Speaking Sensis

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a case in point.

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

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

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

You can only do that by choosing them all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, buyers are showing their preference for choice.

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

Related links

Sensis on local search 1 – BIG

Sensis on local search 2 – GROWING

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

So, you just got engaged. Congratulations.

And commiserations too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Businesses just like these…

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

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

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

This makes local search unique in four very distinct ways.

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

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

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

Sensis General Manager, Marketing, Michelle Sherwood is participating on a panel at the Advertising, Marketing & Media Summit this Monday 11 May. The session is titled “When the going gets tough… The tough get marketing”….topical for most marketers today. Joe Talcott, Marketing Director, News Limited is chairing the session and the other panelists include senior marketing practitioners from marie claire, AFL, Medibank Private, ninemsn, MINI and Australia Post.

Sensis will have a double-billing at the CeBit WebForward web, search and e-marketing event in Sydney next week. General Manager, Digital Marketing Services, Thomas Arthur is speaking on Wednesday 13 May about Integrating Mobile Advertising into the Marketing Mix. Group Manager, Mobile, Gregan McMahon is speaking on the following day about Tapping into Mobile Search. Both presenters are hoping the audience comes away revved up about the endless possibilities of the mobile medium!

Meanwhile, Group Marketing Manager, Yellow Pages, Stephen Harvy is addressing a luncheon hosted by the Australian Arab Business Network in Bankstown, NSW on 13 May. This group, which represents a wide range of businesses, invited Stephen along as they’re keen to know more about Local Business Search: how are consumers really searching and how are technologies converging to enhance the consumer experience?

Hope to have an update with key take-outs from these sessions soon…

Today, Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst spoke at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon on what he describes as The Age of Engagement.

Digital media isn’t merely cannibalising traditional media. It’s giving marketers new tools to work with and the ability to build deep, valuable relationships with customers.

The first presentation in this series looks at how local search is helping marketers support consumer purchase decisions in exciting new ways. And how the next generation of local search is being driven by the mobile phone.

The second presentation looks at social media. Be sure to check back as this presentation will be uploaded shortly.

Times might be tough in the media sector today, but there’s a lot about the future to be excited about.

This week, Bruce Akhurst, the CEO of Sensis, will be sharing his thoughts on the future in a two-part presentation: The Age of Engagement.

The first part of his speech – covering the rise of local search – will be delivered at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Sydney this Thursday, 23 April.

And, in a departure from the norm, part two of this presentation, which covers the rise of social media will be delivered using – what else – social media!

So, pop back to the Speaking Sensis blog this Friday, 24 April. You’ll be able to view both of Bruce’s speeches.

My last couple of entries have looked back on 2008.’s

Now it’s time to turn from past to future, with eight trends for 2009.

It’s a testing time for the media sector today. But despite the impacts of the economic downturn, there’s a lot to be optimistic about. The key will be focusing on customer needs and listening to what your customers are saying to you.

Which is why we’ve dubbed 2009 ‘the year of the customer’.

Have a read and tell us what you think. Do you agree… or not? What do you think this year’s hot spots will be and why?

Mobiles make mainstream

Mobile advertising has been promising big things for years. Now it’s delivering and, this year, mobile advertising will make the mainstream.

I could spend hours talking about the unique capabilities mobiles offer marketers (and I will do soon), but, for now, let’s talk numbers.

From January 08 to January 09, traffic to Sensis Mobile sites grew on average 12% A MONTH . Mobile now represents 8% of Sensis’ total Australian digital traffic – and it’s growing fast(1) .

And, according to MediaSmart (Sensis’ digital display advertising business), the uptake of mobile display campaigns is currently running at almost three times the rate it did last year.

Think mobile advertising is a way off? Think again.

Integration

The marketing challenges created by fragmentation (people spreading their media consumption) has been a hot topic for years.

In 2009, we’ll turn our attention from the problem to the solution – integration, multi-channel, cross-platform or whatever you choose to call it.

Increasingly, media companies will bundle different media into multi-brand, multi-product networks. This way, advertisers can access a larger base of consumers with a single purchase and manage their media strategy in a co-ordinated way.

Sensis has been executing on this for a while through our Yellow Pages® print, online, voice, mobile and sat nav network. We”re also seeing strong traction for cross platform advertising in the activities of a number of major media players, including the Mitchell Communication Group’’s cross-platform media negotiations, which received considerable media coverage late last year.

Expect integrated campaigns to steadily become the norm.

