This article was created by Hubspot and based on US statistics but it applies just as strongly here in Australia.

Yellow Pages used to represent the final stage of the buying process when people were ready to make a purchase decision. But today the buying process is no longer a linear path ending with the book. Instead, it follows the curves and tools of emerging online technologies.

Some Quick Facts:

Since 2007, many states quit printing residential listings or have pending requests: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Traditional land lines are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10% each year.
Consumers increasingly consider online services before Yellow Pages as they make purchase decisions.
“Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.” — Bill Gates.
Buying behavior is changing rapidly as people shift their research and shopping habits from traditional marketing channels to the Internet. Consumers can educate themselves more than ever about a product or a service before they make a purchase decision. They compare prices, check customer reviews, read case studies and receive instant responses to their queries. It is just a matter of time for this change in buying behavior to hit your industry.

Some Industries Have Already Tipped

The shift in consumer behavior has already reached some industries, such as the travel industry and catering. These businesses rarely buy Yellow Pages ads because calls don’t come in that way for them. In the travel business, a number of online tools have emerged to make the buying process more engaging and educational. All of a sudden, sites like Priceline.com and TripAdvisor offer tons of valuable content for travelers. Couples preparing for their wedding celebrations also gravitate to the Web for catering information and honeymoon destinations.

Some Industries Are Further from the Tipping Point

There are businesses in the Service industries that haven’t fully experienced this shift yet. Plumbers and contractors, for instance, still dominate the phonebook. If you are looking to renovate your bathroom, it can difficult to find enough information about it on the Web. There isn’t enough local content online to provide consumers with the same shopping experience as what the travel industry offers.

But it is a matter of time for this new buying behavior to slowly make its way to all industries. Then, the question you will need to answer is, “Where on that line am I?”

Huge Opportunity Lies with the “Untipped” Industries

A great marketing opportunity lies with the industries that haven’t tipped yet. If you are ahead of the curve and following closely the shift in consumer behavior, you can own this new space and become a trusted advisor online. You will gain a huge competitive advantage rather than trying to catch up with competitors who have been more aware of the changes in buying processes.

As Andrew Quinn, HubSpot’s Sales Training Manager with 16 years of experience in the Yellow Pages industry said, “The market is not going to go backwards and reverse itself.” That means you will need to step up.

When was the last time you used the yellow pages, except for a door stop?

The original video was first released in August last year and has been viewed over 1.8 million times. It was arguably one of the best social media videos ever. It turns out things are changing so rapidly in the Social Media world that in only 9 months the statistics are outdated so creator Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has updated and refreshed the video….. and here it is!

This video is a fantastic resource to explain the benefits of Social Media and what the future holds for us in business. If the exponential growth in the last 9 months is any indication and the adoption of Social Media to come, expect version 3 to be coming out very soon!

Spread the word my friends, if your business doesn’t embrace Social Media what will happen to it?

There have been 4 major events this past year that have changed the importance and the effectiveness of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
1) Yahoo & Google announced that they no longer use key words and meta tags in their searches that effect search engine rankings.
2) Facebook passed Google as the most visited website on the Internet.
3) The phrase “Facebook” became the most searched word typed into search engines.
4) Google created their own social networking site, Buzz.

SEO is still important but not as important now as SMO (Social Media Optimisation). With Facebook recently overtaking Google as the most visited website on the internet shows that people using the Internet are the ones that are dictating where it’s future is heading and what it’s going to be used for. Searching for information will still be a part of life on the Internet, but entertainment, socialising and sharing experiences is what most users are now looking for and doing online. And the scramble is now on to take advantage of this shift.

Brands and companies need to have a social media presence. This shows that it’s now more important for brands and companies to have their message on social media, it’s now not good enough what companies and businesses write about themselves on their own website, it’s what others are saying about them and how their message is being spread through social media.

This ‘shifting of the cheese’ shows that users of the Internet are the ones that are unconsciously but effectively controlling and designing the way the the internet will be used in the future and how we will interact with it.

Businesses must now combine both SEO and SMO if they wish to be found and have an effective online presence or they run the risk of not getting their message heard.

To kick of the new year here are some predictions for the year ahead in Digital Marketing. eMarketer is one of the most cited resources for internet marketing trends so when I came across their predictions for 2010 I thought I would share them with you.

1. Digital Video Convergence
One of the keys to transitioning the US home video audience from DVDs to digital streams and downloads will be the emergence of technology that bridges the gap between the computer and the TV. The Consumer Electronics Show in early 2010 will usher in TVs with direct Internet connectivity, or with on-screen access to content portals such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix. As online video becomes intertwined with the living-room TV experience, download and streaming services will take on a prominent role in the home entertainment ecosystem

2. Hybrid Plans that Combine Subscription Fees with Advertising
More marketers will increasingly embrace online video advertising, supported by the twin boom of video streams and video ad networks.

