Speaking Sensis

Learn how SEO, SEM and sustainability can benefit your business as Yellow Pages® experts take to the stage at this year’s NSW Small Business September.

Sensis is a key sponsor in this year’s event, which is an annual celebration of the importance of small business to the social and economic fabric of NSW.

In its fourth year of sponsorship, Yellow Pages® is running a month long series of education seminars targeting SMEs in growth in both greater Sydney and regional NSW.

Yellow Pages® experts will focus on to two key areas – digital marketing and greening up your business.

Experts from our business will talk about how SMEs can leverage mobile capabilities, undertake effective SEO and SEM marketing, provide key insights from a special report on e-commerce in metropolitan and regional NSW (from the Sensis E Business Report) plus sponsor a keynote speaking engagement by Jon Dee on environmental sustainability.

As in past years, Small Business September is an opportunity for people in small business to extend their networks, develop their skills and build links with the many support organisations that exist to promote business success.

I encourage small business owners of any background and industry to get along to these events (most of which are free) to help them build their knowledge and skills in managing a business across marketing, finance and operations.

Our consultants get quite involved in letting their customers know about these seminars and getting along to the seminars themselves to network with SMEs and further understand their advertising needs and business objectives.

Be inspired by over 300 events designed by industry experts to help your business flourish – I know I will.

To register for events – visit www.smallbusinessmonth.nsw.gov.au or call 1300 661 539.

Hi again. Well, Winter is here with some great rain for our gardens and dams. There’s a lot of exciting things happening at Sensis. And, to top it all off, St Kilda’s nudging the top of the AFL ladder. Could life get any better? In this update, I wanted to share with you some comments on our two speed economy, an exciting couple of months on the innovation front and a few beautiful sets of numbers.

Australia’s two-speed economy
We seem to have hit an uncertain cross-road in the Australian economy. There are signs of a solid return to growth and businesses in many sectors are performing well.

At the same time, however, confidence has dipped among Australia’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs). While SME confidence grew strongly from its historic lows during the GFC, the June Sensis® Business Index reported a significant quarterly drop in confidence. Confidence is still above the lows of last year, but it is concerning that it has fallen so far: especially when you consider that the chief concern among SMEs is ‘lack of work/sales’.

As we all know, the Federal Election is not likely to be far away. Given the importance of Australia’s SME sector and the millions of people it employs, I sincerely hope that the policies of all political parties will reflect a real focus on support for the SME sector.

A busy time for Yellow Pages®…
On a more positive note, we’re currently finalising the distribution of our Yellow Pages® print Regional and Living Local directories to households and businesses around Australia. As I mentioned in the last report, I’m proud to say that we have taken responsibility for the carbon footprint of all Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories from 1 February 2010. We will offset the carbon emissions through Government accredited providers and projects in Australia.

At the same time, the 2010 Yellow Pages® metropolitan campaign is now well and truly underway. This is one of Australia’s largest customer engagement operations with more than 1,000 consultants developing solutions that help hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses connect with the well over six million potential customers who use our print directories every month¹. That’ real muscle for Australia’s SMEs.

Of course, Yellow Pages®’ value extends far beyond the print directory these days, with millions more searches of Yellow Pages® advertising being conducted in online, mobile and voice every month.

… and a busy time in the labs as well
And we’re committed to building on that value. The evidence of this lies in the ‘run’ of digital innovations we’ve delivered recently. All these new releases further improve the quality and ease of use of our services for buyers and sellers. With so much to report, it’s hard to know where to start, so let’s just jump in.

Early June saw the launch of Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® sites specifically designed for the Apple iPad. It was great to be able to launch these tailored sites (complete with gestural interactions like panning and zooming with a swipe or pinch of your fingers) in time for the iPad launch.

We’ve also released upgrades to our Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® Mobile sites. All three incorporated auto suggest features to make searching easier for users as well as gestural mapping for high end Android and iPhone supported phones. On top of this, we added a more seamless click to call feature for the White Pages® and Yellow Pages® sites. In the case of White Pages® Mobile, this dropped the call wait time from around seven seconds to practically zero. And we also incorporated a range of new features for Yellow Pages® advertisers, including text descriptors, business logo and image gallery capabilities.

