Thoughts on Business, Marketing & Creativity

In my role as a product manager for SEM products at the Yellow Pages Group, I often get pointed towards articles online that offer advice to SMB’s about how to market their businesses. Recently, a colleague pointed me towards one article that stated that online Yellow Pages (YP) directories could be harmful to the organic ranking of a lawyer’s website.  The article stated that advertisers could see harm done to their website’s SEO rankings because of a) duplicate content gleaned from the site; and b) because of unique URL’s that are similar to the advertiser’s URL.

The first point could have some merit, because duplicate content on multiple sites is a big no-no in search engine algorithms. However, the duplication of a couple of sentences, or a short promo text will not negatively impact one’s rankings.  If that were the case, no one would ever use a quote online for fear of being penalized by Google.  Search engines don’t like the wholesale copying of one site’s content to another.  As best as I know, online YP publishers don’t copy/paste your entire site.

The second point, that online YP directories provide customers with URLs similar to that of their main site and that that negatively affects their organic rankings, is plain nonsense.  If your website is MontrealLawyers.com, Google will not penalize you because someone else registered MtlLawyers.com.  I can’t even think of how that could possibly make sense from a search relevancy perspective.

My goal here is not to defend online YP directories.  I have heard the arguments against them, and I’m willing to admit some of their weaknesses.  Rather, my goal is to point out that quasi-expert advice like the above is doled out on the internet with non-chalance and passed off as trustworthy. After all, “Law Firm Marketing Dude” (seriously, that’s the name of his site) claims to have “20 years of experience” (I hope I didn’t negatively impact his SEO rankings by copying those words from his site). I should be able to trust his advice, shouldn’t I?

While I want to believe that most people can see through these ruses, I don’t think it’s as easy as it seems.  Once upon a time, I went to law school and practiced law (very briefly).  As a result, I know a thing or two about the legal profession.

The differences between law and marketing are vast, but one of the most important differences is that in law, there are a lot more trustworthy sources of information.  The legal profession is heavily regulated, and rightfully so.  We can’t have just anyone calling themselves lawyers and handing out legal advice.  Marketing, on the other hand, is not so regulated, and as such, anyone can call himself a marketing expert and just start handing out advice, a lot of which is nonsense.

Now, imagine a lawyer who is running a law practice.  He comes from a world where his opinions are informed by peer reviewed law journals, academic text books, and judge-written court cases.  He can trust his sources.  That same lawyer is now trying to figure out how to market his law practice online, and the option readily available to him is…  the internet?

Lawyers and other business owners are a smart lot, so I have faith that most will see through the BS, but there’s a lot of bogus information out there, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing it. Especially when your entire experience is based around having easy access to trustworthy information.

In the age of the internet, having trustworthy sources is a valuable asset and increasingly rare.  So, business owners, I would advise you that your most important task in learning about how to market your business is to first find a trusted source. Once you’ve found the trust, then you can begin to learn.

I started this blog about 9 months ago.  At the time, my stated goal was to help SMBs learn more about internet marketing, and thereby help them succeed in otherwise unfamiliar territory.  In the process, all I hoped for in return was some dialogue, and hopefully to learn from the process.  I think I may have half-succeeded.  If you were to aggregate and organize all of the posts on this blog to date, I think you would get a pretty decent – if somewhat disjointed and frenetic – book for SMB’s who want to learn how to market themselves online.

Where I failed was in what I hoped to get back for myself.  This blog has created some dialogue, but not as much as I would have hoped.  I know it’s not because no one’s reading it, because I have the analytics to prove that someone is reading.  So, I began to ask myself, why isn’t there more discussion going on here?  It’s not the quality of the writing.  I write elsewhere, and get quite a bit of discussion on my posts.  I also don’t think it’s the subject matter, because there is definitely plenty to be said on the topic of internet marketing.  So, what is it?

I’ve decided that the biggest reason that I have not generated as much discussion on this blog as I would have liked, is the audience.

Before you, dear reader, close this window in offense, allow me to explain. I’m not saying that my audience is ungrateful.  I’m not saying my audience is lazy.  I’m not saying my audience isn’t intelligent enough to have a discussion.  In fact, there is no blame to be placed on the audience at all. The blame is on me.

