Whatever Floats Your Yacht
Like most of us in the Yellow Pages industry, we have taken the 30 seconds or so required to set up both a Yahoo! Alert and a Google Alert for terms such as Yellow Pages, directory publishing or IYP. Today's Google Alert on Yellow Pages certainly does cover the waterfront. Unfortunately, Singapore Yellow Pages, citing the seasonality of its revenues, reported a loss of S$2.8M for its fiscal first quarter ended in June.
A second story was by Susan Weinman, who is managing director of Yellow Page Services for Michaels Wilder, a Phoenix-based advertising agency specializing in Yellow Pages advertising. She took the time to write a story to combat the never-ending mantra that "Yellow Pages advertising is a necessary evil." But as she points out in a thoughtful piece in a small trade publication, Professional Door Dealer, "at least 64 percent of your new customers come from Yellow Pages directories, and it's the No. 1 lead generator for garage door service and sales." She then goes on to provide some helpful hints to help dealers maximize their advertising budget. This is the kind of in-the-trenches effort would make a huge difference to the perception of Yellow Pages if more of us would reach out to vertical publications.
Contrast that with the third story in today's Google Alert for Yellow Pages. "To announce the launch of the new local online Yellow Pages directory for the country of Brunei, festivities and fanfare began this week, led by the head of state, His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei who, as you probably know, is Hassamal Bollkiah. You can just imagine the excitement of the 372,360 residents of Brunei (a country completely surrounded by Malaysia in the south China sea) when they celebrated the Sultan's 60th birthday by taking advantage of the new GTE Directories Brunei Online Yellow Pages search site, produced by Innovectra Corp. Not only that, you can win a car by participating in the new Brunei online Yellow Pages site.
Honestly, the site is pretty darn good, providing a gateway to any possible information you would want to know about Brunei. Check it out for yourself.
The point of course is that every market is different and requires unique marketing strategies. It is a little hard to imagine W celebrating his recent 60th birthday with a new USA online Yellow Pages search site, but the directory in Brunei obviously convinced the powers that be that they would get some publicity to drive tourism there.
Meanwhile a well-written article in Professional Door Dealer can make a big difference in how SMEs in this business spend their advertising dollar.