Enterprise

Yell is amongst the most sustainable companies in the world, and we are proud of the contribution we make to local economies. Business to Consumer directories (B2C) such as Yell have a long history in providing economic and social benefits both to consumers and to advertisers – particularly for small and medium sized (SME) businesses.

Research shows that although services are increasingly moving online, internet and mobile services continue to complement those provided by printed directories. For many, the printed directory remains the principal way to access local goods and services.

Supporting our users and advertisers
The majority of our advertisers are small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs), employing fewer than ten people. They view classified directory advertising as a highly valuable proposition that constitutes a significant part of their marketing budget. As a product, our directories not only offer a valued source of information, but also represent a significant source of sales leads for many small businesses that in turn support local economies. In the last year, for instance, 546,000 people bought an advert in a Yellowbook directory.

It is important that our advertisers have the right information to make an appropriate decision about their advertising. Businesses need to invest in advertising that provides them with a good return and with our free call monitoring services we can prove that advertising with us does just that.

Yellowbook recently provided more than 6,000 webinar presentations to our advertisers, educating them on the value of a web presence and the specific solutions Yellowbook can provide, as well as launching a Visibility Report tool which generates an SEO analysis report of an advertiser’s Yellowbook provided website and calculates a visibility grade. They have also provided tips and techniques to help customers get the most out of their advertising on a 30 minute CD ‘How to Turn Calls into Customers’.

We have more than 6,000 sales people across Yell Group to service our advertisers and we aim to ensure they conduct themselves with the highest standards of professionalism and integrity. In the UK we run a sales compliance campaign ‘Winning Fairly, Selling Fairly’ to ensure we maintain our ethical approach to selling. In the US, our core value of ‘Think long term, act with integrity’ provides the foundation for our commitment to ethical selling. In Spain, our ‘Ojo al Dato’ campaign ensures the information collected from our advertisers is correct.

For the eighth straight year, Selling Power Magazine ranked Yellowbook among the ‘50 Best Companies to Sell For’. Each year, the magazine identifies companies with the most to offer sales people.

Working with key suppliers
Yellowbook’s ethical guidelines for suppliers ensure best practices in diverse aspects of the supply chain: fair and equal labour standards, compliance and governance practices, environmental excellence, and responsible products and services. Currently, 76% of Yellowbook key suppliers have committed to adhering to the guidelines.

In 2008, Yell Publicidad in Spain launched ethical purchasing guidelines for their suppliers. Currently, 46% of their suppliers are signed up to them, and they aim for 100% by 2011. Yell UK has had ethical purchasing guidelines in place since 2006, and now 95% of UK suppliers have signed up.

Supporting enterprise
In the UK, for the last three years we have teamed up with horsesmouth.co.uk to sponsor The Small Business Mentor of the Year Award, an initiative aimed at celebrating and recognising mentors who have contributed towards the success of small businesses. Horsesmouth.co.uk is an online social mentoring network launched in January 2008. It’s an innovative way for people to network and provide business mentoring, while retaining their anonymity if desired. The site is made up of three areas – work, life and learning. Each of these areas promotes knowledge sharing and advice.

In March 2010, Yell UK sponsored the Best Small/Medium Business Award at the Belfast Telegraph Northern Ireland Business Awards.

In 2010, Yell sponsored The Pitch, a national event that invited the UK’s small businesses, including start-ups, to present their business to a panel of industry experts. The sponsorship, now in its second year, formed part of our corporate responsibility strategy to support the UK’s small businesses. The Pitch promoted Yell as a champion of UK enterprise to more than 240,000 SMEs.

Ten Yell UK mentors have signed up to Reading Future 50 – supporting Reading University’s most enterprising students who are working with local small businesses to implement a social media marketing strategy.