Just before lunch at ILM Asia, Sidharth Gupta, CEO of Getit Infoservices, shared his company’s vision of the future. It was comprehensive and holistic.

In his talk, Gupta spoke of the evolution that is occurring around the world and in India as it relates to the directory space. Gupta’s vision embraces a much wider swath of media options that his sales representatives can and should be selling to their advertising customers.

These range from traditional directive advertising products and extend back into television and other traditional media. He also emphasized the important opportunity of building a strong consumer brand.

Getit, currently a know media brand in 50 states within India, intends to extend this coverage to more than 100 states. This is a lofty goal and one that will certainly require significant resources, precise marketing and operational excellence. Gupta promised to return to ILM Asia in 2012 and share how Getit Infoservices is doing on its aggressive and aspirational path.

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My colleague Charles Laughlin kicked off ILM Asia — a conference organized by BIA/Kelsey and the Asian Directory Publisher Association (ADPAI) — with the results of a survey of business leaders operating in the local search space in Asia.

Among the most interesting findings is that 92 percent of the respondents believe publishers must “transform now, or die.” If we think mobile is a key trend in the U.S., it is even more pronounced here in Asia. When compared with mobile users in the U.S. and Europe, Asian mobile users are significantly more mobile savvy and demonstrate a greater willingness to use their mobile device to:

–        Check their bank account

–        Make a purchase

–        Use a QR code

–        Transfer money

–        Accept location centric ads

–        Accept personal centric ads

It should be an interesting two days here in Singapore with the directory publisher leaders.

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Maybe it’s not my glasses. In fact, all those straight lines with hard edges are quickly disappearing. Technology is making everything that was simple much more confusing. Luckily, for all the analysts at BIA/Kelsey, we have the privilege of spending our entire work days bringing sense and clarity to this rapidly changing local commerce space.

For instance, a couple of years ago I went out and suggested the notion of the three Ps — “Presence,” “Performance” and “Permanence.” I spoke of these three buckets at the YPA (now LSA) annual convention in San Diego in 2009.

We’ve now evolved this construct to “Media,” “Commerce” and “Engagement” — the three pillars of local commerce. Media is what you’d expect — advertising and promotional messages necessary to drive both awareness and action. Commerce is the conversion of those messages into customers, clients and patients (if you are a medically oriented SMB). And Engagement is the process of retaining and engaging those customers as they move from one-time customers to long-time fans.

These buckets of activity are becoming more and more solved by cloud-based solutions — nearly anyone and everyone figures he or she can get a piece of the action. Consequently, it is not surprising to watch transactional companies such as American Express nibble around the edges of advertising and marketing solutions. Nor will we be surprised when companies such as AT&T Interactive begin to solve the riddle of social media, marketing and engagement by offering easy-to-use solutions for the millions of U.S. merchants struggling to make sense of — and money in — the new marketplace.

Which brings me to the “rimshot” of the day. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, the longtime mobile business phone leader, suffered a 20 percent decline in its market valuation Friday. In just three years, the company has plummeted from a lofty $150 a share and a $90B market valuation to a skimpy $30 a share and a $18B market valuation. It makes one think — as one of RIM’s largest investors has suggested — that RIM cannot adopt and adapt fast enough to keep pace with the relentlessly aggressive product initiatives driving consumers to the iPhone and to Android devices. At this point, it appears that RIM missed the boat, like Palm did, when it tried to milk its way to success while Apple and Google chose to break the existing model.

As companies in the local commerce space ponder their strategic direction in the coming months and years, the fate of their company and their competitors will ride heavily on the ability to transform — not just evolve and nibble on the edges. It likely won’t be enough to dabble in adjacent markets or products or service. It won’t be enough to tinker with the business model. It won’t be enough to hope that the marketplace stands still just long enough to get out and with a hefty retirement in place. Indeed, technology is altering the competitive landscape and the dimensions of the marketplace like never before.

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You know the saying: “Pretty soon, we’re talking about real money.”

So how big is the deals space? Groupon COO Margo Georgiadis suggests it’s after the $150B local ad market. Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey’s own economist, forecast the U.S. deal space to grow to somewhere between $3B and $6B by 2015. But Mark’s forecast is based strictly on the existing deal-a-day business. At our Deals 3D event July 18 and 19 in San Francisco, Yipit cofounder Jim Moran will make an argument that the deals market will eventually trigger all kinds of advertising and commerce, so it should be seen as more of a trillion-dollar marketplace.

So what’s $850B among friends? Here’s my simple math. The U.S. economy is about $15T. SMBs account for something in the order of $5T. So if the deals space does serve as a new foundation for commerce, as Moran and others suggest, we are, in fact, talking trillions not billions.

We can look to the retail industry as one example where “deals” have become the core driver of most of the industry sales. I don’t know about you, but I wait for the half-yearly sale at Nordstrom before I think about dropping a pile of money on clothes. Much to its chagrin, the retail industry has “trained” us to wait for the big sales — and we generally do.

