I find it interesting how so many news sources are ready to put the final nail in the coffin of the Yellow-Pages Industry. If you ask Independent Publishers this is simply the furthest from the truth. How could there be such differing views?
Response To:
Wall Street Journal Article &
Dallas Morning News
Let's be honest, in today's economic climate every industry is susceptible to hard times and the Yellow-Pages Industry is certainly no different. However, I think you can look at this particular industry a couple different ways.
First you have the AT&T Yellow Pages and Verizon phone books or the like. These books are going the way of the trash bin. The size alone makes them excellent candidates for recycling to even the most non-green persons. As I drive around town I can see them sitting on people's door steps, on top of mail boxes and in business corridors for days if not weeks after delivery. I have 8 of them outside my door in our office hallway. Sometimes shrink wrapped are multiples of these books. To be honest it looks like you need a forklift to move them any distance. I highly doubt I am the only one noticing this and am absolutely positive local business owners are noticing the same thing. They served a purpose at one point but yes they are now unnecessary and unpopular and a tough sell to local business owners who all to often find their paid listing drowned out by filler listings which don't even know they are in the book to begin with.
Enter the small Independent Publisher producing small localized books tailored to the needs of the areas which they are distributed. These books are small, handy, easy to use, easily stored and quite frankly easy on the eyes. These books are convenient to keep around. They provide excellent cost savings coupons and local restaurant menus. Put simply you can pick one up and in seconds find pretty much what you are looking for without having to do too much page surfing. Local businesses pay and pay handsomely to get into these books. As I browse through the one sitting next to me, at all times, I see plenty of nice big color ads and sub headings which are not jam packed with filler. Now I am a self confessed die hard internet fiend. Yet I still keep these books close at hand and I never see these sitting around where they are dropped.
So what is the real story behind the prophecies of doom and gloom? I believe it is more an issue of what certain people want advertisers to believe rather than actual industry trends. It is much easier to push advertisers into PPC campaigns than it is to actually give them something which works online outside of SEM. Organic placement takes time, effort and technical knowledge. It is a process not an immediate source of gratification. It is a harder sell. However, with the majority of advertising spend (2nd to direct mail) moving to online advertising in the near future where does that leave the small to medium sized business owner?
Quite frankly I see it driving the small to medium sized business owners back to their small localized independent yellow page publishers who are affordable and offer a product that has shelf life and delivers results. Now here is the catch, just because a print directory works it only satisfies part of a business owners advertising itch. I would suspect that most, if not all, business owners know that they should be online. I would also assume that damn near all of them have no clue of how to get online in a manner which can give them any sort of lead generation results. So they hear that SEM is the only way to get instant gratification and the cycle begins. We see it all to often... start with a $300 monthly campaign budget and before you get 4 months in to your yearly commitment you are up to $300 a day PPC budget and losing money hand over fist. Why? Poorly created ads... horrible landing pages... bad keywords... god awful web sites... or more typically a combination of all the above. In my humble opinion this is what will be the downfall of PPC. Only the wealthy large businesses need play because if you cannot afford costly well designed campaigns you are going to put yourself out of business trying to learn on the fly.
My favorite story so far was a locksmith who was paying top dollar for 100 "quality" clicks per month and after several months of no return on investment decided to pay attention to the reporting which was included in the package and noticed keywords such as "Alicia Keys" driving people to their businesses site. This business should have just walked out onto the street and handed cash out to strangers. The return would have been much greater for sure.
So seeing the writing on the wall Independent Publishers have been working their way to offering print in combination with a digital offerings which helps small to medium sized businesses get the best of both worlds. The problem is available solutions. Contrary to the Wall Street Journal article there are not that many offerings available and up until now, for the most part, they have all been a joke. Let's face it publishers, from what I can tell, are generally not technically savvy. So when they have someone showing up at their door with the answer to their web "problem" what else do they know other than it is on the web and that is what our customers are asking for. So yes there have been those publishers who made poor decisions like Online Book Replication or straight SEM but I see this trend changing with a turnkey digital solutions offering like My411Pages.com, Inc..
I truly do not feel that without a web solution Independent Publishers would fail. I do think that they would not reach their true potential. My411Pages does not intend to replace print, rather bolster their print offering so that they can keep print sales strong by offering a total solution to businesses of any size. Are the margins that different? Yes. Especially when comparing the cost of print to that of online. However, if it helps you gain customers you would have never had the opportunity to attract and keep those who would normally be lost to attrition then it is highly worth it. Rather than thinking of it in terms of margins, think of it in terms of a greater increase in print sales because you have a comprehensive suite of advertising solutions for your customers needs.
Given the right marriage of Publisher to IYP Digital Solutions provider I believe that the Independent Publisher Industry can be as strong as it ever has been and even more so.
My411Pages.com Corporate Blog » Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers...Really?