I blame myself because my goals were not aligned.  On the one hand, I hoped to educate small business owners.  On the other hand, I hoped to get challenging discussion back in return.  Small business owners were never going to take the time to read my blog, give the ideas in it a great deal of thought, and respond with some esoteric comment.  Small business owners are some of the busiest people on the planet.  If I was at all successful with some of my posts, they read the post, and immediately went to put the ideas into action. They didn’t philosophize over them!

If I wanted conceptual discussion about my industry, I was really writing the wrong articles all together.  As a case and point, some time ago, I wrote a post that was in no way advice to small business owners, but rather a commentary on the state of social media, and the prevalence of “experts” in the field.  I’m sure some small business owners may have read that with some passing interest, but none would argue that it was among my most useful posts.  However, that post generated comments and e-mail dialogue with Chris Brogan and Naomi Dunford, two people in the industry, whom I have incredible respect for.

Therefore, my biggest mistake with this blog was an error in the way I set out to achieve my goals. And I’m certain that there are many people blogging, tweeting, marketing out there, who are making the same mistakes.  So, before you spend anymore time and/or money, stop and ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with the work you’re doing online.  Then, ask yourself if what you’re doing is really the best way to go about doing it.

In my case, the kinds of articles I was writing, probably would have been useful if my objective were to find clients for a consulting business.  However, I’m not a consultant. I work for a marketing company, and I don’t work in sales.  The only times I’ve ever consulted on the side, were on a pro bono basis (if you run a non-profit, feel free to drop me a line).  I don’t sell my services, so why am I running a blog as if I did?

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I have enjoyed every minute of writing this blog, and I appreciate each and every single one of my readers, and don’t expect any of them to do anything more than read these posts.

However, I do think it’s worthwhile rethinking who my target audience is, and what kind of stuff I should be writing to achieve my goals.  With that purpose in mind, I’ll be taking some time to rethink the direction of this blog.  There’s a good chance that at the end of that reflection, this blog will be much more “big picture,” and a lot less “nuts and bolts.”

Until then, I encourage anyone operating online to do the same. Rethink what your goals are and evaluate if you’re really going about accomplishing them in the right way.  Don’t just keep doing what you’re doing because it’s what you do.

If you read blogs, then you already know about guest blogging. What you may not know is just how important guest blogging is to bloggers, and to internet marketing in general. It’s so important, that Leo Babauta, the founder of the Zen Habits web site (one of the top 100 blogs in the world), credits guest blogging as the single most important way he built his audience. Many websites about web marketing and copywriting devote a lot of words to the topic (my personal favourite being Men With Pens, browse through their archives to find some great posts on the topic, many by guest bloggers).

Guest blogging, though, isn’t just for bloggers. Small business owners have a vested interested in participating in the conversation as well.

I’ve written on this blog about the advantages of content marketing, demonstrating ones expertise and creating a human connection with your audience. Guest blogging works by extending your reach. When you write for someone else’s blog in a related field, you are in essence borrowing that person’s audience. If you make a strong enough connection, you can convince members of that audience to become members of your audience as well.

The key is to increase your profile in your industry, by connecting with those bloggers and websites where your customers will already be spending their time. Then, by contributing, you spread your expertise to them, introduce yourself, and you have just made an easy connection with a person who was already looking for the kind of content you were providing.

The more you write for sites in your industry, the more ubiquitous your name becomes. When guest blogging, being prolific is a good thing.

However, it’s important to remember though, that guest blogging is not just a numbers game. It’s not simply about how many readers you can attract back to your own blog, or how many visitors you can get back to your website. Guest blogging is also about the connections you make with the others in your industry/niche/area. If you run a site or a blog, and you let someone else write for you, there is a level of trust required there, and a certain bond between host and guest is created.

It’s important not to to underestimate the value of those connections. Bloggers and website curators are quickly becoming industry leaders in the 21st century, and cultivating relationships with these people is going to become more and more important as time goes by — just as it’s important to have good relationships with reviewers and trade publications in your industry.

It’s also important to note that while the guest may gain a lot of benefit from blogging, the host is also benefiting. After all, websites and blogs publish content. Without content, they have no purpose. Guest blogging affords bloggers fresh, free content that they can use to continue to build their own audience. Furthermore, as a guest blogger, chances are you will promote the fact that you have posted on someone else’s blog, and will be sharing your audience with your host.  The same way he is sharing his with you.

Guest blogging is networking in digital form. The same way local business owners will help each other, guest blogging allows individuals in the same industry to partner for the mutual benefit of all.

