Comments on: Another Year, Another Useless Yellow Pages

By: Sterling

Sterling — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:45:37 +0000

I believe the yellow pages will be out of style, computers are taking over. We need to save paper!!!

By: John D

John D — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:14:15 +0000

If your industry is the name of the product or service (trucks.com, paintball.com, lawyer.com, discjockey.com) you would have a great advantage in searches but not necessarily top of mind brand awareness. What you do with that site once found is another matter. If nothing else do make sure the phone number is front and center as well as a simple contact form.

By: Rob Sequin

Rob Sequin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:51:51 +0000

Interesting.

Would you want to own AceWidgets.com for example?

Do you think you would get more business if you owned your product.com or your industry .com?

By: John D

John D — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:45:30 +0000

Most YP consultants up sell you to a bigger ad for a special “sale” price. Each year you advertise it gets a little bigger for just a little more because of a discount (a so called 30-60% discount). Want to go smaller? OK, but no reduction in ad cost! In other words, the $1500 ad has worked its way up to $2500 over the years. You can go back to the $1500 ad but it will still cost $2500!

Branding is the name of the game. If buyers think ACE WIDGETS when a need arises ACE WIDGETS has an excellent chance of getting the business. Trying to directly correlate an ad with results is interesting but not the best way to grow a business.

We track all of our internet searches. 70% of the searches are for our name. The products and we offer account for the other 30%. That 70% already knows us by name, how? By all of the hard to trace but obviously effective advertising we do and by making sure we can be found. So we don’t plan to abandon the YP we just won’t use it as an advertising medium but as a directory.

By: Rob Sequin

Rob Sequin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:20:37 +0000

JohnD,

Thanks for the insight.

What other types of ads will the yellow page ad cost reductions go towards?

“Spend 80% of the ad money money on top of mind awareness (radio, cable tv, billboards, direct mail, shows) spend 5% on YP ads, spend 15% on internet marketing.”

I suppose it depends on the type of business but radio, cable and billboards are just branding with no measurement of response.

Why not spend 30% on Internet marketing that is only spent on people to whom you want to show ads and is 100% measurable?

By: John D

John D — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:14:17 +0000

As the guy who last year spent over $250,000 a year in yellow page ads I can tell you that yellow page advertising is no longer king. This year we will reduce our ads to bold listings and save at least two thirds of that money. It will go into other types of ads.

Do fancy or large ads help people make decisions? For pizza, restaurants, local car repair and other small local businesses the answer is probably. When it comes to other types of business researched in the YP users already have a brand name product or service in mind and the decision is already made, they may use the YP to locate that brand name so an expensive ad is a waste of money.

Spend 80% of the ad money money on top of mind awareness (radio, cable tv, billboards, direct mail, shows) spend 5% on YP ads, spend 15% on internet marketing.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:16:05 +0000

I wrote this post at the beginning of the month. I just walked down the street and saw that a few people haven’t even picked up their yellow pages yet. Is that better than throwing them into the trash?