The focus of the Yellow Pages Today April workshop was on White Pages with the underlying theme of how the product can survive and the regulatory environment that will either help or hinder its growth or decline.

The opening session with Stephanie Verilhac, EADP EU affairs officer, covered the current state of the EU privacy directives as well as the upcoming 2007 Telecom Review. The core message is that several of the EU states have fulfilled the goal of opening up competition and have been omitted from the 2002 regulations while seven countries will remain under regulation until competition advances to an acceptable level. The privacy regulations continue to affect the major online portals, which must turn to partners like Yellow Pages publishers to gain access to local databases or build their own.

Following Verilhac was Claude Merchand from PagesJaunes who spoke from a publisher perspective on how the EU directives and regulations are affecting his organization. One of the key challenges is the relationship PagesJaunes has with France Telecom in what content to include in the book and how to structure the revenue agreements. Merchand sees a day when it might be possible to operate separately from the telecom in delivering a Universal White Pages.

Up next was Dolf Weiler, marketing director for De Telefoongids, who pointed out that White Pages is no longer just print and that his organization is actively investing in broadening the White Pages portfolio. Weiler said as long as publishers are willing to invest in and experiment with White Pages, it can continue to be successful. One key sales point he made was that 25 percent of the population in the Netherlands does not use online to look up local business information, which means WP is better suited to reach the majority of the buying audience since it has print, online and mobile products that reach nearly 100 percent of the population.

One dilemma pointed out in the presentation is that people want to be able to find any person or business but are reluctant to provide their own personal or business data, which makes the completeness of the database a continual challenge. When talking about the notion of sharing data with mojor portals such as Google and MSN, Weiler warned, “Be wary of handing the crown jewels to your greatest competitor.”

Via video conference, John Hillrich of Idearc shared his company’s strategy of expanding the WP concept to include direct mail and a new mover product called Solutions on the Move. While not a major revenue driver for Idearc at 4 percent of revenue, it remains a valuable product to leverage additional AVO to lift overall spend.

The final presentation of the morning was from Sensis’ Melissa Reynolds and Geoff Hoffmann, who outlined the publisher’s energized strategy toward White Pages that led to an unprecedented 10.3 percent gain in the first half of 2008. One of their key points was the new focus Sensis has had on developing a sales process and differentiating the White Pages product from the major portals. The publisher has zeroed in on the consumers need for information in the White Page products and how that can lead to product innovation and increased usage and sales.

Lawrence, Massachusetts-based Yellow Pages publisher LocalTel has partnered with Google’s AdWords program to sell keywords on Google and Google Maps, and for ads to appear on partner sites within Google’s AdSense network. According to the press release, “ Through a new strategic relationship with Google, LocalTel has become a Google Adwords authorized re-seller allowing businesses of all types and sizes to easily and effectively advertise on the largest search engine on the web.” 

As independent publishers struggle to build their own online revenues, partnerships with major ad serving networks are key alliances. Using strong local brands combined with the brand appeal of Google allows smaller publishers to build online revenues without relying solely on their IYP properties.   

The balance between merchants and brands is being shifted by the increasingly common use of enhanced “product locators,” which adds store locations, maps — and frequently promotions such as coupons — to the mix, says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-Tailing Group in Chicago.

Freedman has just completed a round of shopper behavior research for Krillion. The results, not surprisingly, reinforce Krillion’s mission of providing brand information, and now actual store inventory, to local shoppers.

The research’s key finding is that shoppers want to “see everything” and will look at multiple sources on the Web to find it, says Freedman. They especially want to shop online and pick it up at the store. She finds that merchants benefit from store pickup because consumers invariably add more to their shopping cart once they’re inside the location. On average, for instance, Circuit City brings in an extra $154 from such “cross-channel” shoppers.

Cross-channel shopping is increasingly being enabled by big-box stores, she adds. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sears, RadioShack, CompUSA each launched in the past six months. Increasingly, it is also having an impact on Main Street stores as well. Fifteen of 75 retailers surveyed, or 20 percent, now have a product locator on their site. A similar number had store pickup. “It is growing really fast. No one had it 18 months ago,” she says.