Further support for video ad growth will come from sites that offer a deeper catalog of professional video content—such as whole seasons of TV shows (both present and past), exclusives of entire sports events and other premium content. Such offerings will attract larger audiences. But in order to maintain the costs of deep-catalog video, the sites and their studio and TV network partners will need to introduce hybrid plans that combine subscription fees with advertising.

3. Online News Content
Media companies are at the center of a fierce debate over how to best monetize digital content. In recent years, they swung from one extreme to another—first charging the consumer for access to content, then opening the floodgates to free, ad-supported content (with a few notable exceptions).

Now, some media entities with premium offerings are again contemplating paid-content experiments. As these play out in 2010, we’ll see what works and what doesn’t. Our prediction? Consumers will resist paid systems, and competitors will capitalize on the negative sentiment with ad-supported content. In the end, there will be islands of paid content (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times) and hybrids of paid and ad-supported models, but on the whole, the digital media landscape will be predominantly ad-based.

4. Twitter
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to guess that 2010 will be the year in which Twitter turns its focus toward building its business. So far, it has concentrated on audience growth, and by any measure it had a spectacular year. (eMarketer estimates that Twitter’s US user base tripled to 18 million in 2009.)

The questions now are: What kind of business will Twitter build, and will it succeed?

The revenue streams that have been discussed include paid corporate accounts, celebrity authentication and temporal search. Of these, search seems the most realistic as a revenue generator. There will be formidable challenges, however: After all, how does a marketer insert itself into a short, time-sensitive conversation without disrupting the flow of that conversation and alienating the user?

It’s not clear how, or if, Twitter will overcome these obstacles, but co-founder Biz Stone offered a tantalizing hint when he told Reuters that the company has a novel form of advertising up its sleeve. Expect Twitter to roll this out in 2010 as the cornerstone of its temporal search business.

Another thing to look out for is a possible Twitter IPO. This appears a more likely avenue than an acquisition, which loomed as a possibility at this time last year.

5. Social Plus Search Will Equal Better Results, More Ad Opportunities
Search will get more social in several ways: by including real-time content in results (e.g., Twitter posts), adding information from social network friends to results, and using collective information from other Web users to hone search relevance. By using social data to filter search queries, search engines will hope to deliver even more relevant results and more effective advertising. These trends will yield new ad formats that may incorporate friends’ viewpoints or interactions directly into the ad—and will raise new red flags among privacy advocates. Those search and social sites that get ahead of the transparency curve will tend to gain more consumer mindshare than those who operate under a heavier cloak.

Another key change to speed up in 2010 will be more video results as part of general search queries. That will help drive the greater traffic marketers will increasingly expect as a trade-off for the continued high CPM costs of video ad placements.

6. Mobile Commerce’s Time Has Arrived
Whereas consumers once limited their mobile phone purchases to downloadable ringtones and games, today they are using their devices to buy books, apparel and other items associated with online shopping on a PC.

It is eye-catching when a consultancy revises a market forecast upward in the midst of an economic downturn. That is exactly what ABI Research did with its forecast of mobile sales of physical goods in North America. In January 2009 it projected m-commerce sales would reach $544 million this year, up 57% over 2008—impressive in its own right. But in late October, ABI upped its forecast, saying sales would top $750 million in 2009, a whopping 117% annual growth rate. M-commerce’s time has arrived, and it is an easy bet that sales in 2010 will pass the $1 billion mark.

8. Social Plus Search Will Equal Better Results, More Ad Opportunities
Search will get more social in several ways: by including real-time content in results (e.g., Twitter posts), adding information from social network friends to results, and using collective information from other Web users to hone search relevance. By using social data to filter search queries, search engines will hope to deliver even more relevant results and more effective advertising. These trends will yield new ad formats that may incorporate friends’ viewpoints or interactions directly into the ad—and will raise new red flags among privacy advocates. Those search and social sites that get ahead of the transparency curve will tend to gain more consumer mindshare than those who operate under a heavier cloak.

Another key change to speed up in 2010 will be more video results as part of general search queries. That will help drive the greater traffic marketers will increasingly expect as a trade-off for the continued high CPM costs of video ad placements.

9. Retailers Grapple with Measuring Social Commerce
A number of major retailers have established a presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. For now, retailers are intent to learn from these experiments and are not too concerned with driving e-commerce sales. Building brand awareness and a solid fan base and generating leads have been deemed sufficient. But in 2010, retailers will become more serious about trying to measure social media’s impact on sales. One question retailers will grapple with is how much a large fan base translates into sales or brand loyalty.

10. Social Ad Networks Will Expand
Expect more momentum—and regulatory scrutiny—behind advertising that is targeted based on information from social network user profiles. News Corp.’s Fox Audience Network (FAN) and services from startups 33Across, Media6° and others are already up and running. Meanwhile, some advertisers, such as Discovery Channel, have tested ad formats that are personalized on the fly by using Facebook profile data.

So there you have it, what do you think? Are these accurate? Do you have any predictions of your own?