts of the journey they were not so familiar with.

But, with all the features from mapping, directions and turn by turn voiced navigation being provided free of charge, the subscription and advertising models of today are under pressure.

New ways of monetising the features will need to be developed. So we need to look back to see the future. Clues to what might be new advertising models might just lie in that 1997 research report on my desk.

Journeys aren’t just about getting from A to B, people want to do it safely, avoid incidents and have a smooth journey.

Features like real-time traffic and alternate routes can be sponsored, much the same as traffic reports are on the radio.

Users want to know information of value on their journey, such as fuel prices, where to eat, where to pick up some flowers or where to find an all night chemist.

Again, these features can be monetised through different advertising models.

Advertisers might pay to become navigation points on a map, just as our survey found13 years ago.

Special offers might encourage purchase along the journey, who wouldn’t stop at the convenience store for a cheap burger! If your planned travel is for a few hours drive, it’s likely you are going to want to eat at some stage.

Constant in all this change are our basic needs to complete a journey without fuss and bother. The tools to help us do this are getting more sophisticated and as a marketer, I am excited about the highly targeted opportunities we are going to be able to provide by knowing where an individual is, and where they are going, even the time of day they are travelling.

The chance to reach someone on the move and near your business seems much more exciting than someone with their feet up on the couch for the night.

Recently, there’s been a lot of strong talk about the future opportunities created by mobile technology.

The highly respected Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley recently said: “We believe more users may connect via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.” Eric Schmidt of Google was prompted to say: “If you want to understand the future of the internet, don’t think of it as pipes and tubes. Think of it broader as a mobile device.”

And Google Europe’s boss John Herlihy went a step further by saying: “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant … In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.” While not everyone ascribes to Herlihy’s point of view, it does really underline the ‘mobile mania’ running through the industry at the moment.

So is this excitement justified? Simple answer - you bet!

First up, mobile Internet uptake has been extraordinary. The Sensis® eBusiness Report last year found that finding local products and businesses was the most popular use for mobiles with 41% searching for information on products and services and 36% searching for information on suppliers of products and services. By contrast, use for social networking is 40%.

And numbers are tipped to continue to grow and this will be borne out in the next Sensis® eBusiness Report, which will be out later this year. Usage of our mobile sites is also growing at a cracking pace. In 2009, usage of our mobile sites grew by 70% YoY.

 Mobiles – everyone has got one

Secondly, the headroom for growth is huge.

Globally there are currently about 3.2 billion mobile subscribers in the world and that number is expected to grow by at least a billion in the next few years. Today, mobile phones are more prevalent than cars (there’s about 800 million registered vehicles in the world) and credit cards (there’s only 1.4 billion of those). So significant has been there take up that fewer teens are now wearing watches because they use their phones to tell time. It could be safe to say that the mobile phone may be the most prolific consumer product to be invented.

Even in Australia there are more mobile services in operation than there are people!

Mobiles are evolving – rapidly

And thirdly, the mobile phones we have today are incredibly powerful, and getting moreso every month.

The first mobile internet connected device was launched in 1997.  The Synergy, launched by Philips, was the first smart phone on the market and while sales were poor, it paved the way for the smart phones of today.

And in 2000 Panasonic took things a step further with a converged gaming device and phone – a forerunner to the iPhone.  Again sales were poor and the phone was impossible to fit in your pocket, let alone the gaming console!  But these innovations helped shape where we are today.

The phones we use today are a totally different beast. In fact, behind all the cool applications is an engine that is probably ten times more powerful than the PC you had on your desk only 5 to 10 years ago.

And the whole mobile experience is just going to get better and better with new devices, new operating systems, like the Android and Apple’s OS4, and a never-ending stream of mobile apps.

The future …

But this is just the start. In fact, when you start to think about what’s coming in the coming five to ten years, the whole conversation starts to take on a distinctly Star Wars tone.