More recently, we launched a new social networking feature to White Pages® Online. ‘Save and Share’ lets you save interesting White Pages® listings or share them on Twitter or Facebook. Save and Share is already proving popular, with thousands of shares and a large number of resultant click backs from social networks to White Pages® Online. That, of course, means more potential leads for White Pages® advertisers.

Another exciting online announcement was the launch of an upgraded Bing search engine, which can now include Yellow Pages® listings (in the form of a ‘5-pack’) as part of its search results. This means Yellow Pages® advertisers can now be searched for on both Bing and Bing Maps.

We’ve loaded Citysearch® restaurant listings into Whereis.com. This has the joint benefit of improving the richness of the Whereis® experience, while helping to drive more potential customers to Citysearch® advertisers.

And we’ve launched online behavioural targeting for MediaSmart advertisers®. This gives advertisers the ability to deliver more relevant advertising to people using the MediaSmart® online network, which includes Sensis and Telstra sites and an extensive roster of third party sites.

Finally, we’re seeing great advertiser uptake of our bundled advertising products. Over the last year or so, we’ve released a strong range of new multi-product, multi-channel advertiser bundles such as the Yellow Pages® print and digital bundles and the priority advertiser bundle that spans 1234, Citysearch® and Whereis®. These bundles combine different advertising products into a single package, making it easier for advertisers to broaden their reach and create advertising solutions that meet their specific needs.

A beautiful set of numbers
Recently, there have been some great votes of confidence for what we’re doing at Sensis.

I mentioned in a previous update that Sensis looked like receiving great results on the 2010 Corporate Responsibility Index. The CRI, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is run by the St James Ethics Centre and is used by many major Australian businesses to benchmark their sustainability performance. Well, the results are now in. Our first year entrant score of 79.44% (bronze) last year has grown substantially to 92.51% (gold) this year. This result includes platinum scores (a new rating for benchmark performance) in three of the total six areas: sustainability strategy; integration; and assurance and disclosure. This achievement is a real source of pride and is the result of a strong commitment to sustainability from everyone in the business.

Meanwhile, we continue to see fantastic growth in mobile usage. In June, Whereis® Mobile officially became our first mobile site to hit a million visits in a month². Our other mobile sites – like Yellow Pages® and White Pages® – are also doing well. In fact, the whole portfolio is now being visited more than 3 million times a month², which represents high double digit growth over last June and potentially a huge amount of new ROI for our advertisers.

And on a totally different topic, we’ve been working with Mission Australia on the ‘1234 Project’. For every person who clicks ‘like’ on the 1234 Project Facebook home page, Mission Australia will give a pair of socks to a person in need. Our initial target was 12,340 socks and, in less than a month, we’ve already reached it!

The Human Yellow Pages®
Finally, if you think this update is a long read, spare a thought for Tansel Ali. To prepare for the upcoming World Memory Championships, Tansel, who is our own Australian Memory Champion, has turned himself into something of a human Yellow Pages®. Tansel is attempting to memorise every display advertisement (business card size or larger) in the Sydney Yellow Pages® so that he can recite any business name or number. For the record, that’s 2,306 pages, more than 16,000 numbers and a hell of a lot of reading!

That’s an incredible feat Tansel. All the best for the Championships in China later this year.

Best wishes,

Bruce Akhurst

1: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, April 2009 to March 2010. Base: Australians 14+
2: Omniture SiteCatalyst. June 2010

Respected business finance commentator Ross Greenwood recently spoke of Sensis as the “great litmus tests for the health of businesses around the country”. Hear Ross speak with Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst about small business confidence and profitability during the current economic climate on Sydney’s 2GB and Melbourne Talkback Radio.

David Egan finds speaking first hand with Yellow Pages® advertisers is an important reminder of the real challenges that face Australian businesses every day.

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with 300 passionate business owners in Brisbane as part of two seminars sponsored by Yellow Pages®, the Queensland Government’s Small Business Solutions and TNS Research. The focus of those seminars was online advertising and search engine marketing. The theme of the morning was how to tap into the latest online trends to help promote your business.

