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Sensis: Mobile usage takes off

Wayne Aspland | 12 November 2009

Crunch!Sometimes the numbers just talk for themselves. Take Yellow Pages® Mobile usage data…

As you all become devoted (hopefully) readers of the Crunch! column, you’ll begin to notice that my articles all take on roughly the same formula.

Obviously, there’ll be stats… a no-brainer considering this column is meant to be about stats.

But those stats will be surrounded by witty (hopefully) witticisms and insightful (hopefully) insights as well.

There’s a simple reason for that. To the vast majority of the world (i.e. the majority of people who aren’t bone fide pen-holder-carrying geeks), staring at a bunch of numbers is like watching grass grow.

But, every now and then, you come across a set of stats that just talk for themselves – no frilly additions necessary.

Here’s an example.

1.    In October, the Yellow Pages® Mobile audience hit half a million unique visitors for the first time1.

2.    All up, it’s taken Yellow Pages® Mobile a touch over 18 months to reach half a million unique visitors1. By comparison, it took Yellow Pages® Online more than five years to reach that mark2.

Still think mobile marketing’s sitting on the runway?

Think again.

1.  Omniture. July to October 2009
2.  RedSheriff 2004/2005 data

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The rise and rise of eBusiness in Australia

Wayne Aspland | 29 October 2009

Crunch!So you think office workers sit at their computers writing Word docs all day? Forget that. According to the latest Sensis® eBusiness Report, we’re all going shopping!

There’s something distinctly Escher-like about the Sensis® eBusiness Report.

Okay, so comparing the mind-bending explorations of the impossible created by Dutch artist Maurits Cornelius Escher with an Internet survey might sound a stretch (although the cover of the Sensis® eBusiness Report does have a freaky picture on it).

But, there is method in my madness.

The thing is, the longer you look at the Sensis® eBusiness Report, the more interesting little tidbits pop out at you.

Just like Escher, eh?

Every year around August, the Sensis® eBusiness Report comes out and gets its fair share of headlines – usually focussing on one or two key observations.

This year was no different. The main focus of reporting was on the uptake of mobile data services by Australian consumers.

But some other really interesting findings hit me as I stared at the report recently. They relate to the way eBusiness has evolved in Australia.

The rise and rise of eBusiness
First up, it’s clear that eBusiness has had a real growth spurt over the last two years.

There’s four distinct activities related to eBusiness measured by the Sensis® eBusiness Report: two (research and buy) sit on the ‘buy side’, while two (sell and promote) sit on the ‘sell side’.

And, as the table below shows, all of these activities have really packed on the muscle over the last two years: albeit at different rates. In fact, researching potential purchases has reached the point of near-ubiquity in Australia, with the buying and selling activities not far behind them.

eBiz

Businesses placing almost a third of their orders online
The second observation is that the SMEs who have cottoned onto online ordering are using the web for an average almost a third (31%) of their orders.

Ponder that for a moment. 78% of Australia’s SMEs are placing, on average, almost a third of their orders online.

That’s staggering and it underpins just how far eBusiness has come in this country.

Having said that, it does look like online’s share of orders may have hit a bit of a ceiling. While the number of SMEs placing orders online has grown rapidly since 2007, the average percentage of orders they’re placing (31%) has remained static.

Around the world? Nup… around the corner
One final observation. Back when the web was a toddler, the talk was of globalisation. If I recall, the thinking went something like ‘anyone could sell anywhere so everyone will sell everywhere’.

And while the web certainly has given birth to a new generation of multinationals, it pans out (perhaps not surprisingly) that the overwhelming bulk of businesses remain focussed on their neighbourhoods.

In fact, it turns out that two thirds of SMEs mainly sell to local customers – in the same city or town. 11% mainly sell elsewhere in the state, 12% interstate and 4% overseas.

So there you have it. A growth spurt in the uptake of eBusiness; a high (although static) share of purchases being placed online and a real focus on the customers just around the corner.

The Internet may not have changed the face of business in the way we once believed, but it sure has changed the way we do business.

Anyway, enough said. I’m off shopping (click, click, click).

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Leading us up the garden path

Wayne Aspland | 14 October 2009

Crunch!Crunch! is a new column looking at the numbers behind advertising and local search. In today’s Crunch!… Defining what a click is. That’s easy. Defining what a click isn’t. That’s harder… but much more important.

In the 12 years I’ve been working in online media, there’s one thing that’s always befuddled me.

It’s the fact that online marketers cite measurement as the biggest barrier to advertising on what is touted as the world’s most measurable medium.

Go figure!

To highlight this, a 2007 McKinsey Quarterly report* found that over 50% of Internet advertisers saw “insufficient metrics to measure impact” as a barrier to using or considering digital advertising.