As an analogy, when I used to run a handful of bars and restaurants, it would occasionally happen that something would go wrong in the ordering process. Either someone forgot to place an order for a particular item, or the supplier ran out, and therefore we’d run out (this always seemed happen with beer kegs for some reason…). On these occasions it became almost standard practice that neighboring bars and restaurants, even if they were technically our competitors, would loan us a couple of kegs to get us through a weekend. When the same thing happened to them, we would return the favor. In the end, everyone ended up ahead. I see guest blogging as a very similar practice.

There are a number of tips for how to go about guest blogging, and a much longer piece could be devoted to just that topic, but I find that most advice on guest blogging complicates the matter too much. First, find a site that you’d like to guest blog on. Make sure you understand the site and its audience. If it has guest blogging guidelines, read them. Then reach out to the site owner, and start a dialogue. All too often, people forget that at the other end of an e-mail address is a person, and the same way you’ve interacted with people your entire life is the way you should interact with people online. Be polite, make it easy for them to say yes, and give them something of quality to post on their site. That’s all.

I have not done a lot of guest blogging — something I hope to change in the near future. In the meantime, however, you can find me as a regular contributor at Workshifting.com and TheNextGreatGeneration.com.

Have you had any success with guest blogging? If so, share some of your tips. If not, what’s held you back?

I hate junk mail.

I pay all my bills online, and no one ever sends me hand-written mail. I don’t even know my postal code. I check my mailbox about once per month, at which time, it is just about bursting at the seams with circulars, fliers, and other promotional stuff I can’t be bothered to look at. All of that wasted paper, that’s all marketing content, and it’s called direct mail advertising. Most people despise it. I do.

In the online world, a similar beast exists, and it’s also called junk mail, or spam. Some estimates say that as much as 85% of the e-mail sent on a daily basis is spam. As a result, modern e-mail softwares and servers have developed sophisticated spam filtering. My e-mail inbox used to look like my physical mailbox, but on a bad day, only one or two messages will trickle through the filters.

If most people are like me, and they simply toss out a month’s worth of fliers and circulars, and have decent spam filters set up in their e-mail, why would any marketer go to the trouble of direct mail? The simple answer is because it works. The equation with direct mail has always been simple. You don’t convert many people into customers, but the incremental cost of getting more people the message is minimal, so you still end up with a decent return on investment. In the world of e-mail marketing, the incremental cost of sending more e-mails is zero, so even if you have a terrible conversion rate, you’ll probably still see a return on investment.

So, what’s an honest businessperson to do? On the one hand, you know what it feels like to be inundated with junk, on the other hand, you’ve heard that this marketing method works?

The answer is to create targeted direct mail advertising. The reason direct mail converts so poorly, and is so annoying, is because there is no targeting. It’s carpet bombing people with paper. With just a little more creativity and effort, most direct mail campaigns, especially electronic ones, can be made to convert far better, be less annoying, and have the added advantage of creating not only a customer, but a loyal fan.

The first step is to pick your audience. I live in an apartment building. Why do I get fliers for landscapers? I also get mail for things I don’t want, don’t need, or don’t like. If you can exclude from your direct mail campaign people who don’t want, don’t need, or don’t like what you have to offer, then you will finally be targeting an audience that cares about what you have to say.

Once you’ve found your target audience, the next thing to do with your direct mail is to be useful. A tagline and a phone number, or an e-mail address is not useful. A promotion can definitely be useful, but it can also be boring. Do something interesting with your promotional material to get people’s attention. Run a contest, provide valuable content, do a give-away, entertain or just plain do something different. Alternatively, provide something useful. I’ve never used a real estate agent, and yet I know the names of a few of them, because I often write on complimentary pads they’ve sent me.

Finally, don’t send anything out unless you’ve received some form of sign that the person wants to receive it. This is the basis of permission marketing. The person may explicitly give permission by opting-in to a mailing list, or they may give it implicitly by purchasing something and giving additional contact information (note: whenever you deal with implicit permission, make sure opting-out is VERY easy).

Not all direct mail marketing needs to be spam. When direct mail marketing is done right, it is a cheap marketing method, that provides excellent returns, and creates loyal fans. Think about that before licking the next stamp, or hitting send on your next e-mail blast.

Blogging is a fantastic business tool, but a business’ blog does it no good if it is never read. There are over a hundred million blogs out there, many are business blogs, but only a fraction of them get any kind of decent traffic.  It is a shame that many great blogs languish in obscurity.