Freedman’s research also found that ratings and reviews are increasingly important, especially as the “local component” of the shopping experience. Generally speaking, women have especially seized on reviews, while men are more tied to the search engines.

“What people really want to know is the service element,” says Freedman. Besides price and inventory, “it is the only differential” at the local retail level.

S&MM online columnist Robert Grede shared some interesting insights in a recent article on how local advertisers can survive in a down economy and what local media sales reps should be communicating to their advertisers and prospects. While many of these items are not surprising, it is surprising how local media reps can get so focused on the troubling aspects of a down economy rather than being truly consultative salespeople who can maximize the opportunity for local small and medium-sized businesses and provide real guidance. Some of the key points Grede shared include: 

You need to keep your customers and prospects informed of changes in your business. The business environment changes quickly, and advertising, besides its power of persuasion, is your information tool. It provides information about those products and services to customers and potential customers. There’s an old adage that says, “Without advertising, you wouldn’t know.” If given the right information, your customers will become more likely to buy—even in a poor economy.

Your competitors are probably trimming their budgets, so you will stand out and gain market share at their expense. If your competition suddenly becomes invisible, whom do you think the marketplace will turn to when it needs to buy? That’s right, the one they keep hearing about. By advertising in a slow economy, you may minimize your decline in sales—or even increase sales—as you pick up your competitors’ customers.

Conversely, if your competitors don’t trim their advertising budget, you could lose market share to them. Makes sense. You trim your ad budget, and you suddenly become invisible in the marketplace. Meanwhile, your competitor has maintained his promotion and advertising spending. Your customers learn more about your competitors’ products. They decide now might be a good time to try them.

Your customers and prospects will remember you when the economy picks up again. You know the economy will rebound. It always does. You need to be positioned as a survivor. If you have maintained your promotion spending, your company will have the image of a leader—the one to depend on in your industry—when the rebound comes. 

During the advertising downturn of 2001-2002, sales organizations focused their efforts on communicating the positive aspects of a down economy. The key was promoting the fact that Yellow Pages advertising provides a solid ROI, a consistent base of ready-to-buy prospects and, combined with other media, a means to survive or establish a leadership position in the market place. 

It is a tough marketplace for local media; all the signs point to this fact. What this article suggests is that we should not make it any worse by feeding off the defeatist attitude in the marketplace particularly when it comes to Yellow Pages. The sales role should be the evangelizer, demonstrating the value of the Yellow Pages product and the value of the leads it creates to help local companies survive, maintain or grow.      

It was interesting to see the Yellow Pages Association release its usage data showing print usage was stable at 13.4 billion and IYP usage had increased to 3.8 billion in 2007. While the overall usage figure is a 3 percent increase from 2006, which is encouraging, zeroing in solely on usage may be taking away from stronger measures of value. Just as online has shifted from a focus purely on clicks to a broader definition of value based on calls and leads, the Yellow Pages industry should follow this lead in marketing the medium.

The value of a Yellow Pages ad to a local small-business owner is not the movement in the usage number but in the number of consistent leads its advertising program delivers. Keeping this in mind, Yellow Pages continues to have a strong story to tell. Recent research by the YPA reveals significant local display ROI for some of its higher usage headings, which has remained relatively stable in most cases over the past three years.

Source: Yellow Pages Association (2008)

Building on the ROI figures, the number of calls generated by both print and IYP continues to support the health of a massive number of small and medium-sized businesses. According to CRM Associates, a typical business receives more than 800 calls per year per display ad with a cost per buyer influenced figure of $10. These are the numbers SMBs really care about, and arguably these are the metrics the industry and its investors should be focusing on.

