Should You Advertise with Yellow Pages?

| March 27, 2015
“Should I advertise with Yellow Pages?”
This is a question we get asked by many of our potential and current clients.  The answer is NO!  Does Yellow Pages deliver what they promise?  NO!  It is no coincidence that every business is questioning this advertising medium.   In this article,  we will give you clear cut facts as to why you shouldn’t continue to spend your advertising budget with Yellow Pages.
“How will people find our business if we don’t have an ad in the Yellow Pages?”
When we hear this, we ask the business owner how they personally look up products or services.  The answer is always “I Google it,” regardless of how tech savvy that owner is.
Well, ladies and gents, there is your answer.  More people are turning to Google for their information needs.  The Yellow Pages and Yellow Book have been replaced by technology.  This is the same theory why most people prefer Kindles and Nooks for reading.  Who wants to lug around those huge books if you can carry that same information in your pocket.  That holds true with those Yellow Books, as well. (You are better off using the book as a booster seat for the kids.)
As business owners, you advertise to get your business in front of your customer at the exact moment they are looking for your product or service.  The chance of your customer being closer to a phone book rather than their smartphone is slim.   Mobile searches equate to 60 percent of all Google’s inquiries.  Due to this trend, Yellow Pages has been pushing their online solutions. They know their book product is on the way out and just about extinct.   The Yellow Pages online solution sounds fantastic to the average business owner, until we look under the hood of that proposal.  Here is a real-life example of a proposal Yellow Pages presented to one of our clients:

Those are the results our client was promised for their $2,200/month investment.  As SEO professionals, we don’t disagree with these numbers.  If these results are given, then the money is well spent.   However, that is not the case.  We looked into this client’s website analytics to find the true sources of traffic for website visits.   Highlighted are the results we found.

As you can see from this info, Yellow Pages severely under delivered for this client’s $2,200 monthly investment.  The funny thing is that these 20 referrals are technically from the FREE business directory listing you can sign up for as a business on YellowPages.com.  Another thing to consider; when you are looking something up online, what search engine do you use?  We doubt you go to www.yellowpages.com to perform a search.   Odds are you are like 80 percent of internet users and use Google to find your information.

You might be asking, “Where did the money go?”  We are asking the same thing, and that is the reason we are urging business owners to stop advertising with Yellow Pages.  The Yellow Pages sales person didn’t know how to answer this question as they were trying to renew the client for another year at $2,500/month.  The client has since dropped ALL Yellow Pages advertising and has reduced their monthly advertising budget.  They came to the realization that their budget is better invested and garners better results from BPM’s online advertising strategy.   If you would like to discuss how BPM can save you from the big, yellow monster, please contact us today!