They’re Searching -- But are You Sinking?
Time to Get Your Oars in the Cyber Water

By Deidre Cavener
Published: November / December 2008

I opened my mailbox today, yes the snail mail kind, and pulled out the current edition of one of my marketing magazines. The first headline that jumped off the page was, “Yellow Pages Bleeding Red Ink.” I sat back and started to ponder that thought while smiling quietly to myself.

In 1995 I worked as an intern at a local website development company while working on my undergraduate degree in Management Information Systems. My job for the semester was to come up with something innovative that would harness the power of the Internet. The very first thing I did was grab the yellow page phone book off the shelf, look the owner in the eye, and say, “We should build an online yellow pages that is easily searchable from anywhere!” He agreed and that is how I spent my semester.

Fast forward six years later to 2001. I broke my tooth and had to find a local dentist fast. I went immediately to the Internet with the assumption that it would be “easy” to find exactly what I was looking for in a second or two. I entered “Dentist Seminole Florida” in the search box of the local yellow pages website and was totally shocked by the results - in six years nothing had changed. Dentists from the entire Tampa Bay area were returned in my search. I didn’t want the entire area … I only wanted Seminole, Florida dentists. I like to do business with people in my community. For those who aren’t computer savvy, this type of query is really simple if your database programmers know what they are doing, and your website isn’t geared specifically to making advertising money, instead of providing a valuable service to the users.

A year later I was having lunch with a business owner at a nice restaurant on Redington Shores. He spent a good deal of time telling me all about his new Yellow Page advertising campaign. He couldn’t wait for the new “books” to come out. He was as excited as a kid in a candy store and the whole campaign only cost him $800.00 a month. Being an Internet pioneer, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing … $800.00 a month! I bluntly said, “In ten years the yellow pages will be dead.” He looked me square in the eye and said, “You are crazy. The yellow pages will never go away.” Well, bleeding red ink is a pretty good sign I was right.

So what happened? Nothing!

The yellow pages had the money, the sales staff, the customer base and, most importantly, the data. Sitting still while the world changes won’t do your business any good. The philosophy of “Businesses need us, we don’t need them” doesn’t fly in today’s competitive marketplace. Did anyone advertise in the yellow pages because they knew, liked, and trusted their salesperson? Of course not. They did it because it WAS the way people found them. Like most large corporate conglomerates with a monopoly on the market, they just sat still and watched their ship sink.

Is your business just sitting around watching technology pass it by? If you answered yes, you’d better get up and start rowing because your ship is sinking too … one competitor at a time.

Local Internet portals, vertical portals, and search engines are the ones delivering business information to people searching. Not only is this good for your bottom line (much less expensive), it is good for the environment. Going online first is a very “green” thing to do. I don’t know about you, but last year I received 7 yellow page books on my doorstep. They all went straight into the recycling bin. Save a tree, or I should say a forest; go online first!

Make Sure YOUR Website isn’t a barrier to business!

Pull your website up right now and ask yourself … does it convey our business in a professional manner? Does it communicate the way we would if we were having a face-to-face conversation with the customer? Often your website is the first exposure your business has to a prospect. If it looks as though your neighbor did it, you not only lose a customer to the “back” button, you send them to your competitor. And you lose credibility. A non-professional website is a lose-lose marketing tool. I can tell you honestly, 99% of all small business websites fall into the lose-lose category! Start rowing! Your website is one of your most valuable marketing tools and should be viewed as an investment in your business. Make sure you invest properly. It should not be a do-it-yourself project.

Remember … don’t follow the dinosaurs (slow, big, unchanging). You know where they ended up.