Not only are SMBs in the Professional Services vertical heavy users of Social Media for advertising and promotion, they are highly engaged on social media, according to LCM. 3/4 reported that they track “likes” in social media, while 57.4% monitor customer comments online.

There is a big opportunity with this group to offer CRM solutions because Professional Services SMBs stay connected with their customers but only 20% say they use a CRM system. 88.0% have maintained a customer list for a year or more, while an additional 6.4% have maintained a customer list for less than a year.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded by clients of BIA/Kelsey here. This report is one of a series of drill-down reports on the findings from Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor? survey. In the coming weeks we will be looking at SMBs by additional vertical categories. Our Home and Trade Services SMB report is already available. To learn more about our LCM survey of small and medium-sized businesses, click here.

Click here to purchase the Professional Services SMBs — LCM Wave 18. To purchase any of our other Local Commerce Monitor drill-down reports, check out our new BIA/Kelsey Shop.

*Professional Services vertical includes consulting, legal, architecture, and computer software. Financial Services SMBs are not included, but will be profiled in their own vertical report.

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Interestingly, traditional local media has a disproportionate share of 2015 spending (87.2 percent). Yet, the online/digital local will grow substantially in the next few years, reaching 20 percent by 2019. This online/digital will be with pure plays, as well as the traditional media that have expanded their services and see the opportunities with this group of advertisers. These health care providers will be extremely interested in greater integration of digital marketing services.

More information on this vertical advertising spending is now available in the recently released report, Insights in Local Advertising – Health Care Vertical, which examines traditional and digital spending trends, profiles the market ad share by media, and details the advertising trends of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

To read the executive summary of this report, just click on “Insights in Local Advertising – Health Care Vertical.“

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We’re reporting the Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) results by these slices at the request of our clients. (We also report out the LCM results by many other slices, including “super verticals,” lifecycle stage, spending level, etc.)

The average total spend for advertising and promotions annually among SMBs with 10-99 employees is $53,440. This spending level places this segment of SMBs closer to Plus Spenders and franchise SMBs than to segments of smaller SMBs like the Core Spenders.

The top advertising/marketing priority for SMBs with 10-99 employees for the next 12 months is SEM/SEO. This is consistent with other size brackets, and not surprising considering the steadily increasing importance, and ever-changing rules, of SEO.

Broadly speaking, SMBs in this size range often find themselves straddling the worlds of digital and traditional media. Their media mix puts more weight on classic media, including direct mail, print and Internet Yellow Pages, newspapers and magazines. They’re also loyal to the sales channels attached to these media, even for the purchase of online ads. For example, Print or Internet Yellow Pages is the second most used channel for purchasing online ads, used by 27.5% of respondents.

Service model preference leans strongly towards the “Do it with me” model, preferred by 52.8% of respondents, which is a sharp distinction to the smaller SMBs, which favor the “Do it myself” model.

Customer loyalty programs are popular with these SMBs, with 43.1 percent already having a customer loyalty program, and another 26.8 percent saying they plan to add one in the next 12 months — for a total of 69.9 percent.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full report here.

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YP is “not your grandmother’s Yellow Pages company” and is poised for real growth as the second largest mobile search ad company in the U.S. behind Google, said YP CMO Allison Checchi during a keynote address at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media at San Francisco Airport.

Checchi noted that the company pulled in more than $1 billion in digital revenue last year (about a third of which comes from mobile), and that its network of mobile and online publishers helped deliver 40 billion annual impressions. “We are at Version 3.0 or 4.0 right now in the way we are serving consumers,” she said, noting that YP is moving quickly to add transactional capabilities and other new business models.

YP’s next steps will leverage the company’s real effectiveness for commerce. Internal data shows that YP searchers spend 20 percent more than other Web searchers, she said.

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YP is “not your grandmother’s Yellow Pages company” and is poised for real growth as the second largest mobile search ad company in the U.S. behind Google, said YP CMO Allison Checchi during a keynote address at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media at San Francisco Airport.

Checchi noted that the company pulled in more than $1 billion in digital revenue last year (about a third of which comes from mobile), and that its network of mobile and online publishers helped deliver 40 billion annual impressions. “We are at Version 3.0 or 4.0 right now in the way we are serving consumers,” she said, noting that YP is moving quickly to add transactional capabilities and other new business models.

YP’s next steps will leverage the company’s real effectiveness for commerce. Internal data shows that YP searchers spend 20 percent more than other Web searchers, she said.

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YP has named David Lebow to the newly created position of Chief Revenue Officer, reporting to CEO David Krantz. Lebow was previously executive vice president, digital markets. This promotion puts Lebow in charge of YP’s enormous 4,000 person sales organization.

Lebow joined YP in January 2013. His career has spanned some of the biggest brands in digital and broadcast media, including AOL, Clear Channel, Internet Broadcasting and Group Commerce.