And there’ve been similar surveys, with similar results, in Australia.

So, what’s going on here? How the hell can measuring such a measurable medium raise so much angst?

I’ve long thought there’s two reasons.

The first is confusion about how we’re measuring – in other words the different public measurement services and their methodologies. For quite a while now, there’s been concern in Australia about the accuracy of online statistics. Naturally, when there’s a lack of faith in the source, there’s going to be a lack of faith in the data as well.

The second is a lack of clarity around what we’re measuring. Just think about the simple issue of online traffic as an example. Over the years, we’ve been stumped by a blinding array of different metrics – hits, page views, sessions, visits, unique users and unique visitors just to start with.

These metrics all mean slightly different things but, despite that, they’re often quoted interchangeably: a recipe for much pulling-of-hair and gnashing-of-teeth if I ever saw one.

This metric malaise is a really big problem, and I wanted to touch on it today with a focus on one particular metric – the humble click.


WHAT’S A CLICK?

The other day, an interesting question was raised at a customer panel session I attended.

On the surface, the question – “what (in advertising terms) is a click?” – would seem pretty straightforward.

Put simply, it’s when a person clicks from a feeder – like a search engine or banner ad – to a particular advertiser’s web site. It’s the action that gives rise to pricing terms like ‘cost per click’ and ‘pay per click’.

Okay, no biggie there.


CLICKS AIN’T LEADS

But the question becomes a lot murkier when you think about what a click isn’t. In particular, whether a click and a lead are the same thing.

Now, this might seem like nit-picking, but it’s a really important question – especially for the numerically-obsessed, like me. It gets to the heart of how you understand, measure and evaluate the contribution of different media to your business.

To start with, let’s think about this in a traditional media context.

Let’s say you send out a DM piece to 1,000 potential customers. As a result, 100 people take a moment to read it and 10 are so enamoured with what you’ve said that they give you a call.

What have you got there? 1,000 leads? 100 leads? 10 leads?

If you’re a media outlet trying to justify your existence, you might say 100. You might even say 1,000 if you’re feeling particularly hairy-chested (and/or deluded).

But if you’re a manager trying to get a handle on your sales pipeline, the answer is unequivocal… 10.

A lead isn’t a passing ship; it’s a real potential customer who has called, emailed, visited or contacted you in some way expressing a real interest.

A lead is a real sales opportunity that – most critically – you have a real chance to close.

Don’t get me wrong. The fact that 100 people read your DM piece (or clicked through to your web site) is great. They now know you and have you in the back of their minds. They’ve interacted with your brand.

But those people don’t qualify as ‘leads’ until they take that next step and get in touch with you.


BRINGING CONVERSION INTO THE MIX

Clearly, you can’t properly equate clicks to leads (which take the form of calls, visits, emails and other forms of enquiry) in the way some try to do these days.

To properly measure the leads generated by online advertising, you need to bring another ratio into play – conversion.

Conversion measures how many people actually took that next step of contacting you.

Most research suggests that online conversion rates are quite low – in the low single digits. That means the actual leads stemming from your online advertising may only be a relatively small fraction of the number of clicks.


THE BOTTOM LINE

So, what’s the bottom line here?

Firstly, comparing clicks with leads ain’t comparing apples with apples. If you want to compare clicks generated by one form of advertising with calls or visits generated by another, you need to think about the conversion as well. How many people actually visited your site and then contacted you?

Secondly, think about how well your web site converts browsers to buyers. Optimising online lead-generation campaigns means not just getting lots of people to your site, but having a site that efficiently converts them to leads as well.

And finally, if someone comes to you offering a mountain of ‘leads’, ask them precisely what they mean by the word ‘leads’.

How many of them will be real leads – enquiries from potential customers that you have a chance to close?

You might just find they’re leading you up the garden path.

* How companies are marketing online: A McKinsey Global Survey. September 2007

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Sensis® e-Business Report: Half of Australia’s young adults have used the mobile Internet

Wayne Aspland | 20 August 2009

waAccording to the Sensis® e-Business Report – one of Australia’s longest running and most respected digital media surveys – the mobile generation has arrived.

For years there’ve been promises. Now the proof is well and truly in the pudding. According to the 14th Sensis e-Business Report, Australians and their mobiles have really clicked.

Almost half of all 20 – 29 year old Australians have now accessed the mobile internet. And teenagers aren’t far behind them, with 47% of 14-17 year olds and 34% of 18 – 19 year olds also surfing the web from the comfort of their phones.

In fact, all up, over a quarter of all Australians over the age of 14 have now accessed the mobile internet.

But the size and growth of the mobile generation is only part of the story. The other exciting bit is how Australians are using the mobile internet.

