YP Companies need to change their strategies and maybe their management

Many of the digital services are already available. Many YP companies own a sales relationship with tens of thousands of advertisers. These advertisers range from large brands to Mom and Pop corner shops. But who would not pay if you bring business to their door.

Take a look at some of the innovative mobile products Cellcity offers to the YP industry. Cellcity CheckOut, an instant way to provide YP companies with the capability to offer their merchant customers with their own instantly customizable mobile m-commerce store, iBid, a solution to enable the service industries (plumbers, electricians, removalist, home appliance mechanics, gardeners etc) to bid on job requests from a consumer, click to call, click to SMS, mobile advertising etc.

But how many YP companies are investing in new sales streams? Meaningfully investing? Very few. Not too many are really taking a good look in the mirror. They prefer to play the margin game on books and web.

Books will probably still work in many small towns across the world where 3.5G communication is not prevalent. Perhaps this suits many small communities in the US. It's not suitable in larger cities and certainly not in Europe or Asia.

Fact is YP companies own the historical relationship with companies who have been placing their money with YP for years. It's up to the YP companies to introduce the new sales vehicles. To start thinking like Google and offering Google-esque services in bundled packages the up-sells the engagement of what mobile (and other networked digital services) can provide.

So how do we take control of YP management/sales teams to get them to sell these products? we have customers in Asia, Europe, Brazil and Israel and there is movement and demand. But in the US... nada. At YP conferences we hear talk but see little action.

I imagine it is very difficult for non-digital aware C level management to navigate a digital and mobile future from a leadership position. But it shouldn't be.

Mobile platforms offer YP businesses a lifeline to the future. The cell phone is offering a whole host of new products that the consumer and the merchants are embracing today. And if the pace of mobile internet and mobile application adoption is rising so rapidly, why are these YP businesses being so slow in adopting solutions?

Cellcity can deliver a YP organization a mobile solution for iPhone within just weeks. A fully customized solution with 2 months, and a standard template-based local search offering within days. But it requires management to make a decision.

Groupon is an example of what you can do with coupons but by no means the only way of doing it. Customer engagement can take many forms utilizing mobile platforms from SMS and click to call to initiating mobile marketing activities to cross selling databases of consumers based on preferences and locations to advertising, coupons, m-commerce offerings etc.

Basic local search should and will be free. Google, Yahoo, Bing and businesses like FourSquare etc are basing their future businesses on giving this free search away for free. YP businesses need to embrace this concept and then add value by bringing the merchant and customer together and monetizing this. And as expressed above, there are many ways they can do this today and many more ways they will be able to do this in the future.

What I find really surprising is that adding these mobile products and services, these mobile marketing products and advertising solutions enable YP companies to extend their current business models. Yet going mobile is treated with such caution by the YP community. The Equity community should not be touching a businesses that doesn't have a robust mobile strategy.

YP Industry in Digital Denial

The YP industry worldwide seems to be in a state of digital denial. Only a few of the more insightful management teams have seen the light.

While the digital web still offers business opportunities, mobile digital strategies are savior of the industry. The entire YP industry runs in fear of Google, yet what it should be doing is embracing it and some of its strategies.

Google should be seen as an additional avenue through which YP can offer its services to its customers (as it can also do with Facebook and other online portals search portals).

Coupon-ing is a natural fit for YP companies going forward. It does not have to be Groupon, many companies such as Cellcity have mobile coupon technology that can help YP companies. But any such strategy should be part of a greater m-commerce and customer-merchant engagement strategy that YP can profit from by leading the engagement.

YP companies own an historical relationship with the merchant, it has the sales team and personal contact points to make this happen.

YP companies have to re-think their sales strategy to embrace a rampant mobile world that offers new possibilities the consumer world is already ready for. It is up to business to create the solutions to serve the consumer.

We've been banging the mobile drum for the past 2 years for YP companies to prepare and what we've seen (a complete lack of real commitment) from many of the biggest names in the YP industry should make YP business leaders cringe with embarrassment.