SearchEngineLand posted yesterday about a recent survey of 4,000 US adults and how they search for and find local business information across digital platforms. Clearly, using smart phones to access Google Maps leads the pack, as the chart below shows.
The rise in searching businesses that rank well on Google is huge. Your business can do this. The goal is to achieve better GeoSoMo - Geographically targeted mobile social media marketing.
The GeoSoMo term was coined a few years ago by Scottsdale (AZ) social media marketing company Mint Social (for whose clients I help produce content). At the Mint Social blog, Steve Heideman writes:
"Geosomo is our own coined term for geographically targeted social mobile marketing (sorry HubSpot—we got here first). We first began introducing the concept a couple of years ago when we saw the mobile search and smartphone numbers taking off. What we noticed in our daily lives is that despite the fact that 97% of all consumers use online media to shop locally, many businesses were invisible in this space."
It's a huge wakeup call for businesses to start boosting your presence in local and online search rankings. Please don't say you're still relying on Yellow Pages advertising for your local business! That's a dying breed.
In fact, recently, on an alumni listserv I'm subscribed to, one of the older guard alumni posted something about picking up Yellow Pages instead of a search engine. Another listserv reader named Ian responded with this info below, which completely destroys any inclination you should have about marketing your business with Yellow Pages.
Parting words - Think local, think search, think content for your customers. Enjoy!
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Some fun facts about the yellow pages:
- In 2011, San Francisco banned print yellow pages delivery throughout the city, except to those people who specifically request them.
- "Nearly 70% of adults in the U.S. 'rarely or never' use the phone book, according to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Instead, most of them (60%) use the Internet to find contact information, a number that's certain to continue to rise, especially as smart phone adoption and location-based services both grow."
- "All demographic groups seemingly ignore internet yellow pages, search engines are the preferred channel for ages 18-54 and even the 55-64 group is at a statistical parity between search and print yellow pages (+1% YP). At 15% penetration in the 65+ group it should be noted that even seniors can no longer be ignored on the Web."
- Here's a nice table with % of various age demographics, and the information sources they use to find out about local businesses:
- The Product Stewardship Institute claims local governments spend $54 million a year to dispose of unwanted phone books and $9 million to recycle them.
- The Yellow Pages Association, the trade group repping publishers of the yellow pages, changed its name a few years ago to the Local Search Association". Hmmmm.
- That same trade group, the Local Search Association, informs readers that just a little less than half of the people they surveyed used the print yellow pages in the last month.
- AND, just for fun, and for the sake of comparison, I picked a yellow pages company (DEXO, NYSE) and Google, and compared their 2-year performance as investments. Google Finance even drew me a pretty graph for comparison. Turns out, DexOne is down 94.09% in that time, and Google is up 16.66%. Take a look for yourself.
Finally, here's a joke that I found on the first page I looked at:
- “Why are the Yellow Pages like nursing homes? They’re shockingly expensive, few people under 70 use them, and many who do are just a little out of it.”
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