Speaking Sensis

I’d like to officially welcome Yelp to Australia today, a global leader in local ratings and reviews. I encourage everyone to visit www.yelp.com.au and share their experiences of local businesses by posting ratings and reviews.

Why rate and review? Aside from the fact that it’s the fun and easy way to talk about great (and not so great) local businesses, it’s sites like Yelp that are playing a big part in how we Aussies make purchasing decisions these days.

According to the Sensis® Social Media Report, social networkers read an average of six reviews before making a buying decision. So rather than waiting for a review of a business to be published online or in the local paper and then deciding whether or not to give the business a go, we are getting on the front foot and seeking these reviews out for ourselves. Yelp.com.au makes this very easy. 

Yelp first started in San Francisco in 2004 and today’s launch in Australia marks the 13th country it has opened its online doors in. In Q3 2011 the online ratings and reviews company received an average of 61 million visitors a month (up 63 per cent from the same time last year), has generated 22 million reviews on its global network as of September 2011 (an increase of 66 per cent over the same time in 2010) and saw an average of five million unique views a month on its mobile app. With results like these, it’s evident that ratings and reviews are becoming an increasingly important component of consumers’ pre-purchase behaviour.

While I’m personally excited about Yelp’s launch in Australia today, it’s also a big coup for Sensis®’ Yellow Pages®, after announcing our ground-breaking partnership with Yelp back in July. 

Yellow Pages® local business listing data has been integrated into Yelp.com.au (including mobile site and apps), which means our Yellow Pages® advertisers will be able to be found by more potential customers. And in a couple of weeks, Yelp Reviews and Ratings will be displayed on Yellow Pages® Online and Mobile. I’ll tell you more about that shortly. In the meantime, visit www.yelp.com.au to rate and review a local business near you.

Today we announced the expansion of our search engine marketing (SEM) product offering, with the launch of ClickManager Express – an affordable, entry level SEM product focusing on exclusively advertising through Google AdWords.

This is pretty exciting for small and medium sized businesses that want to give SEM a go but haven’t done so yet. Why? Because it’s cost-effective and we’re here to manage it all for you. We don’t expect you to be an expert on SEM – all you need is a website and we’ll take care of the rest.

We’ve noticed significant growth in the SEM industry within Australia over the last 12 months. While it’s still a relatively new area for many small businesses in Australia, as the number of businesses with websites grows, so does the need for SEM products. There are so many SEM suppliers that it can be a bit overwhelming for small businesses to know who to turn to.

We believe the combination of our partnership with Google and Yellow Pages being such an established and trusted brand provides businesses who want to give SEM a try with the confidence to do so.

The 2011 Sensis e-Business Report found the proportion of SMEs with a website continued to increase over the past year from 61 per cent to 67 per cent , while Frost & Sullivan found 32 per cent of small businesses and 43 per cent of medium businesses planned to increase their search engine marketing budget in 2011.

Furthermore, of the businesses that indicated an increase in their search advertising budget, 32 per cent indicated that the budget increased by more than 25 per cent – which shows that a significant portion of advertisers continue to make good increases to their search advertising budget allocations.

It’s really important that SMEs don’t miss out on the market opportunity available to them – having a website without SEM is like opening a shop and not putting any signage up – nobody knows you’re there. The ClickManager Express product starts from as little as $110 including GST a month and provides SMEs with an affordable, entry level solution.

The ClickManager Express product is sold by our Yellow Pages media advisors and requires the business to have a website. Sensis also offers a website solution called SiteSmart for businesses that are not currently online, so a business can go from no website and no SEM to having both in a very short period of time with Sensis.

For more information, visit www.clickmanager.com.au.

Last week, the Google AdWords Authorised Reseller program was rebranded to the Google AdWords Premier SME Partner Program (PSP). The reason for Google’s new AdWords program name is to reflect a more accurate picture to customers of companies like Sensis, who do far more than just resell AdWords, as well as reinforcing the program’s specific focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

As the team at Sensis is all about making marketing easy, especially for SMEs, we were very excited about the new branding.

Sensis entered into a strategic agreement with Google to become an Authorised Reseller of Google’s AdWords advertising program in Australia earlier this year. The agreement allows Sensis to sell Google AdWords to our SME advertisers and gives Google the opportunity to make its AdWords product more accessible through our sales force.

As a Premier SME Partner, Sensis is recognised in the market as meeting Google’s highest standards and criteria for qualification, transparency, and customer service. This includes completing extensive Google product and account management training.

The PSP connects Google’s trusted and experienced AdWords partners, such as us, with small and medium-sized businesses that want expert help in creating, managing and optimising their online advertising campaigns. This ensures we can provide small businesses with the most effective AdWords advertising solutions.

In addition to in-depth AdWords expertise, with Sensis’ ClickManager and Digital Plus products we provide full-service campaign management, detailed reporting, one-on-one customer support, and broad marketing guidance to help advertisers make the most of their campaigns. 

It was also great to hear what James Sanders, head of Google’s APAC channel sales partnerships, had to say about it: “We are excited to launch the Google AdWords Premier SME Partner program with hand-picked, highly qualified companies like Sensis. Small and medium-sized businesses will not only benefit from Sensis’ in-depth training, but from their years of experience in the local market.”