I prepared a 30 minute walk through of what I thought were the hottest topics of the moment, social media, mobility, applications and content. While I am sure these topics were interesting and entertaining, I came away with a very clear message from those in attendance.

As much as these business owners are interested in what’s new, many are still coming to terms with what the internet means to their business. They spend hours working in their businesses, from self-storage to pest removal and they are the best at what they do. They all reflect on how advertising their business was once a fairly straight forward activity – and then along came the internet with new opportunities and, of course, challenges.

It’s clear when speaking to the attendees that they strongly believed that in investing in their own website gave them access to new business sales and leads. They also believe that if their websites are constructed correctly, they can get “free advertising” through a presence on search engines. Rightly or wrongly the feel that the more time they invest, the bigger the reward will be.

But many spoke of the challenges they faced in getting their websites right.

Everyone has an opinion on how to manipulate websites. And in essence the way you lay out your physical web pages and the words you use on those pages goes some way to helping you get found. And to complicate things further, there are the paid listings on search engines.

One thing that was clear when I spoke to some of the attendees was that they started online they did it in a small way and things seemed pretty cheap.

But then they got hooked.

One business owner mentioned to me that they now spend as much each month on their online keywords as they do for some of their traditional methods of advertising. Interestingly that doesn’t include all the time they spend managing it each week!

When it came to questions, the one I was asked the most was who to trust.

The question seems to evolve from increasing numbers of people knocking on their door making all kinds of promises. And the best answer came from one of my co-presenters, Peter Baldwin from the Queensland Government-sponsored Small Business Solutions Team.

According to Peter, listen, learn and leave your credit card at home. And I agree. Meeting with people is a good way to develop your understanding while not burning a hole in your pocket.

The other question I was repeatedly asked was is what to stop doing if adding the internet to the marketing mix. You need to do it all.

While it is clear that new forms of online usage mean that there are new ways in which  people will search for and discover your business, not everyone has dropped traditional media. 

Despite the hype around mobile, a recent report from research agency Nielsen suggested that while 43 per cent of all Australians own an internet enabled phone only one third of them regularly use it to access the web.

Reasons provided include bill shock that comes with a fear of how much it will cost and the fact the early generation phone are hard to use.

It’s these sorts of stats that remind you that we need to remind ourselves that not everyone is at the bleeding edge of technology.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to leave you with a comment made by one of the delegates in attendance.

“All these new technologies are complimentary. When email first arrived in my business, I didn’t throw away my fax machine. In fact I still use my fax machine every day. I know that there are alternate ways to communicate now with emails etc, but lots of my customers still fax through orders.”

Business confidence among small and medium businesses was just one percentage point higher than it was a year ago according to the latest Sensis® Business Index, released today.

The index recorded the largest single-quarter fall in business confidence among SMEs in the history of the index (which started back in 1993), which was larger than anything measured in a single quarter during the global financial crisis. 

And it’s not hard to see why. 

Businesses are saying that they are seeing business falling and customers not spending. Business confidence rose strongly out of the GFC, but Australia’s SMEs are yet to reap the benefits of economic recovery. They are yet to record a net positive quarter of profitability, that is, one where more businesses record increasing profits than decreasing ones. The last time that happened was back in February 2008.

SMEs are definitely saying that they are doing it tough, with more believing that the economy is slowing rather than growing. And their perceptions of the Federal Government have also fallen sharply in the past quarter.

The Australian economy has done well throughout the economic downturn compared to most other developed economies. We have not had a recession. But to get sustainable growth back into our economy requires business growth and investment to improve.

So, this quarter, seeing the largest single quarter fall in business confidence since the inception of the survey made me recall the last time I reported this, back in November 2007, before the last election and before other economic signals started heading downward – small businesses reported the first signs of the GFC hitting Australia. Hopefully this quarter’s fall will not be replicated in successive quarters as happened throughout the GFC.

That is why this quarter’s results are so important, because they show so starkly that Australia’s small and medium businesses, the backbone of our economy, are finding economic conditions worsening.  It is important that we listen to what small businesses are telling us this time.

Today, I’m exceptionally pleased to be blogging about the official launch of our brand new, hot off the press, ‘Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth’ book.