If you take this model to the SMB space, the impact of Groupon, LivingSocial and dozens of other SMB “deal” companies will be felt for years to come. On the consumer side, we’ll increasingly wait for “deals” before we act.

The integration of deals into the local search space has its own implications. Consumers like you and me will be able to “search” for deals on sites like Bing, Google and even YP.com that make sense for us, rather than hoping that the next email in my inbox is the “deal” I need now. Or they’ll have deals pushed to their smartphones.

From the merchant angle, the broadening of “deals” will enable millions of SMBs to leverage the local search platforms — social, mobile, directional — to announce their deals to existing and potential customers. At the same time, however, many merchants will be approaching the deals marketplace with increasing caution if they become convinced that deals appeal more to coupon clippers than to new customers. This is a real concern.

But in the end, we believe the new deals environment leads could lead to a real shift in the nature of local commerce. In 10 years, today’s local media business could even be a historical footnote, paling in comparison to a richer, more targeted “deals” space. It is even possible that millions of SMBs will simply shift a good chunk of their budgets from media solutions to engagement and offer solutions. In 10 years, you and I may even look back at the Deals 3D conference in 2011 and wonder why we didn’t substitute Mr. Robinson’s famous quote about the future opportunity in “plastics” with “deals.” Hope to see you in SF July 18 and 19. You may register here.

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A couple of weeks ago at the Social Loco event held at Mission Bay Conference Center (same place we’ll be holding our Deals 3D July 18 and 19), I met up with longtime industry innovator Justin Sanger. No doubt you remember Sanger from his days as founder of LocalLaunch, which eventually was acquired by RHD (now Dex One). Sanger and his chief strategy officer, Aaron Lacheta briefed me on their latest foray into the local space — named JoinLocal.

JoinLocal is diving deep into the social local space. JoinLocal is a social engagement platform that helps SMBs identify, engage, motivate and reward their most loyal customers (and other segments, including employees, partners and vendors) to form what Justin calls an “Advocate Network.”

Sanger describes a business’s advocate as someone “who is a vocal supporter that actively recommends a business on- and offline. Together, advocates form an active sales channel.”  What JoinLocal’s platform can do is help SMBs engage their advocates, with structured and unstructured campaigns that include news/information, offers, events, surveys, polls and other content. They also motivate, track and reward advocates to perform social actions, including positive word of mouth, such as reviews and referrals. Like LocalLaunch, JoinLocal will white-label its platform and product to work though the traditional channel to sell to SMBs domestically and internationally.

JoinLocal’s approach certainly resonates with us here at BIA/Kelsey. We are a small business by most definitions — fewer than 100 employees. And we do have advocates — many of you reading this blog are our advocates and we thank you for it. And while our marketing team does a great job of engaging with many of you, we have not figured out a systematic way to identify you, engage you, organize you and grow the numbers of our advocates. I think this is precisely what Sanger and team are up to at JoinLocal, and if they can pull this off, we’ll quickly become one of their advocates.

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As I prepare to head off to the “last” Yellow Pages Association conference, I am struck by the incredible transformation the Yellow Pages industry is navigating.

The first Yellow Pages industry convention I ever attended was well before anyone had ever heard of the “Internet.” I made a presentation at a conference in Palm Desert, California, to pitch a national product initiative called “BrandSell.” And while “BrandSell” never really took off, there are at least a dozen of you who will remember those meetings we held around the country fondly — I certainly do. Maybe “BrandSell” was a bit ahead of its time, but it demonstrated to me that the industry could wrap its head around new and innovative opportunities.

Now as YPA prepares to retire its current brand and unveil a new one (widely expected to happen at next week’s conference), I see a very significant market opportunity for local media companies. By our best count, there are more than 50 million SMBs worldwide, most of which find today’s marketing and advertising opportunities complex and confusing and need a trusted and objective third party to parse fact from fiction, hype from help. Every day these millions and millions of SMBs ask themselves, “How do I get my business noticed, how do I convert that presence to customers and then, perhaps most importantly, how do I retain and grow the customers I’ve got?”

Two years ago, at YPA 2009 in San Diego, I pitched the “three P” paradigms — Presence, Performance and Permanence. I am more certain today than I was 24 months ago that this is the right paradigm for the next decade of local media. And the winners will be defined by the “trust” that those millions of SMBs assign to the media channels and the associated media consultants (what we used to call sales reps).

Some quick math suggests that the three Ps could be worth more than $80 billion on a global basis. This represents an incredible opportunity, one that can only be addressed by those able to rapidly adjust to the changing market. This means offering SMBs clear and concise packages of media and services at low cost and via highly scalable and efficient platforms that allow publishers to retain and grow their existing customers while penetrating the huge, untapped “non advertiser” market.