If the industry continues to enhance the value of the leads it generates on behalf of its advertisers and focuses on ways to demonstrate the value of what the Yellow Pages medium delivers to consumers, it will continue to be a valuable and relevant medium for local advertisers. In a down economy, SMBs tend to stay with their most stable lead generation source if they are to weather the economic storm.

Smart SMB advertisers already understand this and also understand that this is a time when they can advance their position versus their competitors, which may choose to cut back on advertising. Smart Yellow Pages companies will work to promote the value of ready-to-buy leads, train their salespeople to consistently present this message, and support the value the Yellow Pages product delivers to consumers. Those Yellow Pages companies that follow this route will also be in a stronger position to weather the advertising downturn already well under way.

At the end of the day, all a small-business advertiser wants is a consistent source of quality leads from its advertising investment, and all consumers want is a medium that provides a comprehensive database of local content to make buying decisions easier. It’s all about influencing leads to come to the medium and delivering quality leads to help SMB businesses remain successful.

One of the many reasons the Internet has bloomed in the U.S. is that the administration, under the leadership of Ira Magaziner, former head of U.S. Internet policy, allowed the World Wide Web to grow without putting unnecessary restrictions on it. At a Kelsey Group conference on Interactive Newspapers in 1996, Esther Dyson, then the chairwoman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, spoke to our audience about the EFF defending consumer rights in the digital world. Some countries, concerned about what people might say or do on the Net, did put rules and regulations in place and they inhibited its growth.

Yesterday, the FTC issued a very unsurprising decision allowing Google’s proposed merger with DoubleClick. More importantly, the FTC also stepped into the issue of privacy by taking a tentative step regarding behavioral advertising (the tracking of what a user does online — from searches, to Web pages visited, to content viewed). I believe that the companion announcement is more important than the Google/DoubleClick decision. The FTC recognized that behavioral advertising does provide real “benefits to consumers in the form of free content and personalized advertising.”

Behavioral advertising, in theory, is good for consumers and good for advertisers, especially as more advertising moves online. The jury is still out on consumer acceptance of even the most customized advertising on our mobile phones. However, as the use of video increases on the Internet, personalized advertising becomes very attractive, especially if it offers a coupon or other mechanism to lower prices. The trade-off is that some computer in a cloud somewhere knows all about me because of what I do on the Internet.

In my view, I should be able to direct advertising in a way that is acceptable to me. This is a difficult challenge, but my wish is that in 2008 we make substantial progress in addressing privacy principles. The FTC’s voluntary privacy guidelines would require consumers to have the ability to choose whether they want their information collected. Consumers could also request reasonable security for that data and require express consent before the information can be used in a way that is different from what a company promises when it collects data.

People are understandably concerned about pornography, spam and how it interacts with the First Amendment. I believe privacy, or the lack of it, is the one issue that could derail future Internet growth. So the second part of my wish is that companies abide by the voluntary privacy guidelines proposed by the FTC. Every organization involved in local media should endorse this concept.

‘Tis the season for shopping and at times endless aggravation finding stores that actually have the items you want in stock. I’m all about anything that can help ease the stress of the shopping experience. And one thing I rediscovered as an essential shopping tool is the Yellow Pages (thanks to, of all things, a MySpace blog).

The thing that continues to make the Yellow Pages relevant and valuable in the lives of myself and others is that it helps at the end of the buying process. While this point was driven home in the recent TMP research (here and here), several recent shopping experiences gave the numbers and research findings real-life meaning. My wife and I are close to another family in our town of Kettering, Ohio. Their son, Sam, is a big fan of Wii and the game Guitar Legend. Needless to say, the latest version of this game is popular and hard to find. After going to a few stores only to find the game out of stock it dawned on me I should be using my trusty Yellow Pages directory. After going to the main game store heading and coming up empty, I branched out to department stores, electronic stores and toy stores that also carry video games and — bingo — I found one in stock and requested that the clerk hold the item.