It’s a new and free resource for small and medium businesses in Australia with information and tips on how to operate more efficiently, save money and reduce impacts on the environment.

Now. Before you start accusing me of being a geek for being so excited, I’ll ask you to hold on for just a moment. Let me present my case and then, if you should still feel the need, the name-calling can begin.

This 230+ page resource has been authored by renowned environmentalist and 2010 NSW Australian of the Year, Jon Dee.

As Jon says in his introduction to the book: “For the modern and efficient business it’s not a case of having a successful company OR a healthy environment. In a truly sustainable world, you must have both”. I reckon this sums up the benefits of the book (and my excitement), very nicely indeed.

First and foremost, this book has been designed to help small and medium businesses save money by being more efficient in their operations. And by being more efficient, they can also reduce their impact on the environment.

Small (less than 20 employees) and medium (20-199 employees) sized businesses in Australia account for around 70% of actively trading businesses in Australia, employing around 40% of total employed people in Australia and contributing almost half of the value of Australia’s GDPⁱ.

So the SME sector is incredibly important to the Australian economy. With more than 2 million SMEs in Australia, this sector has the potential to make some significant changes to the impact they have on the environment.

If there’s an opportunity to save money, it’s something we all want to do. But what if the environment isn’t your thing? While it’s not popular to admit, you secretly just don’t care – you don’t have time. You’re not into hugging trees and you certainly don’t want to pay extra for some flash-harry light, you’ll be right with an incandescent, thanks very much.

The simple fact is, regardless on whether you believe in climate change or not, the global population is growing – 2.55 billion in 1950, 6.8 billion today and an estimated 7.6 billion by 2020ⁱⁱ. The fact is, we’re using more resources than our planet can generate and we need to start working out how to do more with less.

So, how do we address the challenge of a growing population and shrinking supply of natural resources? What can you do? You can green up your operations. Not only could you be saving yourself some cold hard cash, but you’ll be playing your part in ensuring a sustainable future.

Pretty exciting, yes? A free resource with information on how to save money and do your bit. You can order or download your free copy of the book here: http://about.sensis.com.au/small-business/free-sustainable-growth-book/

Yours in proud geekiness,

Jess

• ^i’SME trends and achievements’, Prepared for Telstra Business by CRA International

• ⁱⁱSee www.census.gov

If you are in small business, it will not be surprising news that the latest Sensis® Business Index found that, on balance, Australia’s SMEs are more likely to report that it is comparatively more difficult to access finance for their businesses at the moment.

Some 35 per cent of SMEs felt that it was comparatively difficult to access finance at the moment.  This compared to only 20 per cent that felt it was comparatively easy.

In particular, this will not be surprising if you were in the 20 per cent of SMEs that told us that they had tried to access finance in the past quarter.

And it will really not be surprising if you were included in the 19 per cent of those that had applied for finance and not been successful.

Being able to access finance is an issue which is critical to small businesses.  Finance can be the essential ingredient for fuelling small business growth, as well as ensuring that new business opportunities can enter the market.

There are, of course, two sides of the market for finance, there is the demand for finance and the supply of finance. Both sides of the market have been impacted by the recent economic downturn.

So it is important that there is data available which tries to track both the demand and supply for finance for small businesses in a robust and objective manner.

In the latest Sensis® Business Index we started collecting data to highlight the factors impacting how small businesses access finance.  These insights cover how many businesses have tried to access finance, the proportion that were successful and how accommodative they felt that financial institutions currently were in providing finance.

As part of our commitment to the small businesses that are the backbone of the Australian economy, Sensis provided this data in a submission to the Senate’s Inquiry into the Access of Small Business to Finance, which will hopefully assist the Inquiry in making sound policy decisions in this area.  You can access our submission on the Inquiry’s website by clicking here.

If you have a story to tell about accessing finance or have any feedback about our submission, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of the story.

Yellow Pages® was on hand at Australian Arab Business Network (AABN) Dinner on Saturday night to help Australia’s Arabic business community celebrate their successes of the past 12 months.

Yellow Pages'® Helen Giannakis awarding a $2000 advertising voucher to Mark Merhi and Khalil Merhi of Merhis Constructions for outstanding business achievement.

