Verizon SuperPages will leapfrog the increasingly stagnant Internet Yellow Pages space by focusing on “co-opetition, personalization and risk-taking,” said Internet Division President Eric Chandler in a wide-ranging address at Kelsey’s Drilling Down on Local conference in San Jose.
It isn’t the first time that SuperPages has attempted to remake itself. Two years ago, SuperPages was determined to become the Web’s ultimate shopping portal. But going forward, Chandler acknowledged it would be folly to stick with an ecommerce strategy. “There’s been significant evolution over the past two years,” he said. “Performance-based ads have taken the place of storefronts.”
With hindsight, that makes perfect sense to Chandler. “Most advertisers don’t really have much to put up,” he said.
Selling for Google
Chandler’s big news at the conference was the announcement of a sales deal with Google – enabling SuperPages to join rivals such as Yellowpages.com and Dex as salespeople for the marketing behemoth. For the past couple of months, Chandler revealed that SuperPages tested a Google package on 400 advertisers, and saw an incremental spend of $173 per customer. “They have money to spend if you can prove you have value for them.”
More importantly, customers in the test also want to do it via SuperPages’ sales force, rather than self-serve, which would favor a Google-direct channel. “No matter how easy you make self-serve, or performance-based ads, a percentage of customers won’t want to do it,” said Chandler. “The vast majority of our customers want us to do the work for them.”
Looking past the Google deal, Chandler said he wants to provide even greater distribution for advertisers by striking additional sales deals with MSN’s upcoming AdCenter, Yahoo and Ask. The company already provides basic IYP for MSN.
Internet Only Sales
Addressing the core IYP business, which is based on pay-per-click, SuperPages’ sales force has proved to be a key asset. But the supplemental creation of an Internet-only sales unit has allowed the company to reach a whole new base of customers. “The type of activity generated by that has been…. very significant,” he said.
New ways of selling also play a role in the division’s growth, he said. One example is media-like placement, in which advertisers bid to be on the receiving end of teaser pay-per- call ads. For instance, copy for a limousine ad reads “need a lift?” and provides a pay-per-call number.
“We’re putting these ads in 500 directories,” he said. The beauty is “they could change every day” to account for seasonal sales, etc.
Greenlight for User-Generated Content
As for the IYP product, Chandler said the big challenge has been to keep users on the site. He thinks the answer to his dilemma is user-generated content, especially local reviews – a controversial conclusion, since negative reviews might scare away advertisers. But SuperPages found that “users are 18 percent more likely to click on advertiser with reviews/enhanced content.”
Without much effort, SuperPages has already been able to generate 75,000 reviews. Of those, more than 83 percent are service-oriented, which differentiates SuperPages from review-centric Yellow Pages sites such as Judy’s Book and Insider’s Pages, which tend to be more entertainment and dining-oriented. The SuperPages reviews are also surprisingly positive, reported Chandler. “Eighty-seven percent have four or more stars” on a five star system.
Personalization is also an important element for driving usage. Unlike newspapers, Yellow Pages have never had the urge to register and target users, since category searches are self-targeted. But Chandler has reached the conclusion that personalized portals play an important role in user frequency and loyalty.
One feature that SuperPages is providing on “My Directory” service is more detail on businesses, and geo-targeted coupons tailored to work or home addresses.