Back in May, Lebow was a featured speaker at BIA/Kelsey’s “Leading in Local: The National Impact” event in Atlanta.

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2012 General Services Ad Spending by Media

But 2012 is the last year that Print Yellow Pages is expected to be on top in the General Services vertical. BIA/Kelsey expects Direct Mail to surpass Print Yellow Pages in this vertical in 2013. By 2017, Print Yellow Pages’ share of the General Services advertising pie is expected to fall to 11%, with Internet Yellow Pages’ share growing to 12%. BIA/Kelsey projects General Services’ advertising revenue on Internet Yellow Pages to surpass their Print Yellow Pages counterpart by 2017. Direct Mail will continue to be the dominant medium in the General Services vertical, with nearly 26% of the advertising revenue.

Health is the next biggest vertical for Print Yellow Pages advertising with 17% share. As advertising revenues for Print Yellow Pages decline, general services and health will remain the top two verticals for the medium.
By 2017, total Print Yellow Pages advertising revenue will have declined from nearly $5.5 billion in 2012 to $2.2 billion, a five year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of negative 16.5%. All of Print Yellow Pages’ verticals are expected to have double digit declines between 2012 and 2017, with the biggest dollar loss coming from General Services.

Internet Yellow Pages, on the other hand, is expected to increase from less than $2.2 billion in 2012 to $3.3 billion in 2017, a five year CAGR of 9.0%, making Internet Yellow Pages the third fastest growing medium out of twelve, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad View Plus.

More information on Media Ad View Plus is available here.

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The Local Service Pages is not your ordinary book; it focuses on service-based companies, a category that continues to have solid usage. CEO Derrick Bliss has a strong belief that the print product will endure and continues to innovate on this idea with the Staten Island edition. The book has a new interactive ad form called “Actable Pages”. According to Bliss it “extends the brand of companies and gives consumers a reason to hold on to the book”.
The ad works by downloading the Free Actable App to an Android or iOS device, opening the app and scanning the entire page or ad that is set up as an Actable experience. The entire ad is then scanned  and by holding the phone or tablet over the ad that is set up you view whatever experience is embedded. It may be a video or slideshow appears on the page on your device or it may be a 3D experience that happens between your phone and the page. According to Bliss this is a great example of how publishers will use interactive print to attract and retain users while generating additional revenue from advertisers wanting to extend their content.
Even better the ad is portable, the image can be emailed, posted and shared. To see the ad in action, download the Actable app and use your phone to scan the image of the cover.

Local Service Pages new fully interactive book

Bliss says that their next book, Brooklyn will also carry this ad format for advertisers.

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Ambassador Media Group LLC (Ambassador Publications) company produced yellow pages directories for the Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Nassau, Queens, Staten Island and southern Westchester County markets up until April. Picking up on the market opportunity is a new kind of yellow pages company, Local Services Pages.

CEO and cofounder of Local Service Pages, Derrick Bliss, seized an opportunity to create a strong-performing directory. Bliss previously was the director of sales at Ambassador. He believes in the value of local yellow pages. Prior to working at Ambassador, he spent time helping run his family business, a plumbing and drain cleaning company. A major key to his family’s success was directory advertising.

The Local Service Pages is not your ordinary book; it focuses on service-based companies, a category that continues to have solid usage. Bliss has a strong belief that the print product will endure, evolving into a condensed version that’s centered around the business categories receiving the majority of usage, and integrated with other media.

The fully recyclable 7×9 print book includes user-friendly content: subway maps, coupons, menus and a guide on recycling resources for consumers. Each ad has a QR code that drives traffic online to an advertiser’s website, Facebook page or mobile site. The ads also include call tracking, which Bliss says is “critical to advertisers to see performance and ROI.” The ad offerings are competitively priced against SuperMedia and Hibu. Besides full color ads with QR codes, the core digital offering is a premium placement on their partner digital site thumplocal.com. Local Service Pages offers Thump’s online products and services to their customers, complementing their print campaigns.

Bliss says they are having great success with the new model. The first book will be distributed to 200K+ homes and businesses in the Bronx in time for Halloween. Coming in 2013 will be the Staten Island (February) and Brooklyn (May) books, followed by continued growth throughout New York and beyond.

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In 2004 91 percent of Golden Pages’ revenues were from print products and just 9 percent were from digital. Fast forward to 2010 and, through its vertical and digital transformation, revenues have shifted to 70 percent digital and 30 percent from print. Golden Pages identified five consumer needs — reliability, necessity, specialty, affordability and emotional involvement — and created verticals.

The transformation in strategy includes rich content built on its Internet Yellow Pages to deliver a great consumer experience. Lempert offered the example of Zap, Golden Pages’ local shopping and comparison site, which lets consumers shop and then make informed decisions based on local business information and inventory of where to buy the products. Golden Pages took the Zap model and “zapped” its Yellow Pages into verticals.

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