The Yellow Pages aren't dead yet
I'd just finished designing a half dozen Yellow Pages ads for a client when a timely blog post caught my eye. It was Geoff Wilson at PseudoFish heralding the coming death of the Yellow Pages. While Google Local and other web sites may be taking business away from the offline directories, there are still plenty of reasons for small businesses to continue advertising in their local directories:
Offline Customers
There are, of course, still a great many people who use the internet only occasionally or not at all. Robert Scoble thinks this will only be an issue for another 20 years, and he may be right, but I know an awful lot of people in their 20's and 30's who rarely even check their email, much less use the internet to find local businesses. Many of these folks will eventually come online, but I suspect it will take more than 20 years for the number of infrequent internet users to shrink so small that they can be disregarded completely.
Offline Businesses
Those of us already online may still find ourselves turning to the Yellow Pages to find local businesses. It may seem strange to big city dwellers, but in small town America there are still an enormous number of small businesses that have no internet presence at all, while others are just catching on to the need for at least a basic web site and email address. Here in Sutter Creek (population ~3000), I still need to reach for the yellow pages if I want to find a local plumber or electrician.
Tourists
Some people may shudder at the thought of a week without internet access, but a lot of folks like to stay unplugged while they're on vacation. And while many hotels now offer internet access, it's not nearly as ubiquitous as that other book that you'll find in nearly every hotel room (not the one that the Gideons put there). Most of my own Yellow Pages usage comes when I'm away from home, looking to get some food delivered or to call a cab. Businesses that cater to out-of-towners may never abandon the Yellow Pages, at least as long as every hotel room is stocked with a copy.
Motivated Leads
People who find your business in the yellow pages are actively looking for someone to do business with, and they are ready to make a call. Those who find you via the web may be doing a bit more research on their own before they get in touch. These are potential customers as well, so you need a web site that satisfies the "researchers," but you can't neglect the people who just want to pick up the phone and talk to you.
Price
Even as more and more consumers turn to the internet to find local businesses, the printed business directories are still one of the cheapest ways to reach local customers. Just try taking your annual budget for Yellow Page ads and put that money instead into an AdWords campaign. You might be disappointed.
Online is still the future...
Yellow page advertising is not going anywhere; it's just too cheap, easy, and accessible for small businesses to ignore. The internet will certainly continue to command a larger share of the market, and businesses will have to adapt to the realities of the online world in order to survive, but that doesn't mean abandoning proven forms of offline advertising.
The yellow pages will not die just because some consumers claim they don't use it. It's going to stick around until businesses stop seeing a return on their ad dollars.
Mark Raratonga wrote:
As good as your points are, I still can't bring myself to spending thousands of dollars for a listing which is difficult to measure and in an industry which is being fragmented.
Brandon wrote:
Yellowpages advertising should be very measurable. Any responsible YP publisher will encourage their customers to track the results of their ads. I just renewed my advertisement with Yellowbook ("not the other book"), which is also much less expensive and has a great internet site that gets awesome hits. Last year, my rep showed me how Yellowbook could track the results of my ad by putting a forwarding phone number in my ad. Now when customers call that number, it rings right to my phone, and I get a report of all the calls that come through the ad. I Own an HVAC Company, as well as a Pizza Restaurant (I know it's an odd mixture, but I bought the Pizza House from an old friend who was moving cross-country). The results? Shocking - I thought since my HVAC company had been long established I'd get a lot of repeat customers and word-of mouth. I discovered through the call reports that even my regular customers were finding me through the ad, as well as many new customers - Averaging 38 calls/month over the past year, even with the slow economy.
Now, for the pizza house. here's the shocker. I pay out close to $10k per year on direct mail for menus, my Yellow Book ad cost me just under $3500 for the year. I received 432 calls per month on average over the last 12 months from my yellowbook ad. Almost 15 orders per day. The pizza menu/ad in the yellowbook paid for itself for a full year in just under 3 weeks by my calculations. I do a similar tracking process for my direct mail campaign and received about the same number of calls (456/month to be exact), but at a cost of $6500 more than yellowbook. Clearly, the YellowBook is a much greater return on investment.
The Bottom Line is this: Some people find my business online, some find it in yellow book, some get my menus in the mail, and occasionally the HVAC customers pick up the tag on their heating/cooling system and call me from that.
Yellowbook brought me the best return on my advertising dollars, and they were able to prove it. They positioned it this way: Their product works, they want me to be able to make a good business decision in the future, and the tracking information allows me to do that. I am indebted to Yellow Book for proving this to me.
skywalker wrote:
Affordable advertising I don't think so. When 30 to 50% of local searches online, how can the yellow pages continue to raise their rates? The usage shrinks every day and rates are still based on distribution. If consumers had a Do Not Deliver List. Like the national do not call list, then we would see some changes.
Tom St Louis wrote:
i agree with you. in fact, i've made a trashing of the yellow pages but in the end, i knew that yellow page advertising is here to stay.
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