Small Business Commando News

Donna Bogatin’s ZDnet post addresses the importance of local salespeople versus the Google “come buy ads” approach.

She notes that InsiderPages, Backfence and other local startups failed to gain traction.  I might add that they did not use the traditional Yellow Pages feet on the street approach.

Yellow Pages publishers know that local ad sales is a belly-to-belly business.  It’s not pretty, it’s not cheap, but by God it’s worth about $16 billion in the US this year.

To be successful in local ad sales, you need to get the advertiser’s attention, build trust, provide a good value and deliver the goods promised.

Tall orders for any business, but especially difficult in the local channel.

Google: $31 billion local dilemma ZDNet’s Donna Bogatinatin — The local advertising opportunity is currently wide open.

Yellow Pages industry research found that college students’ use of printed telephone directories is on the rise.

Imagine that.

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There has been a mini-buzz around the blogosphere sparked by the massive headcount reduction at BackFence.com.

Being successful in local publishing doesn’t require a magic pill or some Web 2.0 (groan, I hate that term) formula.

I grew up in Loogootee, Indiana (pop. 2,500), which happened to be the largest “city” in Martin County.  I didn’t have any photos of Loogootee, so I posted an old country music program to show what a wonderfully hick town it is.

The local newspaper “The Loogootee Tribune” is a very profitable venture, and was recently purchased by a local entrepreneur, Larry Hembree (my brother’s high school classmate).

The paper has not changed much in the last several decades. The front page always includes minutes from the city council, obituaries and highlights from the local basketball team. The revenue model includes such standards as classifieds and display advertising, but it also includes highly profitable “turkey pages.”

“Turkey pages” are pages that congratulate the basketball team on winning a tournament, or recognizing a local business leader on his retirement, or some other “event.” The ad sales reps ask local businesses and individuals to show their “support” of whoever is featured on the page. I don’t know the cost, but it’s low enough to capture several dozen advertisers who collectively pay more than the page costs to run.

A comment on The Local Onliner by David Chase, owner of a hyper-local site called SunValleyOnline.com hits the nail on the head regarding successful (translation: sustainable) local publishing.

1. Focus on providing valuable local content (births, deaths, bake sales, city council minutes, etc.)
2. Run extremely lean so that your hurdle to cover costs is very low.
3. Pay your dues by sticking with it long after the initial burst of enthusiasm has worn off.

Over time, community involvement will increase and advertisers will follow. Using a variety of mini revenue sources, you can develop a property that has legs and will continue long into the future.

When I saw this press release, I nearly spit my coffee out of my nose.  It’s my sick sense of humor.
After helping engineer the sale of his company to AT&T, Elmer Smith, the former leader of BellSouth Yellow Pages (and an all-around good guy) joined the board of a hemorrhoid treatment company.

I suppose that there are some correlations between being in the Yellow Pages business for 30 years and now healing hemorrhoids.

I wonder how a hemorrhoid treatment center handles bad debts?

Do they guarantee that you’ll be a perfect asshole when you leave?

Curious minds want to know.

I saw this in the San Antonio, TX Business Journal. They reported that the local utility company Yellow Pages added 36 new business categories this year.

Among the new business types are Animal Chiropractic Services, Online Schools, Meal Preparation, Assisted Living In Home Care, Immigration Services, Photographers Sports and Virtual Tours.

Whoa. Back up a second.

Immigration Services?

What does it say about our world when the dominant Yellow Pages directory in a multi-national city such as San Antonio, TX adds “Immigration Services” as a new business category in 2006?

I suppose that it could be a number of things:

• People recently began immigrating (uh, probably not)
• The business was classified under a different heading such as smuggling or human trafficking
• The Yellow Pages is a few years behind on noticing , say, a few million recent immigrants.
• Maybe it’s that Immigration Services recently began advertising, and the category was opened to accept their payment.

Gee, I wonder if they allow the ads to include Spanish information other than “Se Habla Espanol?”