Directory publisher marketing continues to focus primarily on the reoccurring theme of completeness in most advertising campaigns and I’m wondering why points like time savings, alternate ways of finding items, and the ability to call and hold an item aren’t being promoted to make the relevance of the product real to shoppers and in training people why print and Internet Yellow Pages products are useful in their lives. If people don’t know why they should use the Yellow Pages, will they actually use it? The answer seems obvious.

The Yellow Pages product is becoming more of a “find it vehicle” after people have done their research and are looking locally to find the product at the best price. What better time saving and stress reducing way to shop than at home on the phone to be sure the item you want is available, at a cost you want, and waiting for you at the store?

Taking a look at real-life shopping situations and promoting the time saving abilities afforded by using the Yellow Pages would be terrific campaign themes either for publishers or the Yellow Pages industry. Usage will only be supported by education and opening people’s eyes to the benefits of the product.

Perhaps personalizing the use of the Yellow Pages and educating people on benefits they might not think the product would offer would be great New Year’s resolutions for every directory publisher.

It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an excellent partnership with SES.

Our next conference, April 30-May 2 at the Westin in Seattle, will be a highly differentiated affair. Stay tuned for what we are doing with that (but not for a couple of months, OK?).

For those of you who can’t get enough coverage, a virtual conference will be up with all the PPTs in a couple of weeks (but only for attendees). You can also order the DVD.

For immediate gratification, however, check out the posts from my talented colleagues on the Kelsey Blog.

I especially liked Michael Taylor’s write-up of our discussion with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis. Michael is totally correct: “The long and short of Calacanis’ comments go to several of the key themes heard over and over again at ILM:07 — relevant content, deep content and engaging, passionate people are all needed to make a highly relevant and personalized search experience.”

In addition to the Kelsey write-ups, Mike Boland has captured links from the press and bloggers who attended our event. It was good to have them aboard. And Mel Taylor took some great pictures.

Here are easy links to Kelsey ILM:07 posts:

1. TKG Analysts Lay the Groundwork (Michael Boland)

2. Winebaum Provides a Fresh Look at Local Search (Michael Taylor)

3. Cash Is King for Local Search Investors (Charles Laughlin)

4. Herratti’s Citysearch: Social Media Video Partnerships (Bobbi Loy-Luster)

5. NCI: ‘We Can Work with Zillow’ (John Kelsey)

6. ILM:07 Spotlights mobilePeople (Stephen Marshall)

7. Stubbs Discusses AT&T’s Post-InGenio Vision (Michael Taylor)

8. TMP’s McKelvey Discusses Online/Offline Research Data (Michael Taylor, Michael Boland)

9. New West’s Weber and Independent Local Media (John Kelsey)

10. Marchex’s Horowitz: Bet on People Already Winning (Charles Laughlin)

11. Google’s Hanke: Maps, Mobile and Mashups (Michael Boland)

12. An Intuit-ive Approach to SMB Marketing (Stephen Marshall)

13. Injecting Social into Local Media (Michael Boland)

14. Taking It Home: The Final Panel at ILM:07 (Stephen Marshall)

Stuart McKelvey, president and CEO of TMP Directional Marketing, gave ILM:07 attendees a second look at their online user study to help clarify its results and provide insight on how this can serve to help more effectively plan both online and offline media. National advertisers drove the demand to track this information for both online and offline purchase influences to better understand how to appropriately balance their media spending.

One of the main findings of the research, conducted in partnership with comScore, is that local search happens at the end of the buying process after consumers have figured out what they want to buy and move on to where they want to purchase the product or service. “The local search process seems to broaden as consumers begin to narrow who they want to purchase from and how much they want to pay,” McKelvey said. Local price promotions, sales, coupons, financing options are considerations in the local search process — and how can they get to the business offering quickly (are they close and at the best price). The business location and service area is critical information for advertisers to include in their online advertising.

One of the more surprising findings is that brand awareness greatly influences where consumers search. “General search site usage increases with high brand awareness,” according to McKelvey. “In the absence of brand awareness then proximity becomes the major driving force for consumers in their purchase decision.”

