“Homepages don’t cost a thing. Bring services into the market,” explained Dominique Mangiatordi using his expertise as marketing executive from the Proximedia Agency and his experience in the marketing of websites and services for about 20,000 small/mid-sized companies in Belgium. Mangiatordi and fifteen other speakers laid out some interesting points to the approximately 100 guests at the Yellow Pages Today Workshops on April 14 in Stuttgart.
Peter Buxton and Jesper Simonsen, the organizers of the one-day event, kicked things off with a thesis that there is yet a lot of potential for directory publications and local search engines to further focus on small/mid-sized companies, as only about fifty percent of which is to be found online. In light of the ever-growing competition between the search engine giant Google and Online-Pure-Plays in the yellow pages/telephone book segment, websites and mobile services offer interesting potential to win new customers and improve relations with current customers.
16 presentations answered questions like what do customers expect, how do products need to be structured, which resources do providers need to represent, which services are currently in demand in the mobile field, and of course, how to market everything. We have a summary of the main topics.

Mandatory: Quick, Simple, and Service-Oriented

The internet is no longer a romping place for the experienced. Just about anyone has access to it, even if they don’t have their own website or online-shop. In this respect, the expectations that small/mid-sized companies have are quite clear, according to the experience of Philipp Neubert from ePages and Nir Shem Tov from Websplanet: the website’s design has to be state of the art. Loading time and usability have to be up to standard. And the service provider must help the small/mid-sized company completely in the creation of the site. Though self-service is somewhat in demand, it is hardly used by the clients because business owners hardly have the time or knowledge to deal with it.

Freestyle: Services, Mobile, and Measurability

The sole creation of a website is just the beginning. Texts, pictures, and company videos have to support the high expectations. Newsletters and coupon functions should enhance the client’s offering. SEO, registration in web directories, or social media activity integration should round off clients’ programs.

In light of the mobile wave, thanks to the success of the iPhone and Co., that all information providers worldwide have caught onto, mobile offerings cannot be missing from the picture, of course. Providers like Unity Mobile offer standardized workflows that make the automized creation of mobile websites quite simple. An example would bet he mobile website from the YPT-workshops. Lars Hedberg, senior manager mobile for Eniro, reports that the demand for mobile offerings is growing rapidly, not only amongst users, but also amongst clients. Simple offerings like colorful accentuations on the small and short hit lists, but also ranking products are already being successfully implemented in Scandinavia.
The speakers ultimately confirm that many clients demanded numbers regarding the use of digital offerings from their providers. This would need to be an integral function in the offering.

Challenge: Sales and Production

Even if the chanlleges of the market are known, they consist of the scalable sale and efficient production of products. Müller Media uses classic media advisors, but also specialized units of sales, according to Joachim Helfer. Sales organizations have to be training intensively and have to use incentive instruments to encourage enthusiasm about the product. Debora Peroni and Gianni Terzulli of SEAT Pagine Gialle agreed in this point. The Italian directory giant has put the marketing of homepages in the center of their strategy for company development since 2010 and have already won 200,000 new clients in the first year.

In regards to the efficient production, the speakers from the houses of Yell and Dumrath & Fassnach made quite clear that new technical and creative qualifications are needed to control quality, customer service, and workflow.

Guest entry from Frank Wenz, CEO TVG Verlag, Frankfurt am Main