Yell – futureproofing UK businesses with expert digital marketing

Claire Miles, CEO, Yell

For many years, the key to running a successful business meant offering the highest quality goods or services to customers to build a great reputation via word of mouth.

In today’s digital-first world, this is no longer enough – businesses need to create and maintain a fantastic presence and reputation online too. While many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK are aware of this need, some may lack understanding of how best to do this, who can help them promote their business online, and how they can better connect with and engage customers.

For businesses that have already embraced the opportunity to be visible online, the new challenge is that it has become increasingly difficult to stand out from the competition on popular websites, apps, search engines and social media channels. This has opened the door for online advertising to help companies reach their target audience, including professionally built websites to provide the best possible impression to potential customers, and effective strategies to grow and manage reviews.

This means that for many business owners, reaching more customers can feel like a tense balancing act of prioritising the already precious time, energy and money they need to run their business with knowing how to manage their digital growth and marketing efforts.

The catalyst for a lot of businesses realising that a great online presence was a must-have rather than a nice-to-have was of course the recent pandemic. To survive a business climate that simply never existed before, SMEs have had to think quickly and adjust their business offering and setup to suit a more distanced way of working and interacting with both existing and new customers. Investing in online services has been paramount to being able to continue serving customers and keep their business going.

For example, during lockdown, when more people were working at home and not going on holiday, there was a real increase in demand for home improvement supplies. A Yell customer of more than 20 years, family-owned Premier Timber on the Isle of Sheppey, was able to take advantage of this opportunity by ensuring it had a strong, trustworthy online presence that was easy to find and contact. Premier Timber made the most of its Yell listing by activating Yell Messaging so customers could send messages instantly. This enabled the company to showcase its great customer reviews, set up a website for e-commerce and optimise it for the right search terms. Premier Timber was able to grow its customer base and order numbers throughout lockdown way beyond expectations, where many other businesses just weren’t set up to do so.

Customer stories such as this are what have helped make Yell a household name and champion of local businesses for more than 50 years – along with its iconic Yellow Pages TV adverts such as the JR Hartley and James Nesbitt-led campaigns. With the last Yellow Pages directory published in 2018, the Yell brand has evolved with the times, and now offers the latest in digital marketing technology to better help UK businesses boost their online visibility and reputation, and grow their business and customer base.

For smaller businesses with one to five employees, Yell offers self-service business growth tools to improve visibility, reputation and communication online. Yell is now much more than an online directory – it’s a springboard to a much wider network (including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft channels), with a range of features that also help businesses be found, trusted by and connected with customers.

Crucially, they can manage all of this in one place – the innovative Yell for Business app. This gives owners and managers full control of their business’s online presence in the palm of their hand. Yell’s vision is to become a fully transactional online marketplace that allows digital touchpoints across the entire business-customer lifecycle.

For larger, more established SME customers, Yell offers a range of fully managed digital marketing services that help businesses supercharge their online reach and maximise their return on investment. Services include online advertising campaigns (including pay-per-click, display and social media), website creation, video production, search engine optimisation (SEO) and reputation management – all supported by products and services from leading technology companies including Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), Microsoft and Wix.

Yell is continuing to develop and improve what it offers to UK businesses based on real customer feedback, because its mission is – as it always has been – to connect businesses and customers brilliantly.

Yell provides a one stop shop for all your marketing needs – see how it can help you here: business.yell.com/