Unlike their dot.com boom predecessors, today’s mobile generation know exactly what the internet is about. And they’re getting straight down to business – in a big way.

41% of mobile internet users are looking for information on products and services, making it the number one mobile activity. And number three, at 36%, is looking for suppliers of products or services.

According to Mark Shaw, GM of Sensis’ digital advertising business MediaSmart, “this interest in product and service information is well and truly hitting the mobile usage numbers. Usage of Yellow Pages® Mobile has almost tripled in just one year1”.

But the mobile generation isn’t just searching. They’re buying as well. 25% have purchased a ringtone, 25% have undertaken mobile banking, 19% have made a credit card purchase, 12% have ordered goods and services, and 10% have bought or sold through an auction site.

Clearly, this is an audience with a penchant for buying. And that’s gotta bring a smile to any advertiser’s face.

Of course, people aren’t just using their mobiles for business. They’re getting social as well.

40% of the mobile generation have used their mobile to access a social networking site. 27% have read a blog (while 12% have written one) and 7% have used Twitter from their mobiles.

And, not surprisingly, the mobile generation is tech-savvy to boot; getting stuck right into the most cutting edge rich media and applications.

Like the 27% who’ve downloaded video, the 25% who’ve downloaded games, the 17% who’ve watched mobile TV and the 12% who’ve scanned a mobile or QR code.

It’s now beyond doubt. A new revolution has begun. And it’s all happening right there in your pocket.

1: Omniture. Average monthly unique usage – June quarter 2009 vs 2008

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Twitter hits the tweet spot for Kogi BBQ

Wayne Aspland | 20 July 2009

waIn his April speech “The Rise of Social Media“, Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst commented on the US mobile takeaway business – Kogi BBQ – and their success in using Twitter to keep customers in touch with where their vans would be.Bruce commented that Kogi BBQ had acquired 15,000 Twitter followers in its short life.

Well, I happened across Kogi BBQ’s Twitter page the other day. Turns out their band of followers has more than doubled – to over 36,600 – in just three months.

Ahhh… the tweet smell of success.

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Sensis listens, learns, launches

Wayne Aspland | 15 July 2009

waThere’s a lot of improvement going on at Sensis. And our customers like what they’re seeing.

If there’s one thing this world definitely doesn’t want for, it’s business advice.

I mean, there’s more business books out there today than skivvies at a Trekkies convention. If you don’t believe me, try searching for “marketing” at Amazon.com’s book section… and be amazed by the mind-snapping 535,000 results you get .

The irony is that this torrent of advice all boils down to some pretty basic principles. And the most fundamental of them all is:

Give your customers what they want.

With that in mind, Sensis has been working closely with the buyers and sellers who rely on our services: listening to them, learning about their needs and launching the solutions to help them.

This approach has led to a stream of new innovations over the last couple of years. From info-rich advertising and metered ads to the Yellow™ in the car directory, to agreements with Ninemsn and Google Maps, to re-builds of our directory web sites to the new mobile sites that are now delivering 8% of our total digital traffic (1) .

More importantly, this customer-centric approach – which can be seen not just in our product development, but in our focus on effective sales and customer service – has contributed to a real spike in customer satisfaction. Between February 08 and May 09, for example, satisfaction among users of our directory sites increased by 10 percentage points (pp) for Yellow Pages® OnLine (2) and 14pp for White Pages® OnLine (3).

And we’re keeping the heat on the innovation front so we can deliver continuous improvement to our customers. In just the last fortnight, for example, we’ve launched the following upgrades to our digital local search sites.

Easy to access

Buyers are looking for more touchpoints, so they can access our services whenever and wherever they want to.

To assist this, we’ve just launched White Pages® Mobile. The new mobile version of White Pages® gives you access to residential, business or government contacts together with maps and directions and the ability to save listings to your contacts or share them with friends. And it’s all just one click away from the BigPond mobile menu.

We’ve also improved the popular send to mobile feature on Whereis.com. Send to mobile is a simple way to send your online search results to your mobile. That way, you can easily take the business details you found on your computer out on the road with you.

Easy to search

People are also looking for easier ways to search – less entry boxes and more relevant results. Over the last fortnight, we’ve continued to answer this call by launching:

  • Streamlined search in White Pages® OnLine. We’ve reduced the number of entry windows, which means less typing and faster results. For example, the number of business search windows has shrunk from four to two.
  • Auto-complete for White Pages® OnLine searches. By suggesting answers while you’re typing this new facility saves even more time and helps ensure more relevant results.
  • New user-friendly URLs for Yellow Pages® OnLine advertiser pages. This means site users can easily bookmark the results page for businesses they’re interested in. And, if you’re an advertiser, you can link straight from your web site to your Yellow Pages® OnLine ad.
  • The addition of business listing names to the Yellow Pages® OnLine search algorithm. This has the potential to greatly expand the relevant results site users will receive. For example, a search for Thai Restaurants on the Gold Coast currently returns 87 listings, instead of only 26 in the past.

