Yellow Pages, RIP?

The Seattle City Council has passed an ordinance creating a “Yellow Pages Opt-Out System.” Once put into operation, this system will give city residents the option of declining delivery of once-ubiquitous telephone directories. No more phone books crammed into the mailbox or piled at the end of the driveway.

While the aim of the ordinance may have been to reduce environmental impact and clutter, there is a much deeper message here: the people of Seattle don’t need their phone books anymore.

Remember Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk,who danced about wildly shouting, “The new phone books are here!”? We really did used to get excited when the thick yellow books were dropped off. That’s how large a part of everybody’s life the Yellow Pages were. No more.

This does not bode well for those stubborn traditionalist businesses that dedicate large chunks of their marketing budget to phone book ads. I have been in the marketing game long enough to remember ad agencies that worked exclusively on phone book campaigns.

Why do the residents of Seattle feel comfortable in rejecting this traditional part of every home’s informational system? Think about it. When was the last time you reached for a phone book to look up information on a business? The first option now is to simply Google the company or conduct an on-line search for similar providers.

I have long argued with clients who continued to sink money into Yellow Pages that the only businesses that needed to advertise there were auto glass companies, plumbers, pizza parlors and personal injury attorneys. Today, even those stalwarts are better served investing in a website with strong SEO.

As has happened with so many trends that sweep across the nation, I believe that Seattle is leading the way. I think the days are numbered for Yellow Page directories across the country. Don’t forget, Starbucks got its start in Seattle, too.

Think of Social Media as "Networking by Remote Control"

Despite the fact that Facebook recently surpassed Google in number of users, many business people are still reluctant to embrace social media. I believe that, for many, it is simply a case of unfamiliarity and a fear of the unknown. Others dismiss Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels as frivolous. After all, how serious could these tools be if a teenager can use them?

Let me try to frame this in a way that "slow to adapt" business professionals might understand.

Everybody knows that networking is an important part of marketing, particularly for those in professional services or sales occupations. You may not enjoy it, but you attend Chamber of Commerce meetings, participate in monthly lead sharing groups, show up for industry conferences and exhibit at trade shows; all in an attempt to connect with prospects and referral sources. You've probably developed a pretty good "30-second pitch," and always carry plenty of business cards.

Now imagine if you could do your networking from the comfort and safety of your office. If you could connect with colleagues, prospects and those all-important "key influencers" as often as you wanted. And if those connections could spread farther and faster than ever.

That's what social media allows you to do. Take LinkedIn, for example. A profile on LinkedIn is like your 30-second pitch, a brief overview of who you are, what you do, and what you are looking for. With very little effort, in the space of a few hours, you can quickly build a network of known colleagues, which can then spread farther and wider through shared connections. You've just "worked the room" with hundreds, even thousands, of people.

Facebook, Twitter and blogging offer similar possibilities, but with the added benefit of being able to share new and interesting information with your broad network of connections, all at the same time. And if you are smart about it, you'll take advantage of all social media channels and link them together, so that a new blog post instantly finds its way to all your LinkedIn connections.

Inexpensive. Instantaneous. Incredibly effective. What is not to love about social media marketing? Get with the program.

Does Blogging Work for Small and Medium Size Businesses?

Aside from its value as a mental exercise and outlet for creativity, does writing a regular blog provide any value for a small or medium size business? The answer is yes.

A recent study by inbound marketing agency Hubspot (www.hubspot.com) reports that "companies that blog have far better marketing results." The study found that companies that blogged had 55% more visitors to their websites, accumulated 97% more inbound links, and had 434% more indexed web pages.

Are these important figures? Absolutely.

More visitors to a website is obviously vital, as it gives a company more opportunity to tell its story and sell its products or services.

More inbound links increases a website's visibility with search engines, helping the website move up the in the results for keyword searches.

More indexed pages also increase the chance a search engine will find and report a website.

What the Hubspot study tells us is clear: if you want your website to be a more active and contributing part of your overall marketing program, you should be blogging on a regular and consistent basis.

It does not take much to get a blog started. The first post is easy. It is the second and all subsequent blog posts that are difficult! Yet, if you think about it for just a short time, there is plenty about your business to talk about and share.

Take "Start a blog" off your "to do" list and put it onto your list of regular duties. If you need help starting or maintaining a blog, I'd be glad to help. Shoot me an email to bill@scribendi.net and we can work together to make you a blogger.

Why We Hate Political Ads

With less than a week to go until election day, it is impossible to avoid the barrage of political advertising. It assaults us through our television sets and radio speakers, in our mailboxes, on our computer screens and over the telephone. And most of the messages we get are blatant “attack ads” that are misleading at best and can be downright vicious.

