Small Business Commando News

I read a lot about marketing and the importance of segmenting your target audience.

I get that, and agree, but it’s really hard to do.

If you happen to be a dentist (an extremely competitive field of medicine), your target audience can change at a moment’s notice.

Take this young chap in the photo.

A few seconds before the photo was taken, he was merely an average prospective client for a dentist.

You know, semi-annual check-ups, maybe some braces, a cavity here and there. Nothing special, right?

But immediately following this photo, he’s suddenly become a highly valuable client needing extensive dental work. Say it with me, “cha-ching!”
This is the customer that you reach using Directional Media also known as “who?” advertising. You do not need to convince him of the value of good dental health, or spend much time on branding with him. You simply need to be the go to provider of services and answer the question, “Who’s a good emergency dentist near here?”

Branding through repeated television, radio and print advertising will all come into plan as this boy makes a decision for a dentist.

If you do not have a currently running search marketing campaign or Yellow Pages presence, all of your previous marketing will go to waste, because the customer with an immediate need can not find you.

Find three places this boy (or his parents) will look to make a quick decision on emergency dental care, and make sure your business is well represented.

Alert blogger Andrew Shotland (not pictured here)

tipped me off to a fascinating article on Slate about the history and challenges of the Yellow Pages industry.

I’ve said it before, but the Yellow Pages is a deeply misunderstood directional advertising medium.

While many (including me) have predicted the demise of the Yellow Pages, there continues to be value for advertisers.

This article dives into the amount of waste and environmental impact, but does not address the positive impact of consumerism and reduced driving when fingers do walking.  The simple fact is that not every uses (or wants to use) the Internet as their sole source for local business information.

Armageddon in Yellow Pages?

I can’t write about Yellow Pages without thinking of the scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail of the warrior claiming “I’m not dead yet!” as pieces of his body are hacked away.

Ken Clark, a highly respected Yellow Pages insider wrote an enthusiastic rah-rah piece about the underlying strength of the Yellow Pages and how the industry does a lousy job of promoting itself.

I must agree with Ken that the core product is strong, and is perhaps the most misunderstood of all advertising mediums.

According to recent industry-sponsored surveys, usage of old yeller remains steady. While I find this particularly hard to swallow (as I do see falling usage), there remains plenty of usage in the print directories. I imagine that print Yellow Pages would easily come in behind Google and Yahoo in local references and well ahead of MSN and Ask.com.

In the heyday of the Yellow Pages (the period between the US Civil War and the Vietnam War), most people I spoke to claimed that they rarely used the directories. There are about 39,000 industry professionals in the US who beg to differ.

I’ve had the unique vantage point for the last few years working on online marketing to compare rates of return for online advertising and traditional media. I’ve been running call tracking test for a variety of clients, and have continually been surprised at the results.

While I firmly believe that nothing compares to a highly efficient online campaign (I am VERY biased), I continue to be amazed at the call volumes delivered by print advertising.

For years, I would ride along with Yellow Pages sales teams, and nearly every renewal sales call began with the advertisers stating (often vehemently) that he was NOT going to renew the Yellow Pages advertising for another year.

More often than not, the sales call would end with the advertiser buying a larger ad package than the one he wanted to cancel. I mean, this happened so regularly that it was comical.

See, Yellow Pages advertising is not BOUGHT, it is SOLD. The advertiser needs a respectable sales person to relate the value story, calculate ROI, provide guidance on proper tracking techniques and help the business owner make a wise decision.

I doubt that many of the folks on Wall Street have ever had to sweat making payroll as a small business person. I can tell you that it is not fun. That’s especially true when you (as the boss) have the great honor of going without pay, or reaching into your own pocket to ensure that your employees never miss a paycheck.

Yellow Pages is not glamorous. It will never be highly respected as a money maker for local businesses. It won’t win any awards other than ones it bestows on itself.

But at the end of the day, when the dust settles, and all good cliches have been ridden hard and put up wet . . .

The Yellow Pages remains one of the most fundamentally important aspects of a local businesses marketing campaign (alongside with his web site, online video, and search engine marketing).

Nice write up, Ken.

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

In this article, Bloomberg writers discuss the distressed high-yield bonds of RH Donnelley and Idearc.

I’m not a bond trader, and these guys know far more about coverage levels and projected cash flows than I ever will. So I won’t even begin to question the value of the RHD and Idearc debt.

I suppose that the problem is that revenues are decreasing when the bonds were sold based on projected earnings growth. It’s not the core business that’s in question, it’s the sales projections vs. reality.

So is the print Yellow Pages industry collapsing? I don’t think so.

In fact, the underlying directory businesses will continue to throw off outstanding cash for many years to come.

However, it’s a bit of a melting glacier. It’s hard to tell the rate of melting until it’s past.

I am not recommending, nor have I ever recommended that advertisers abandon advertising in print Yellow Pages. As a multi-media marketing executive, I am privy to inside call measurement studies that show that traditional media still deliver strong ROI.

However, most advertisers in the Yellow Pages are not sophisticated buyers, and they make decisions based on limited information, unbelievably complicated pricing schemes and fear of making a major mistake.

So don’t let the reaction of Wall Street toward debt levels drive advertising decisions.

Use call measurement services and challenge your local Yellow Pages publisher to do a better job of providing fair pricing and clear information.

And, as an Internet marketing professional, there is no business that can afford to ignore online marketing as a foundational element to their marketing plan.