Easy to find

And what about when you’ve found the business listing you want? What are we doing to make it easier for you to get in contact with that business?

If you’re hungry, Yellow Pages® OnLine has made it easier than ever to book a restaurant or order a meal. There are already over 500 registered Menulog restaurants across Australia that are now also listed with Yellow Pages® OnLine under headings like Restaurants and Cafes.  For example, you can search for Indian Restaurants in Melbourne VIC, and find restaurants like Nirankar Fine Indian Cuisine or Bombay Beat Restaurant that provide one click access to Menulog’s booking and ordering facilities.

We’ve also added landmark navigation to the Whereis.com web site. As a result, you’ll begin seeing turn by turn directions like “turn right at the Post Office” rather than just “turn right in 200m”. This enhancement is the result of research undertaken by Melbourne Uni’s Geomatics department and Whereis. The research clearly showed that people are able to navigate more easily and precisely using landmarks.

I hope you’ll agree that that’s not a bad haul for a fortnight. But it’s far from the end. Continuous improvement means continuous innovation, so keep your eye on Speaking Sensis for more listening, learning and launching in the future.

1. Omniture. June 2009
2. 2 Degrees Research, Yellow Pages® OnLine User Satisfaction Survey, Wave 15, May 2009
3. 2 Degrees Research, whitepages.com.au User Satisfaction Survey, May 2009

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Sensis on local search 3: DIVERSE

Wayne Aspland | 17 June 2009

waOkay. 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.

venn1

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.

channels

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.

(1) Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average monthly unique users Jan – Dec 08. Base Australians 14+.
(2) Hitwise Business directories category. Average monthly shares of total Hitwise ‘business directories category, Jan – Mar 09.
(3) Hitwise Business directories category. Average monthly shares of total Hitwise ‘business directories category, Jan – Mar 09.
(4) Print and voice data sourced from Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average monthly references Jan – Dec 2008.

Related links

Sensis on local search 1 – BIG

Sensis on local search 2 – GROWING

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Sensis on local search 2: GROWING

Wayne Aspland | 10 June 2009

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).

local-search-5

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.

1. All data compares 2008 vs 2007 data except mobiles due to lack of earlier data.  Print and voice: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average weekly unique users Jan – Dec 08 vs Jan – Dec 07. Base Australians 14+.   Online: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average monthly unique users Jan – Dec 08 vs Jan – Dec 07. Sites measured include Yellow.com.au, Whereis.com.au, MyLocal, Google Maps   Mobile: Omniture Site Catalyst. Average monthly visits March qtr 09 vs March qtr 08. Sites measured Yellow™ Mobile and Whereis® Mobile.
2. Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average monthly unique users Jan – Dec 08. Base Australians 14+.

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Sensis on local search 1: BIG

Wayne Aspland | 4 June 2009

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.

im-local

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.

conversion

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.

(1) Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average monthly unique users Jan – Dec 08. Base Australians 14+. Includes Yellow Pages® print directories, Yellow Page® Online, Whereis.com.au, Google Maps, TrueLocal, MyLocal. Voice and mobile not included
(2) Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. Average monthly unique users Jan – Dec 08. Base Australians 14+. Includes Yellow Pages® print directories, Yellow Page® Online, Whereis.com.au, Google Maps, TrueLocal, MyLocal. Voice and mobile not included.
(3) Independent research conducted by TNS of Australians aged 18+ years (Jan 09 to Mar’09).

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Sensis CEO gets social

Wayne | 23 April 2009

As part two of his ‘The Age of Engagement’ series, Bruce Akhurst shares his thoughts on the rise of social media and what it could mean for marketers and the media.

Want to know about the US food van business that has built a huge following using Twitter? Or the toy company that used advice from its fans to create a truly innovative product development processes? Or the coffee chain that asked its customers for ideas and ended up with 70,000 of them in just one year?

Welcome to the extraordinary world of social media. The use of social networking sites have grown at extraordinary rates. Did you know that two thirds of Australian teenagers now use Facebook, YouTube or MySpace every month? (1)

But, in reality, these networks are just the beginning of the social media landscape.

In this presentation, Bruce takes a look at the world of social media and concludes that it is a game-changer on a par with the launch of television. It provides the potential for small businesses to access serious online technologies. And it can get companies and consumers not just talking with (instead of at) each other, but actually working together to build things that ultimately benefit them both.

The Age of Engagement 2: The Rise of Social Media

View more presentations from Sensis .

(1) Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, base: Australians 14+

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