You can take a look at the Sensis Premier SME Partner page here, visit www.clickmanager.com.au for more information about our SEM products or contact me with any questions.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in our business over the years. We’ve launched websites, we’ve gone mobile and in Adelaide you’ll notice a significant change to the Yellow Pages book that’s currently being distributed.

Adelaide is the first city where the new compact-size Yellow Pages book will be distributed – the height and width of the book has been reduced by 15%.

The change to the new format is one of the biggest transformations in more than 80 years of the Yellow Pages. However, the most exciting thing is that it’s a win-win for people who use the Yellow Pages and people who advertise in the Yellow Pages – our customers.

The compact size book is easier to handle, it’s lighter and we’ve also made a number of new design and layout changes to help users find what their looking for. Things like:

• the use of colour to highlight the suburb names in each line listing;
• stronger and sharper heading blocks;
• improved Fast Find Index;
• colour highlights in the Teltales at the top of each page; and
• the inclusion of web and email listings. 

And, if we’re making it easier for users to search the Yellow Pages book, it means they’re looking for our advertisers’ content and will hopefully go on to purchase a product or service.

The transition to the new compact format Yellow Pages has involved a lot of research over the past 12-18 months. Last year, we trialled the compact-size Yellow Pages book with more than 25,000 users in Sydney and there was strong support for this format – moreso than the existing format.

This result was consistent with the feedback we received from several market surveys and focus groups that were held with our users.

Globally, compact directories, along with other book changes, are already being used by several companies including in the UK, where users and customers are responding more favourably to the new compact-size format directories.

Following Adelaide, the new format book will also be distributed in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne between November 2011 and February 2012.

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

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

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

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

Fascinating!

Hearty praise for the Yellow Pages® from none other than a globally respected search marketing expert.

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

As a self-professed iPad convert, not only is this week exciting for me personally but it also marks a milestone for the team here at Sensis as we’ve just launched the much anticipated Yellow Pages iPad app.

The app, developed by our talented in-house team over the past few months, brings together for the first time our digital and print content in the one device. It also adds another layer to our multi-channel platform strategy – now spanning print, online, mobile, search engines, iPhone, Android (to name a few!) and now… iPad!

So, the reach of Yellow Pages print and digital products extends to another new audience this week which means Yellow Pages advertisers now have even more ways to reach consumers, and people searching for businesses now have a new way to access the information.

A bit about the new app – it’s free to download and includes all the information you’d expect from Yellow Pages, and it comes in two versatile views so you can choose how to search and view businesses on your iPad:

Business listings are displayed on an interactive combined map and list view

Or you can check out the business ‘ad view’ which displays Yellow Pages book ads based on relevance to the search term – in other words, it’s the digital version of a print search for many of our ads

The app allows you to FIND businesses nearby, SHARE them with friends and SAVE them for later.

And we’re not talking about one-line listings here either! You should check out the content – the listings can include contact details, product and service information, a photo gallery, videos and links to social media.

The app lets you search by name, category or keyword and as you type a list of possible options are presented so you’ll find what you’re looking for faster. There are a number of other helpful features:

See results for businesses ‘nearest to you’ (your current location) or at a predefined location

Share listings with your friends using Send to Mobile or Send to Email

Save business details to ‘contacts’ so you can access them later

We can’t wait to get this app out amongst the iPad community and hear what people think – so make sure you download it now and post your feedback after you’ve used it.

You’ll find the app under Yellow Pages in the App store.

 

This announcement was made as part of our Commitment to Climate Change, which details how we’ll play our part in combating climate change from by: managing our footprint, working with our suppliers, leading in product stewardship, supporting small business and connecting Australians.

Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst said: “With this announcement, the millions of Australians who use our directories each week can be assured Sensis is committed to playing our part in combating climate change and working to reduce our carbon emissions.”

February was a busy month, which also saw the launch of the refreshed Sensis in the Community program, which was first introduced in 2006. Following the external review, the new program now includes 20 new Payroll Giving partners, which were selected as the top 20 charities Sensis employees donated to. When employees donate money to one of our partners, Sensis matches the donations dollar-for-dollar at the end of the financial year.

Other new features of the Sensis in the Community program include a more user-friendly volunteer leave process, national partnerships formed focusing on small businesses and conservation, and emergency relief partnerships with The Red Cross and The Salvation Army.

Our sustainability initiatives were recognised by our 2009/10 Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) result, with Sensis achieving a 2009 CRI Gold band score of 92.51% recording a 13.07% improvement from our Bronze band score of 79.44% in 2008.

Looking forward
There are lots of exciting initiatives planned for 2011, including our transition to the Australian Government endorsed carbon neutral certification of our print and online directories. This will be obtained through the Australian Carbon Trust under the National Carbon Offset Standard. Other initiatives include introducing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper stock for the paper used within the print directories as well as more sustainable packaging systems.

We’re also developing an Environmental Management System (EMS) compliant to International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) 140001, to help identify and manage negative impacts on the environment and subsequently improve our environmental performance.

We will also be releasing a Triple Bottom Line report, detailing the economic contribution, environmental impact and social value of the Yellow Pages and White Pages directories.

Assurance

The report has been independently assured by Environmental Resources Management Australia (ERM), which has been prepared to A+ standard, as defined in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 application level. This is the second one of our Sustainability reports that has been independently assured by ERM using the AA1000 principles.

You can download the complete 2010 Sensis Sustainability Report from our corporate site. If you have any questions or feedback, email the Sensis Sustainability team.