Effective marketing in an economic downturn

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When the last recession hit the UK, of all the different types of advertising media Yellow Pages was perhaps the least affected, as advertisers saw it as the most direct way of attracting real customers. Today, however, things are much different. Recent reports in The Times, The Economist and The Guardian have each reported how Yell plc has seen a dramatic downturn in its revenue growth and that shareholders are now very nervous having suffered from a 60% drop in share price this year!

We believe things have gone so wrong for Yell because of the advent of effective search marketing on the internet. Consumers can now easily find what they want whether it’s a denture specialist in Manchester or a data cabling company in Warrington on their computer without having to dig out the Yellow Pages, and they rarely go near Yell.com.

Paul Zwillenberg of OC&C Strategy Consultants supports this, saying, "Ten years ago SMEs had one marketing option: printed yellow pages. Now they can buy space on Yell.com, or they can bypass yellow pages by building their own web site and optimizing it on Google, or simply buying keywords from Google."

We’ve seen many of our customers pull out of Yellow Pages because the number of enquiries don’t even cover the cost of advertising. Google is taking the market from Yell as easily as a Rottweiler might take a bone from a Chihuahua. All that’s holding up Yell’s revenues at the moment is effective salesmanship and lack of knowledge on the part of the advertising purchaser.

Let’s consider the facts: Google is a relevancy-based search engine with around 90% of the UK search market; Yell is a portal directory with a negligible share of the UK search market. To get a return, where do you think it would be best to invest your marketing and advertising budget?

The beauty of the internet is that with a well-designed website optimised for both the user and search engines, supported by easy to use tracking software and appropriate online strategies, you can analyse your sales performance on a daily basis and tune your advertising to greatest effect.

Our tip for effectively riding out the downturn is: don’t fall into the trap of simply doing the marketing that you’ve always done. Investigate if you’re making money from directory sites like Yell, Thomweb and TouchLocal. If you’re not, consider investing in paid search marketing to deliver quick and effective returns for your business. However, be careful. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, use a Google Professional to ensure you maximise value and don’t lose your shirt in the learning process.