Syndication

Okay. So, major media providers are increasingly enabling cross-platform advertising. But what about the web itself? After all, it isn’t just one platform, it’s millions. About 108 million at best guess(2). How can you possibly reach out across such a diverse landscape?

In the past, going online meant having a web site and not much more. This year will see more marketers stepping outside their web sites to create syndicated content that windows that reach out right across the web.

Today, advertisers are increasingly using blog, video and even Powerpoint networks like LiveJournal, Wordpress, YouTube and Slideshare to generate and deliver content. They’re using a blinding array of sharing and syndication tools to spread that content everywhere. And the whole lot is search engine optimised, including their Yellow Pages® and White Pages® listings.

The end result is an easy to manage content store streaming content out to a whole mass of proprietary and public sites. You’re heavily increasing potential reach and enabling a whole range of different opportunities, like the ability for people to discuss, share or subscribe to your content.

No doubt about it, there’s more work in this than the old model. But the spin-offs are potentially huge, which is why you‘ll see far more syndication occurring in the future.

Social Media

While we’re on the subject, there’s no doubt that social media is the hot topic right now.

And it’s likely to stay that way. YouTube and Facebook usage continues to grow at almost obscene rates. According to Roy Morgan, over 5.5m Australians used these two sites every month in the September quarter last year – up 1.8m on the previous year(3).

Meanwhile, Coca Cola’s Facebook page now has over 3 million fans !(4)

So social media is a big potential opportunity. But how do you unlock it?

The exciting thing about social media this year won’t just be its growth. It will be the fact that marketers will work out how to use it.

Engagement versus eyeballs

But, to do that, there’ll need to be a major (and very welcome) shift in how we perceive the role of marketing.

Will marketers get value out of social media by using it as another way of shoving brands in people’s faces?

No. They’ll drive value by using social (and other) media to genuinely engage people in conversations and learn from their views. They’ll use media as a channel to provide service – not just taglines – to consumers. They’ll begin sharing, rather than just promoting, their brands and they’ll use media to go right to the source: seeking consumer views on everything from product development to customer service to community relations.

Make no mistake. This is a quantum shift. As a result, brand awareness will start giving way to brand ownership and the role marketing plays in the business will change forever.

Accountability

Here’s a disturbing irony. While digital media is touted as highly accountable, a lack of accountability is still seen as the greatest roadblock by online advertisers. For example, a 2007 McKinsey survey(5) found that over 50% of digital advertisers nominated “insufficient metrics to measure impact” as a barrier to adoption.

The IAB is currently undertaking a much welcomed revision of online measurement guidelines and industry standardisation.

Let’s hope the many issues confronting online measurement can be resolved, including the ability to align online metrics with other media and the ability to measure the rapidly growing mobile landscape in a standardised way.

Of course, accountability doesn’t apply solely to online. Traditional media need to become more transparent about ROI as well. One example of how Sensis is following through with this is our Yellow Pages® metered ads. Unique phone numbers are used on Yellow Pages® ads and then monitored. In this way, the advertiser can see exactly how many calls their ad is generating.

Advertisers have been demanding accountability for some time now. Over the next year, you’ll start to see media providers – both online and offline – start to really deliver it.

Tough times

So there’s a lot of exciting things going on today. But you can’t realistically talk about 2009 without mentioning the global downturn and it’s impact on media.

In Australia, the Sensis Business Index and Sensis Consumer Report are reflecting global trends by finding the lowest levels of consumer and business confidence in their history.

This declining confidence has had a sobering impact on advertising and media.

Almost every major Australian media business is staring at falling revenue, although it’s pleasing for us that Sensis has been a notable exception.

And even the major dot.com high flyers are experiencing either curbed growth or revenue declines.

There is a feeling that things will improve for the industry in 2010, although recent downward revisions in forecasts from various analysts suggest we may not yet be at the bottom of this cycle.

The year of the customer

And this leads me to the final trend. 2009 will be the year of the customer.

Over the last few years, the industry has been beset by discussions about systemic changes. Is traditional giving way to digital? Are advertising business models changing?

These discussions, while vital, have tended to divert the industry’s attention away from the most fundamental and vital question of all – are we delivering what our customers (both consumers and advertisers) want?

Whether they’re traditional, digital or both, the companies that survive and thrive through this downturn will all have one thing in common.

They’ll be focused unerringly on the needs of their customers.

1: Omniture. Visits to Sensis sites. January 2008 to January 2009.
2: www.domaintools.com
3: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. October 2007 to September 2008. Base Australians 14+.
4: Facebook
5: How Companies are Marketing Online – A McKinsey Global Survey. September 2007.