Even those blogs that do attain a substantial readership often take time to get there.  As a result, there are a lot of blogs in the blogosphere that have great content sitting in their archives that have barely been seen.  It seems like a waste to have taken the time and effort to produce great content and then not have it seen.  The solution to this problem is republishing.

The ability to make cheap/free copies of content thanks to computers and distribute it for cheap/free thanks to the internet has caused challenges for many industries such as music, publishing, news, and film. However, many people have found ways to make those exact same causes work in their favour as a cheap/free method of distribution for their own content.

In the case of blogs, the tactic here could not be simpler.  Look back through your archives for some quality content that didn’t get too many eyeballs.  Polish, edit, and maybe even add to it a little bit.  You can polish the content as much as you like, but the main idea here is to re-use what you’ve already created so it’s easy.  Once you have the pieces you want to republish, it’s a matter of finding the right places to put them.

I would recommend two resources: ezinearticles.com and hubpages.com.  Both sites have their own guidelines, and their formats are slightly different.  What they have in common is that both sites get a lot of traffic, and have high organic PageRank.  They do request original content, but if you edit an old piece and make a few modifications, then you should be okay.

Another alternative would be to turn an old blog post into a PDF, and re-publish it as a whitepaper, or a report.  There are a number of services that host and distribute these kinds of reports, but one example that I’ve heard good things about is Scribd.

There is a counter-argument for re-publishing content online, and that is that if you re-post duplicate content, your SEO rankings will suffer because Google and other search engines use duplicate content against you.  While this is a legitimate argument, it is not one I would put much stock in.  Anecdotally, I know no one who has been severely hurt by duplicate content issues for doing something like this.  Remember, you’re not re-posting your entire website, you’re posting one article amid an entire archive.  Also, if this is something that truly concerns you, put a little extra time in to revise and edit the piece.  As any writer will tell you, you can spend an infinite amount of time editing, and with each edit, your piece will change.  I don’t necessarily recommend spending hours editing a piece you’re going to republish (might as well just write another piece), but some editing is still advisable.

Besides not being too concerned about the duplicate content issue, I actually believe republishing articles on strongly ranked websites will help more than harm your own site’s SEO ranking.  By re-publishing, you’re seeding additional content that links back to your own site. The link from the re-pub’d article is already a bonus, but you will likely also be able to get additional links back from the readers that article will have attracted.

Of course, for any of this to happen, you have to link back to your own website from within the article that you have re-pub’d, with a clear description of what people will find when they visit, and a call to action to get them to check it out.  This also means that the piece that you re-pub should reflect what your blog is actually about.  If you write about practical motorcycle maintenance tips on your blog, and you happened to run one post early on that was a rant about why Harleys are so much better than Hondas, that’s not the right post to re-pub.  Not because it’s not valid, but because it doesn’t reflect the specific theme of your blog apart from being on the same broad topic.

In your journeys across the internet, always be on the lookout for additional syndication opportunities.  If you do video, check out TubeMogul.  If you’re a photographer, cross-post with Flickr.  The internet offers a ton of distribution opportunities, and it’s important to use them to get your content out there.

In any case, your posts aren’t doing anyone any good sitting  unread in the archives of your blog.

Have you tried re-publishing or syndicating your publishing?  Do you have any success stories or tips, you could share?  Drop a line in the comments.

Before being a marketer, I was a lawyer.  Had I done a stint as a used car salesman, I would have been able to hit the trifecta of sleaziest careers.  And yet, I’m not a sleazy guy.  By no means am I perfect, but whatever my faults, being sleazy isn’t one of them.  That’s why it still stings whenever people get that look in their eye when I tell them what I do for a living.

People are inherently distrustful of marketers, and as much as it pains me to admit it, rightfully so. In my relatively short time in the profession, I have met far too many sleazeballs.  You know the types.  The ones that seem friendly at first, but then after hours of talking at you, give you a sales pitch for something you don’t need.

Online, you might call these guys the yellow highlighter brigade (because they’re the ones that design the landing pages that have tons of yellow highlighting on them).  They’re the ones who fill up Google’s search results with gobs upon gobs of crappy landing pages for shitty products so that they can make a lousy commission.

They’re the same people that follow you on Twitter, and then you realize that they’re following 100,000 people and the only thing they tweet is generic promotional tweets, pre-scheduled, selling even more crap.  If you do make the mistake of following them back, you’ll find that in a couple of weeks, they’ll unfollow you, so that they can go follow another hapless soul without having their following:follower ratio look too out of whack.