• Mobile internet will extend to new devices. Already we have seen the launch of iPad, NetBook, and Kindle – the next round of mobile connected devices will include in car Navigation systems;

• Solar powered phones – While there are already a few solar powered phones available today, we should expect to see them evolve quickly over the next 2 years with their primary goal to service third world countries and people who do not have access to electricity;

• Sixth Sense Technology – For me this is the most exciting mobile opportunity.  Imagine being able to project the content on your mobile phone onto a wall (or any surface for that matter) and use your hands to type emails, sort and share photos, read the newspaper and get shown the latest video content displayed onto the actual newspaper (yes the paper version)?  Oh and don’t forget that you’ll also be able to make phone calls, but they may change a little as well. Click here to look Sixth Sense Technology in action;

• Holographic screens – Do you remember in Star Wars when R2D2 mistakenly plays a holographic of Princess Leia saying: “Help me, Obi Wan. You’re my only hope”? Well we could expect that on our mobile devices in the next five to 10 years;

• Augmented reality – AR is live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment where elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery;

• Near Field Communications – the ability to scan your mobile at the point of sale to pay for goods; and

• Wearable technologies – like a mobile phone in your glasses. In fact, Apple just hired wearable technology expert, Richard DeVaul, as “Senior Prototype Engineer”.

So there’s definitely a lot of reason for the excitement about mobiles and its being driven by usage that’s now mainstream and technology that’s advancing at a rate of knots.

At the end of the day, the mobile phone will prove itself to be more than just another channel. It will be a game-change for the way businesses and consumers all over the world communicate.

It’s a strange irony, but Sensis’ long history in print products and the strong position of our business can sometimes work against us. Especially when the media is looking for headlines.

Yesterday, a story by Michael Evans in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald reported the challenges he believes Sensis and Yellow Pages® is facing. He claimed we are “battling on several fronts” due to our half-year financial results showing our first-ever revenue decline, the days of print directories being numbered and that a “rampant gorilla” named Google is set to take all before it in the world of online advertising.

Without a deep understanding of the business, the article focused heavily on our print products and shed little light on the value of our multi-channel network.

On a positive note, it did mention the global financial crisis as one factor influencing our half-year financial result. However it stopped well short of explaining our revenue result was achieved in the peak of the global financial crisis, a time when other advertising businesses were experiencing declines as high as 20%.

Our result in the first-half also saw us increase our overall share of the Australian advertising market. This is an achievement that shows in tough times, advertisers stay with us as we continue to deliver them strong value and return on investment.
 
Through its focus on Yellow Pages® as just a print business, the article glosses over the key role Yellow Pages® has played in Sensis’ evolution as the largest locally-owned online advertising business in Australia. This digital business provides customers with the perfect complement to our successful print directories, as well as exciting opportunities for future growth.

Yellow Pages® print products continue to be a core part of our business and revenue base. But on top of this, we’re creating further value for customers through new and exciting print, online and mobile bundles to extend their reach into the market. These are in addition to initiatives that are already driving extra value such as Yellow Pages® Mobile on iPhone, our SEO program for Yellow Pages® Online content and Yellow Pages® listings being available on Google Mapsⁱ and Bing Maps to name a few.

This strategy is driving value as well as diversifying our revenue base. In three years, the proportion of Sensis’ total revenue from digital products has grown from 18% in 1H07 to almost 33% in 1H10. Digital products are now an integral part our overall network and rather than pose a threat to our print business, they are providing strong growth opportunities.

For example, usage of Yellow Pages® Mobile grew by 89% in the December 2009 quarter compared to the previous year. Similarly, our agreement to have Yellow Pages® listings available on Google Maps is another way we are delivering more value via digital media.

The value Sensis and Yellow Pages® are providing customers and the opportunities for future growth are best highlighted by the 4.6 million people that let their fingers do the walking more than 13 million times a week on averageⁱⁱ. Only now, it’s not just in print, but across a powerful combination of print, online and mobile products.

• ⁱGoogle maps is a trade mark of Google Inc.

• ⁱⁱRoy Morgan Single Source Australia, 14 years and above, last 7 day average, July 2008-June 2009.