Is Yellow Pages’ whole market in decline?
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Two interesting articles this week about Yellow Pages (Telegraph and Independent) caught my eye (see links below).
Is the precipitous decline of Yell’s share price endemic, I wonder, of the whole printed business directory space? Faced with stiff competition from online directories, combined with an economic slowdown in which businesses reconsider where they are spending their marketing bucks, could it be curtains for the old guard?
Where an older generation would always reach for the big yellow book, today’s consumers increasingly (and some would say in majority) reach for the Internet. Its not just the delivery mechanism that’s changing, it’s the whole business model.
Take a look at Brownbook.net (www.brownbook.net), I’m the product strategist for that company, and there’s a good reason why I joined them. It’s a totally devastating business model when compared with the traditional directory publishers.
Here are some of the differences:
- instant updates at any time, versus yearly updates
- cheaper AND more flexible advertising, versus high fees and inflexible options
- no sales force to fund, versus expensive on the road teams
- peer-produced, versus costly call centre and data entry agents
- increases SEO of companies websites, versus doesn’t really make any difference
There’s a lot more to it than that, but just how long can an old industry stick its head in the ground. It reminds me of The Post Office 15 years ago when they missed the opportunity to be THE email provider and ISP for just about EVERY UK household… No, they said, our business is safe, and now they’re seriously challenged and stand NO CHANCE of competing in the electronic mail market.
See also:
The Independent - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/sharewatch/market-report-yell-feels-the-pain-as-broker-slashes-target-price-857752.html
The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/money/2008/07/02/cxquest102.xml
