6 more reasons to not advertise in Yellow pages
We all love yellow pages right ? WRONG.
Our business up till recently did advertise with yellow pages however we have stopped all forms of advertising for more reasons than one. Here i will go into 6 more reasons to not advertise in yellow pages and why you should consider stopping your advertisements with yellow pages.
1. Yellow pages gives bad customer service
Do you like to be on hold for 25minutes to then be greeted by a rep that does not have a clue what your talking about and needs to forward your call to another department to only be asked your security questions again ? I know this is not uncommon and if there is one thing that really gives me the sh$%s is repeating what i have just wasted my breath telling someone else before. Yellow pages is the king of this.
2. Yellow pages is a dead advertising medium
Yes this is true. Its not what it used to be. Have you noticed how yellow pages is now exploring different ways to get your business thru website design, online marketing such as SEO, PPC and other methods. Seriously what does yellow pages know about online marketing they are a company based around a off line advertising book. That’s it. They have not been in the game long enough to be called experts in online advertising with technologies such as SEO, PPC marketing. Its best to leave these online marketing strategies to the real experts not people who employee cheap labor and call themselves experts. Besides this in a 2008 report it estimated that they would loose close to 40% of their revenue over a 5 year period due to people not opting to advertise in the book anymore. However recent articles show this is happening quicker than expected. There are many other forms of advertising that will give you a better return on your investment.
3. Yellow pages has a poor return of investment
Talk about poor return on investment. We have advertised in yellow pages local for quite a few years and to be totally honest i think we received about 3 calls out of it. We should of stopped earlier however this was not on our priority list at the time. Will it work for you ? probably not however give it a try put an ad in your local yellow pages and test and measure it for a period of 12 months. I would say if you don’t get regular calls from it then its a waste of time and money. Be expected to pay in upwards of thousands of dollars for a decent ad too.
4. What about yellow pages online ?
No sorry this does not work either. A few years ago the system used to be fair and was based around first in best dressed. Now its all about who wants to pay the most to be listed up the top. We studied this and also advertised online for a couple of years but its important to find out how many possible leads you may get before you invest in this. For example if your a plumber find out from them how many people are searching for a plumber in your local area in a given month, if its thousands then i guess a conversion of 1-3% maybe ok as that would amount to a fair bit of work. However if its in the hundreds forget it, there is very little change you will convert to actual jobs. Why would people first visit yellow pages online when they have the power of Google ? Google is not just a search engine for information anymore its a full blow directory listing service that can find you the cheapest products, local tradesmen as well as latest news and much more. Its shown that 80% of all users have Google set as their homepage, and from this the searches begin. Think about it, when you need to look for a service do you search Yellow pages or Google first ?
5. Is yellow pages suited to any business ?
It may be, firstly big businesses may still see value in it. Why because they have deep pockets, it can cost in upwards of $30,000 for a full page ad in a yellow pages book, BANG! hows that. For the average small business i would say steer clear from it, unless you can inject some serious dollars into it and stand out from your competitors don’t bother.
Last but not least,
6. The proofing system is flawed
Yes its flawed, here is something we experienced and we are not alone on this also. On the 16th of December we got a call from Yellow pages asking to renew our advertisement in the book, they mentioned they would send out a proof and that we could make any changes if necessary. So happens that a week later our company went on holiday breaks till mid January. When we got back from our break we noticed an invoice in our Po box, and no proof. We were like WTF is this. We called them and they basically said that we never got back to them and that advertising was closed and that it was too late to make any changes, we argued that we never even got the proof in the first place and that they should of not asked for proofing during the Christmas break, they should be well aware that 90% of businesses do not trade during this time. Well it was bad luck for us, we had to pay. But we were not happy. Was this a tactic to swindle their customers ? or is their proofing system flawed who knows, but it was certainly fishy.
This wraps up our article on 6 more reasons to not advertise in yellow pages. Please LIKE and share our article.
Want some more reasons to not advertise in yellow pages. Check this article out on 11 reasons why your business should not advertise with yellow pages
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