They’re the guys who promise to teach you how to make money online, when they themselves have never made a dime online.  They’re the ones who promise to teach you how to connect with your customers when their idea of connecting is mono-directional.  They’re the ones that throw around random buzzwords and call themselves experts because they’ve read a couple of blogs, and maybe even purchased an information product or two (but probably not).  They’re the ones that would throw their closest friends under a bus to make a buck (or alternatively, sell their valued customers’ information to make a buck).

There are a lot of those guys out there.

Now, here’s the thing, there are also a whole lot of NON-sleazy marketers out there. People who are bright, articulate and driven.  People who care about their clients.  People who have a proven track record of success.  People who are interested in more than how many targets receive their e-mail blast.  People who actually give a damn, and do this marketing thing properly.

A few days ago, I was reading Mitch Joel’s blog.  I don’t know Mitch personally, but I’ve followed his blog for some time.   I’ve read his book.  I’ve heard good things about his company.  He wrote a post about Facebook’s recent privacy debacle, and took the stance that it is an incredible tool for businesses, and that ultimately it’s up to the individual to protect their own privacy (I don’t want to misquote him, so please do read the post for yourself, it’s worth the time).  I still haven’t decided how I feel about Facebook and the privacy issue (I’m not a believer that privacy is dead), but I respect Mitch’s opinion, even if I may disagree with it.

In a follow-up post, Mitch mentioned a comment from someone who basically dismissed his opinion based solely on the fact that he’s a marketer.  Let me be clear, Mitch is one of the good guys.  But can I really blame the commenter for assuming otherwise?  I know Mitch is one of the good guys because I’ve been following his work for a couple of years.  Had I stumbled upon his blog and read his opinion on Facebook, knowing all the sleazy marketers out there, I too may have dismissed that opinion.

So, here’s the problem: There are legions of sleazy marketers out there giving the good ones a bad name. There are ideas of smart people that can really help businesses that are being drowned out in torrents of crap.  And lastly, while this may not seem very important on a macro scale, there are good marketers out there who are really tired of being thought of as the scum of the earth.

My question, then, is how can the non-sleazy ones stand out from the rest?

I can already anticipate some of the answers:

• Do good work and let the results speak for themselves.
• Give away as much quality, useful information as you can.
• Point out the ones who are doing the good work.
• Grow some thicker skin.

The problem with all of the above is that they’re things that are already being done, and I get the feeling it’s not helping.  In some cases, they may be hurting the cause, because the sleazeballs just take that great content and then re-purpose it for their own sleazy uses.

As for growing thicker skin, maybe I should, but also, maybe I shouldn’t have to?

I will, however, make more of an effort to point out the ones that are doing good work.  For this post, I’m going to stick with mentioning Mitch, since he deserves the credit for inspiring this, but rest assured there are more.  Hell, I probably follow 100 of them on Twitter right now.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts on how we can change the perception of marketers, or even if we can at all?  Drop a note in the comments, or fire me off an e-mail.  This is something I really want to discuss.

I’d love for my mother not to have to worry what people will think when she tells them what I do for a living.

Note from Adam: Today’s post is by Thomas Ballantyne, the savviest internet marketer in the pest control industry! Thomas tested Google’s Sponsored Tags in Houston, and agreed to share his experience with us. Check out more of his work at his blog, or on Twitter.

Google has added sponsored tags for local business listings in Austin, TX. They are now serving up sponsored tags in Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta.

Below is a month of sponsored tag results for Houston, TX.

When considering if the sponsored ad is worth the money, my gut reaction is yes… but the numbers may tell a little different story. At $25/month the sponsored tag gave me 19 clicks to my website. The actual CTR is hard to determine because I am not sure if I am receiving more impressions of the tag then I am impressions of my map listing. But if the tag is related to the impressions the CTR would be 2.13%. The cost per click is $1.31. That cost is lower than a “pest control” click but not lower then the average click of my pest control campaign. So the good news is I get impressions for pest control. The bad news is I am also getting totally unrelated impressions for things like animal shelter. And just so you are aware, I am also getting a lot of impressions for people who search our company name, Bulwark Exterminating. Since this is not a PPC campaign I cannot use negative keywords or exclude non related searches. This makes it hard to determine the real value of the clicks. Of course since I am not paying on a per click base then I shouldn’t really care. Click away!