I hate them. You hate them. The politicians claim to hate them.

So why do attack ads continue to be the core of political advertising? I have several theories.

First, they work. Those voters who are savvy enough and involved enough in the political process can usually see right through the rhetoric and bombast. But, at the risk of sounding elitist, a large number of voters are not sophisticated enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. They register as “fact” the slams and slanders that pass for messaging. The polls reflect this, as numbers rise and fall with the waves of vile advertising.

(Don’t get me started on the pimping of the pollsters. Suffice it to say that Mark Twain was right when he said that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”)

Another reason attack ads remain important to candidates is that they are an easy way to avoid taking a real stand on issues. Instead of telling voters what they believe in and what they will do if elected, candidates can get away with focusing on how much worse it would be if their opponents were to win.

Attack ads are also easy to develop. Instead of crafting content that inspires the electorate, all the copywriter has to do is carefully cut and paste snippets of the opponent’s previous speeches until they paint a portrait that is sure to frighten voters to choose the “safe” candidate.

The political process, spurred by the media, has devolved into an ugly, mud-spattered wrestling match in which almost all candidates come out sullied. Don’t be taken in by this hucksterism. Take the time to dig deep and try to discover the core beliefs of the candidates on your ballot. Remember you’ll be stuck with the person you elect, at least until the next round of name calling and character assassination begins in a few years.

Ad Terms We Could Do Without

Advertising, like any industry, has its own unique lingo. Since advertising is a business based on creativity, it only stands to reason that our terms are sometimes quite imaginative. Here then, is a collection of the most common advertising phraseology, with a brief translation of each.

“Can you make the logo bigger?” Roughly translated, this means “We have nothing of any importance or value to say in this ad.”

“They buried my ad.” This means “I know I spend barely enough on advertising to get a few drops of ink on the newsprint, but does that mean I can't expect to be on the front page?”

“We're the oldest/biggest/best. . .” In other words, “Our products are outdated, our pricing archaic and our customer base is rapidly being depleted by the grim reaper.”

“Service is our specialty.” What they're saying is, “You'll need our service because our products are totally unreliable.”

“It doesn't do anything for me.” Usually means, “I'm spending a fortune on this ad and I'm going to get my money's worth. Give me the Mona Lisa.”

“What we really need is some publicity.” This means “I don’t want to pay for my advertising.”

“Its just not us.” Translated: “Where's the picture of me, my family and my factory?”

“Advertising just doesn’t work for us.” This indicates that the company once ran a two-inch classified ad in a free circulation supermarket newspaper on a Friday in 1993, before leaving for a three-week vacation.

Listen to yourself carefully the next time you are working with your ad agency. If you hear any of these phrases, stop and back away. Before the agency turns and runs.

Want people to be interested? Be interesting!

My clients pay me to communicate their messages in such a way as to cause individuals to respond. The first step in that process is to get people to take notice, an increasingly difficult task in our media-rich world.

Breaking through the clutter has been the marketer's assignment since the beginning of the profession. How we go about it continues to evolve.

The best advice I can give my clients is this: If you want people to be interested, you'd better be interesting.

A marketing message, no matter what the delivery method, must spark your interest, catch your eye and demand your attention. Boring does not cut it. Safe is a snooze. "Tried and true" equals "old and tired."

Turn the tables for a moment. What captures your attention? Which TV commercials do you like? What does it take to get you to turn up the radio volume in the car? How do you decide which items in the pile of today's mail get read and which get tossed? What is it about a website that gets you to go deeper than the home page?

Today you must engage the prospect immediately or lose him or her forever. Your message must be smart, memorable and resonate with something that is already "on the radar screen" of the potential customer. You can't force an idea into a closed mind, so you must find an opening that already exists.

The message must zero in on the self-interest of the individual or it will be ignored. Yet too many companies are too self-absorbed to do anything more than spout off about themselves and their own interests, which are seldom aligned with the customer's.

To be successful at attracting interest, you must succeed at being interesting. That means crafting a message that connects with the right prospects, delivered through the right channels, at the right time.

Saying More By Saying Less (continued)

(Yes, I recognize the irony in "continuing" to say less! Deal with it.)

A colleague responded to my last post promoting spareness of language. He reminded me that even Ernest Hemingway struggled with editing his prose, noting, “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket."

Papa was being modest. He used the language well. Hemingway is also responsible for what some consider to be the greatest ad copy ever written, one that conveys a novel's worth of information and emotion in just six words: "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn."

Can you condense your marketing message into six words? Not always possible, but always a good goal.