Who would have thought 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, that the incoming chair of the YPA would the head of the country’s largest independent Yellow Pages publisher. But I guess that’s the point — since it will soon no longer be the YPA, it’s a good thing the association is taking transformation seriously.

Hope to see you in Vegas.

The post Reflecting on a Changing Industry appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Goodman went on to describe the challenges SMBs face — severe lack of time and limited knowledge about how to participate in the emerging local social marketing arena.

She then presented Constant Contact’s recipe for success — simple, easy-to-use tools, coupled with know-how insights (how to best to use the tools) married with some high touch coaching leads to empowered SMBs.

With its recent acquisition of Bantum CRM, Constant Contact can now offer its 450,000 SMB customers additional tools to further the engagement with their existing customers and cement relationships with new customers that will come from the burgeoning daily deal space.

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Today on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall gathered an assortment of directory industry advocates. With a proposed opt-in ordinance on the city supervisors agenda, industry advocates gathered to mount a vocal effort to bring logic to the forefront.

While constituents included Valley Yellow Pages, AT&T Yellow Pages and other niche Yellow Pages publications serving the Hispanic and LGBT communities, it was the small-business owners who were most vocal in their opposition to the opt-in ordinance.

As an electrician appropriately described, passage of the opt-in bill could cause his business considerable harm. He claims to get 90 percent of his leads through the print Yellow Pages. Furthermore, the downstream consequences of the opt-in bill could be to significantly reduce the number of jobs in San Francisco.

He went on to say that without the leads, he’d file for fewer permits at City Hall, purchase less fuel in the City of SF, eat fewer lunches working jobs in SF and reduce his overall contribution to the SF economy. Time will tell if the supervisors recognize the flaws of an opt-in agenda, but if you listen to the small-business owner, its shortcomings are abundantly clear.

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Today I am excited to announce that BIA/Kelsey has greatly enhanced its focus on social media to include dedicated coverage on our Local Media Watch blog and a new Continuous Advisory Service called Social Local Media.

BIA/Kelsey Analyst Jed Williams and BIA/Kelsey Associate Andrew Shotland, a.k.a. the Local SEO Guy, are teaming up to lead our coverage of this fast-growing and complex marketplace.

As you’ve likely read here or elsewhere, there are some astounding facts underscoring our decision to invest in social: More than half a billion Facebook users, Twitter’s exponential growth and, and perhaps most important, the millions of SMBs that are turning to Facebook and other social media platforms to acquire and retain customers.

Our aim in initiating coverage of social media is not to overwhelm you with data, but rather to help you make sense of this fascinating and important market by offering deep analysis, thoughtful insight and grounded recommendations.

So how will BIA/Kelsey approach its social local media coverage? We’ll do it by focusing on two central sets of questions:

1) “How is the social local media landscape evolving, and what are the implications for various players in the space?”

2) “As a media company, agency, SMB, etc., how exactly do I do social?”

The companies we profile, the trends we study, and the analysis we offer will center on answering one or both of these questions. As a result, our social-related blog coverage will assume a variety of forms. Predominant among these will be news-analysis — what’s happening, how does it change the social local landscape, and what are implications for our various constituents? We will also offer case studies, data synthesis, executive interviews, op-eds and other approaches to understanding this evolving space.

Your input and engagement with us, our analysts and each other will be a key ingredient in our serving up the best possible coverage of this dynamic and rapidly changing marketplace. As Jed and Andrew lead our rollout of this exciting new coverage area, they will need your direct and constant feedback to evolve the direction and emphasis of Social Local Media.

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Last night, Local Insight Media‘s parent company filed for Chapter 11 protection. In speaking with President and CEO Scott Pomeroy early this morning, it became clear that this is a necessary step in ensuring the business can recapitalize its debt structure in the coming months.

Few followers of the Yellow Pages industry will find today’s announcement to be news. Many industry insiders have been waiting for this to happen as it was clear that economic slowdown coupled with the structural change in the market was going to undermine LIM’s financial strategy.

As Pomeroy said, this event should be transparent to those on the front lines; the company has prepared sales and marketing collateral for advertisers and users, should this become an issue. Speaking of front lines, Pomeroy did say that he’s confident the company’s transition to a customer-centric model is taking shape. Sales reps are now able to have a multi-platform, year-round conversation with customers, and this appears to be helping with customer retention and product growth initiatives.

We talked about the potential and necessity of industry consolidation and that it’s a step toward building greater scale across the YP landscape, reducing costs and offering a more compelling advertiser and consumer value proposition. Scott agreed that consolidation is the logical next step in the evolution of the YP industry here in the U.S. and thought that 12 to 18 months was a reasonable time frame for some of the existing pieces to come together.

In other industry news, Frank Jules will be moving to a different role at AT&T, and Jose Gutierrez will be taking the helm at AT&T Advertising and Publishing. Jules brought great vision to the YP industry and he will no doubt be missed. We wish him success and welcome Gutierrez back to the wild and crazy world of local media.

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