Actions to Impressions (ATI)

What is more curious is if the yellow tag under a business listing improves the overall performance of the business listing. So going back and comparing historical data shows a difference of actions to impressions (ATI). Prior to the sponsored tag my ATI was 20.98% for my Houston location. After the sponsored tag the ATI was 22.96%. That is an improvement of 1.98% on my regular business listing. Looks pretty good at first glance. But when comparing all other non-sponsored listings, the average increase for the same period of time was +2.15%. Because the difference is lower one must ask “Is a sponsored tag just dividing up clicks you would have gotten anyways?”

As pest control is very seasonal and dependent on many, many factors, there are a number of reasons this could vary. So as for now we cannot determine the effect of the yellow sponsored tag on overall ATI. As of Monday, Austin went live so in the near future we will be able to compare both Austin and Houston.

Atlanta is also live, but apparently my address in Buford, GA, suburb of Atlanta, does not qualify me for the Atlanta test.

Note on Numbers Above:

Google does not clearly define what they count as impressions. If you are featuring a map of your business on your website then this may skew your numbers. So to suggest that the above numbers only included searches for those keywords would be an assumption. One should also note that LBL’s may or may not be accounted in your Google webmaster’s tools. Based on the fact that Bulwark only shows up in the organic listings for pest control on page 2 and the webmaster tools show impressions on for positions 2-10 on page 1, I am inclined to believe that your webmaster’s tools do include the results from the Local Business Listings.

But again, I am just a pest control guy.

Disclaimer: I am a (online) product manager at the largest directory publisher in Canada.  Despite this bias, I firmly believe that the knowledge acquired working on the inside allows me to simply be more confident in my analysis.

I’ve often written on this blog, and around the internet, about finding the right marketing mix, and I’ve always included directories as part of that mix.  I’ve taken some heat for that from fellow internet marketers. They see directories as dinosaurs on the verge of extinction.  Therefore, in this post, I will take the time to defend my position and outline ten reasons why directories still have a place in this world of search, social and mobile.

1) Not everyone uses the internet to find businesses

The standard assumption among most tech-savvy marketers (and most marketers are tech-savvy, because that’s what’s cool nowadays) is that everyone uses the internet to find what they’re looking for.  That’s easy to assume while watching the crowds of iPhone-toting Gen-Yers, and Blackberry-toting Gen-Xers.  However, there is a significant segment of the population that does not immediately turn to the web when looking to make a purchase.

My father taught me everything I know about computers from how to assemble one, to how to get online.  Last summer he needed a roofing contractor.  Imagine my surprise when I saw him haul out the Yellow Pages.  My mother is less tech-savvy, and she would never even dream of turning to Google to find a business. To her, Google is where you go to get information for your kid’s school project.

I could also go back another generation and talk about my grandparents, but I think you get the idea. You can restrict yourself to online advertising and get me as your consumer, but you’ll be missing two generations of my family that would probably be far more lucrative.

2) Mixed media value

The idea that directories are only the big yellow books that get delivered to your door is wilfull blindness.  The fact of the matter is, every important Yellow Pages publisher in the world has become a media company that offers print, online, video, search, mobile and more. Often, YP publishers offer these media in bundled packages for a value that small businesses would be hard pressed to find elsewhere.  Purchasing all of those media segments independently would be too expensive for a SMB marketing budget, but directory publishers that understand the SMB market, have crafted bundles that make sense to the small business.

3) SEO value of being in an online directory

SEO is all about the quality of the sites that link to your website.  Online directory sites, especially the biggest and most reputable ones, generally have excellent search engine rankings, and obtaining links from these directories is easy and cheap.  While the SEO value of a link from a directory should never be your primary reason for purchasing online directory advertising, it is an excellent side benefit.

4) Competent marketing advice from a knowledgeable advisor

The best thing about Google Adwords is also the worst thing about Google Adwords: It is self-serve.  Google does an excellent job of giving advertisers tools and getting out of the way.  In the context of large companies with marketing departments that have the time, resources, and money to spend on figuring out these tools, this is wonderful.  These companies can do things in house that they used to have to hire agencies to do for them.

For SMB’s however, this is not as appealing.  As a small business owner, you have dozens of hats to wear, and you don’t want to spend twenty hours a week optimizing your $100/month Google Adwords campaign.  In fact, do you even know for a fact that you should be spending that money on Adwords?

