That is the question. It is directory book advertising renewal time and I am seriously doubting the impact that these books, such as Yellow Pages, BT Phonebook and Thompson Local have now.
When I started seven years ago, just before online advertising really took off, I can remember taking lead after lead from these directories. As well as from word of mouth and recommendation of course! But now, I’ll be lucky if I make one lead every 3 months out of those tired old books! And they’re not cheap either!
Yellow Pages is by far the most expensive of them all. You can quite easily spend thousands in there and not see any sort of return on your investment. Thompson Local is quite a bit cheaper but again, any sort of ROI is highly unlikely. So, the debate in the office was whether we ditch all paper advertising altogether and focus on other means such as online and vans etc, or do something smaller in the Yellow Pages and ditch the rest. My own personal view is that we should come out of them totally and focus on web advertising and website expansion. I just don’t see the point when we now probably make just a half-dozen Yellow Pages leads per year.
The argument against that was about image. If we’re not in the books in some way people might think we have gone bust. Plus, the elderly aren’t online, well some are but not all. How else would they find us if they still use the directories as a means of finding products and services?
I argued that there are far more silver surfers out there than we appreciate and if they really wanted to find our details they would. Probably via a family members’ smart phone! Print advertising is really in it’s last throes is some cases, especially directories. I cannot think of the last time either myself, or mum and dad went to the Yellow Pages to look up something. We have always gone to Google. So I guess that is the question we have to ask ourselves if we are to solve the debate: if we’re not looking in them, who is?
Over the past few months we have put more emphasis on our website, given it a full re-design and brought it right up to date. In fact, I think our company site is one of the best out there now! It has more than paid off, with traffic, leads and sales all going up since we focused more on it. Which I think is proof in the pudding that online does genuinely work better that directories!
Would love to know your thoughts on this. Comments more than welcome!
Reduce the size/cost and minimise the risk of coming out altogether.
You can’t measure it accurately. Some website leads will have come from Yellow Pages.
Absolutely agree with ditching it and doing it yourself on the web, even if your firms are on the more publically orientated side of the trade. The last lot of advertising the firm I work for did in YP cost well over £1800+VAT for a small 3 colour advert as we had 3 YP books covering our supply area. Like yours, it must have brought in a full 6 or 7 enquiries over the year, and without trying to sound disrespectful, almost entirely from ladies over 60. The ‘expert advice’ was pushy, very patronizing and just plain idiotic, and the… Read more »
Came out of all directories years ago.Last burn was £8000 on BT directory creating only 8 leads out of 4 adverts. So paid £1000 for a replacement hinge lead. Now keep my hard earned money rather than transferring to the deep pockets of the directories without receiving the results that they promised every year…….
We stopped yellow pages. & phone book advertising last year, although we still advertise in local newspapers we have not noticed a decline in leads at all, best saving we could have made was to stop the yellow pages
We were recently discussing the same thing. I have to say that print advertising has bought us little return over the last couple of years as most our work has come through referrals, our van and website. We have occasionally tried advertising in local papers, leaflet drops or other printed publications and received not one reply. When we take our calls we always ask (as I’m sure you do) who they heard about us and I can’t remember the last time somebody said the Yellow Pages book.
Save your money!
The ideal situation is to run all marketing efforts in synergy. I do think yellow pages is too expensive. yell.com is worth paying for though.
I know its a plug but there are real alternatives that ought to be considered before spending the same on YP, like online presence on our site that DGB kindly reviewed.
£20 pm gets 24/7 display, with online lead service and all your accreditations, company logo displayed, everything you wish to add, even your sales brochure!
Dont do the same old same old and expect different results, try something new, get different results
Out – we were at one time spending £12k with Yellow Pages, we have cut that down to £2400.00 – still too much. We did a year ago ask them for a call breakdown, they stated ridiculous amounts of calls coming to us via Yellow Pages. We received the call breakdown and when it came to the actual facts most off the calls were from other Companies and not genuine leads. We have a call counter on our site with them, the number of calls that they reckon we have had is nothing like the amount of genuine enquiries. If… Read more »
We have actually made a living out of moving businesses out of the YP and into a content driven marketing strategy. In EVERY case, the business owner has not noticed any downside to CANCELLING the YP print ads as well as the online stuff they sell. They are just not up to date with their products anymore. And the few things of value that they sell, they re-sell at a hefty mark up. No need for that. Bail out on YP and get yourself acquainted with more modern methods of marketing and advertising.