While there is a great focus on moving advertisers online, the reality, based on the research, is that the majority of purchases take place offline either in a store visit or in a phone call. Post-search activity is the same across general, local and IYP in that the majority either go to the store or make a phone call — advertisers simply can’t rely on an online-only transaction model in local (80 percent of post-search activity is offline). Surprisingly, of those who had an unsuccessful local search, the print Yellow Pages remains the top resource.

The bottom line is that advertisers need to better measure where customers are coming from in order to maximize their media budgets. This has been the mantra of publishers for years, but the TMP/comScore study clearly indicates advertisers must take advantage of multiple measurements to be sure they are getting high ROI and value.

McKelvey concluded by saying “Online and offline tracking is needed to fully realize the value of each media, thus assisting in the proper alignment of media mix and investment.” Print and online continue to complement each other, and it is important for media companies and advertisers to understand this synergy and spend on media appropriately to drive the best ROI and cost of sales goals.

Having worked in the Yellow Pages industry over the past eight years, both for a major publisher and here at The Kelsey Group, I am constantly being asked what the industry could do to make itself more relevant and stem the tide of usage decline and the wholesale dismissal of the product with the under 30 crowd.

Empowering consumers to directly ask companies for what they want and to vocalize when they see something they do not agree with has certainly become the “norm” today. Bloggers have become citizen journalists, Web sites are “community owned” and supported, and brands are allowing consumers to direct new TV ads – all indications that major companies have understood the change in the marketing rules. Time Magazine in fact named “you” as the person of the year.

According to the Time article: “It’s about the many wresting power from the few … and how that will not only change the world, but change the way the world changes. In other words, ‘you’ have the power, and brands and its institutions must get ready for the changes that ‘you’ will demand.”

The Yellow Page brand continues to remain closed to consumers, and consumers are showing their displeasure by refusing to accept or keep the print book and opting for local search options on the major search engines rather than going to publisher sites.

But where is the Yellow Pages industry in all this consumer-empowered change? While great strides have been made by allowing users to participate with online reviews, the Yellow Pages industry has yet to fully embrace and understand that its advertiser base and content is currently less of a strategic advantage in the age of the consumer.

While the advertising industry has begun to focus on and address the changing needs of the consumer, publishers are conversely spending the majority of their time and energy on what the advertiser wants, how to get more advertisers interested in the product and how to retain advertisers that migrate from print to online.

As the advertiser base shrinks globally, it seems a clear indication that this focus needs to be altered if there is to be long-term viability, particularly for the print product. We have found local advertising is more social in nature with word of mouth, the ability to view people’s work or products up close and the ability to meet unique local needs becoming the driving forces that are changing the way buyers interact with local companies.

Consumers are in charge and they are vocal about what they want and who they support. Yellow Pages as a group has done a mediocre job of telling consumers why the print and online directories are relevant products in their lives, how they are changing to meet new demands, and how consumers can continue to benefit from the most comprehensive database of local businesses available.

Consumers view data as currency that can be traded, shared and customized to suit individual needs. The current Yellow Pages format, however, remains rigid and inflexibly bound into large books dropped off on doorsteps each year.

In this age of “empowered consumers,” what can publishers do to understand what consumers want and how they want to interact with the massive local database Yellow Pages offers? How can the print product evolve to address emerging consumer needs, particularly post-college graduates who are waking up to the real world with the real needs of setting up a house, connecting to local merchants, and becoming part of a new community? Does the industry really have a grasp on how the way people search for local information has changed and how can this understanding change the way the print product is formatted and produced? And can this all be done without the specter of immediate revenue return hanging over the heads of product development teams?

The goal should be to listen and learn from consumers about what makes for a great local search experience, then delivering it in real, differentiated, meaningful features and benefits. 

The empowered consumer shift is well under way and now is the time for the Yellow Pages industry to use its considerable local advantage while it can to swing the pendulum back toward viewing the directory product line as the most comprehensive source of local business information whenever and wherever people need it.