Small business owners are experts in many things, from their own industry, to managing the day to day operations of a business, but they are not marketing experts.  Directories employ people — whether they call them sales reps, account consultants, media advisors or anything else — who understand the media and the marketing and who can act as a guide through a confusing landscape, so that business owners can concentrate on running their businesses.

5) Trustworthy source of advertising

One of the biggest things that directory publishers have going for them is that they have been around for a long time, and are trusted companies in their own right.  In Canada, Yellow Pages Group has been an industry leader for over 100 years.  That history and brand carries weight with it.  If you’re an advertiser, are you going to trust your marketing budget to a company that has been around for a century and has a proven track record, or are you going to trust the guy who opened up shop in his parents’ basement?

The example is extreme, because in the US, the directory industry is filled with a lot of smaller players, some of whom are no more trustworthy than the guy in his parents’ basement.  However, the big players in the US, (YellowPages.com, SuperPages.com, YellowBook.com and a couple others) have an equally strong brand.

6) The demise of any medium is always slower than originally forecasted

I recently read an article from 1993 talking about the demise of the newspaper industry.  While the newspaper industry is by no means in good shape, I’d like to point out that it is currently 2010, and it is still hobbling along 17 years after people were predicting its extinction, and it will likely continue to hobble along for several more years.

I have no delusions that my children will ever use a print Yellow Pages directory, but as I mentioned above in point 1, the generations that do still use it are still around, and are going to be around for quite a few more years to come.

7) Protecting market share

While I don’t like using this as an argument to advertise in any medium, because it feels coercive, it holds true nonetheless:  If you don’t advertise in a directory, your competitors will.  This simply means that not only are you missing eyeballs by not being in a certain spot, but that those eyeballs are going directly to your competitors.  While marketing for defensive branding purposes isn’t appealing, it’s sometimes necessary.

Comprehensiveness of listings

On the flip side, there’s a certain trust that’s built around having a directory listing.  While Google prides itself on giving relevant info (almost) every time, directories for their part, are generally recognized as being comprehensive.  As such, a business’ absence from a directory conveys the sense that he’s not really fully arrived, while his presence conveys an established place in his industry.  It’s as if the space taken up in a certain heading is a validation that you are in fact a player in a given industry, and that is a small step in building trust.  Whether that trust is based on something real, or based solely on customers’ perception doesn’t really matter, because perception is reality.

9) Directories drive innovation and competition

How can a yellow telephone book drive innovation? The argument of the directory nay-sayers is that the industry is stuck in the past. In fact, the industry is going to great lengths to reinvent itself and pushing the envelope.  In the past year alone, I’ve watched YP.ca launch a simplified search marketing solution that tracks leads rather than just clicks; a bevy of online video options; two really cool mobile applications (the YP.ca app, and the Urbanizer app); a ratings and review platform; integration with Facebook; and much more.  And it’s not just YP.ca that’s doing these kinds of cool things, YPs in the US are pushing the envelope as well, most recently YP.com’s Buzz platform has caught my attention (even if the name choice is questionable).

It’s also not just about what the YPs are doing themselves, but about what they’re forcing competitors to do.  Google’s current Enhanced Local Business Listing product (aka Tags), is an attempt to win SMB business away from YP publishers.

The fact of the matter is that in the local marketing space, YPs are the incumbents, and to displace them, other companies are doing cool things to win SMBs marketing dollars.  The winners in all of this are the SMBs.

10) They work: actual customers see actual results

The final reason is really the only one that really counts: Directories, online and off, still drive results. Advertisers are still seeing a positive ROI. YPs have had a hard time demonstrating this because in the days of their domination they didn’t have to.  Now, with the transparency of the internet, they’ve probably been too slow pulling back the curtains on the results they deliver, but not for fear of what’s behind it, but simply because large ships have a hard time changing course quickly.

More and more, though, directories are providing this kind of transparency with call measurement and tracking, and even advertisers are being surprised by just how much of their business they owe to their directory advertising.

I’ll leave you with this link to a recent study conducted by Burke and comScore that supports much of what I said above.  SMBs need to decide now what’s more important, the results, or buying the quick and easy line that “YPs are dinosaurs.”

There are two ways to build a business.  The first method is the Market-Sell model.  In this model, you market your product, and then you sell it.  Repeat ad nauseum. That’s it. The second method is Market-Connect-Sell-Support-Sell Again.  Market your product, connect with your customers, and then sell your product.  But you’re not done yet, because then you need to support your customers post-sale, because ultimately, your goal is to have them buy from you again.