As a corporate sponsor of the network, The award was presented by Yellow Pages’®  Helen Giannakis who told more than 350 AABN members on the night that the dinner was proof of the power of business networking.

“Looking around the room, I could see the many businesses that made up AABN, from those in wholesale food to builders and bankers. And while they may operate in vastly different industries, these talented entrepreneurs know they are not on their own, they are all connected,” Helen said.

“Through networks such as this, business know they have someone to rely on, someone with whom they can workshop an idea, or who can save them from having to reinvent the wheel,” she said.

“Yellow Pages® was honoured to be part of this network, supporting businesses in Bankstown, Auburn, Parramatta and beyond, as a corporate member.

“Just like they rely on each other for success, they can count on Yellow Pages® to reach out to more customers.”

Do you know of a small to medium business that consistently goes the extra distance to provide a better service to its customers? Have you thought about ways to help it get the recognition it deserves? Would you nominate it for a business award?

Well, if you have answered “yes” to all three questions, you now you have a chance to do your bit. The 2010 Telstra Business Awards are now open and your favourite small to medium business has a chance to share in the fantastic opportunities that have been benefitting Australian businesses for the past 18 years. And for the first time this year, all entrants have an opportunity to receive a business health check to help them plan for tomorrow, encouraging them to keep up the good work.

I’ll be coordinating our support of the Sensis Social Responsibility award category. While sustainability is at the core of our Sensis’ business strategy, we recognise that embracing sustainability can be a bit scary for small and medium sized businesses. So, this is an opportunity for us to recognsie and support those businesses we believe are giving it a crack and to celebrate their efforts. And through their success, we hope to encourage more businesses to do the same.

The Telstra Business Awards give small to medium businesses amazing networking

opportunities, media exposure and business development prospects.

Every year, the awards get me thinking about the small and medium business owners I know and who I’d like to nominate. There’s a fantastic beautician I go to in Prahran, but then there’s also that amazing breakfast place on Gertrude St, Collingwood. And I can’t forget about my hairdresser in Fitzroy. The one thing they all have in common is that the owners and their teams are all putting their heart and soul into making their businesses the very best they can be.

While a lot of large businesses have their own internal rewards and recognition programs in place, who is there to pat the small and medium business owner on the back and say, “Well done. You’re doing it right. Keep up the good work”?

The Telstra Business Awards give them that and also provide them with amazing networking opportunities, media exposure and business development prospects – not to mention the serious prizes getting around.

So, a final question for you. Who are you going to nominate?

The latest Sensis® Business Index recorded the third successive quarter of growth in confidence amongst Australia’s small and medium businesses.  Report author Christena Singh takes us through the key results and some of the challenges facing SMEs and the economy going forward.

It was really encouraging to see the Sensis® Business Index record the third successive quarter of growth in confidence amongst Australian small businesses.  SME confidence has now risen by some 40 percentage points in the past three quarters, to a net balance of 52 per cent.

And while the continued increase in confidence and performance is good news, it is important to realise that we are still only partly down the path of economic recovery.  If you look at the indicators compared to their long term averages, you can see that while confidence is now four percentage points above its long term average, all performance indicators are still tracking below their long term average levels.

For example, as you can see in the attached chart, the sales performance indicator is some four percentage points lower, profitability five percentage points lower and capital expenditure nine percentage points lower.  The indicator that is closest to its long term average is employment, which is only one percentage point lower.

And all of these indicators with the exception of capital expenditure have risen in the past quarter.  So Australian SMEs have made good progress on the path to economic recovery but there is still some way to go.

And this is perhaps emphasised by the fact that SMEs are expecting conditions to moderate over the next quarter to some extent, with more thinking that the Australian economy will be weaker in a year’s time.  While many SMEs are still facing challenges such as reduced demand and cash flow, others are already facing the “problems” of economic growth, including difficulties finding staff.

Six months ago the Australian economy had to face the challenges of economic downturn.  We have seen the Australian economy and Australia’s small and medium business meet this challenge.  But in many ways the challenges of economic recovery will be more complex, with the need to tackle both the problems of growth and decline at the same time.  This will be the challenge the Australian economy will face for the year ahead.