The difference between the two methods is that the second method leads to more repeat customers, which is a more efficient way of building a business.  It’s also a hell of a lot more fun as a small business to connect with your customers than it is to sell to faceless strangers.  The secret ingredient to method #2 is trust.

Building trust online is not easy.  It’s a lot easier to trust someone that you’ve looked him in the eye and shook hands.  The internet, almost by definition, is untrustworthy.  Our beloved world wide web still has a reputation for being a hangout for seedy characters (the Dave Chappelle skit about what the internet would look like if it were a real place is a pretty good depiction of how the web is viewed – unfortunately, I can’t link to it because I’m in Canada, and Comedy Central doesn’t like Canadians).

In order to overcome the additional barriers of gaining trust that are imposed by the internet, small business owners need to find ways to connect with their customers.  Luckily, doing this is not as difficult as it might seem.  Connecting with a customer is as simple as dropping him a personalized e-mail to see how he’s enjoying his products; or keeping your ears open on social media for anyone talking about your brand and responding quickly and politely; or providing excellent post sale customer service; or interacting with fans on a Facebook fan page; or getting them to come in to your physical location with a Foursquare offer, and then connecting in person; or any other number of possible methods. In short, trust is about connecting, and connecting is about being human.

The above mentioned methods are all direct methods of earning trust.  If you try to do that with each and every one of your customers, you will either be limiting yourself to a small number of customers, or you’ll be tapping yourself out at some point, and then you won’t be connecting well with anyone.  Thus, small business owners need to earn trust indirectly.

Everyone trusts someone, and that person doesn’t necessarily need to be you.  As long as the people who trust you, are spreading the word about you to people who trust them, you’re building trust indirectly.  This is what Seth Godin refers to as building your tribe. (affiliate link)

The doubters of trust and human business always claim that trying to build trust isn’t a scalable business model, and so processes and efficiencies are more important than connection.  Indirect trust building, and having people that trust you enough to use their own influence to spread word about you is how building trust scales.

There are a few trust building exercises most small business can implement quickly:

1) Maintain a blog. Show your expertise in your field, and show your personality.  People trust people, not faceless entities.

2) Video posts. On the internet, you may not be able to shake someone’s hand, but with video, you can at least look them in the eye.  Videos are a great way to build trust.

3) Write a book. This may be easier said than done, but have you ever noticed that a published author gains instant credibility?  People are far more likely to trust someone who has published a work that demonstrates his or her expertise, even if they’ve never read it.

4) Provide exceptional customer service. Think providing exceptional customer service is difficult?  Think again.  All you need to do is under-promise, and over-deliver.

You can have the most efficient processes in the world in place to run your company, it can run like a well-oiled machine, but if you don’t have the trust of your customers, you’re not going very far.

Don’t believe me?  Just ask Toyota.

I’ve been reading and talking about education a lot lately. The Next Great Generation, a site which I’m an editor for, is having a whole week about the topic, so for some in depth thoughts on it from some bright young minds, I think you should take a look. I also have a long-winded piece coming up on that site about the topic, but I wanted to give a quick look into how western education systems affect creativity.

I went through a very normal public school education. I feel like I have a good picture of what a decent public school education looks like, and all I can say is that as far as fostering creativity goes, it sucks. How do I know this? Because I was great at school. Seriously, I was really, really good at school. I was the kid you hate because he doesn’t even try and still gets A’s. Where’d it get me? Into an academic advisor’s office that kept pushing me to do pre-med even though I hated all physical sciences. Once I finally decided to ignore that advice, where did my good grades get me? Law school. Fat lot of good that did me.

Do you see the problem here? Our best students are getting pushed towards careers that are completely empirical, and leave no room for creativity. We don’t need more lawyers and accountants. Yes, we need more doctors, but maybe if there were people coming up with creative solutions to the underlying causes of illness, we wouldn’t.

I’m not suggesting that our society will improve dramatically if we have more dance instructors or sculptors. I’m suggesting that every single function in society could be well-served with an injection of creativity. Let’s stop teaching people how to do things, and let’s encourage them to figure out their own way of doing things.

And one last thing, a $40,000+ piece of paper doesn’t prove anything other than that you can memorize information and regurgitate it onto a page. So, I beg you, if you’re one of those people who tries to impress others with his degrees, stop. Just stop. Please.