Are Premium Services with the Yellow Pages Worth It?
In Denver there is a guy on radio and TV called Tom Martino, The Troubleshooter . He exposes scams that prey on honest people and small business. On the radio today he was interviewing small business owners who claim to have been sold $650/month marketing packages by theYellow Pages (that alone got my attention, I’m still not sure I heard that right), and guaranteed leads from their listings in www.YellowPages.com . They cited Yellow Pages sales people who said their business would be at the top of the local search results for their respective business etc, etc
I’d be interested to know more about this subject, so I invite people to post comments here and let us know about any experience you might have with getting leads from paid ads or services with the Yellow Pages
Are your advertising dollars worth it with the Yellow Pages? Leave a comment with your experience!
9 Comments Received
March 18th, 2009 @10:54 pm
There was a ‘lil discussion on these lines, about IYP sites in general, over on David Mihm’s blog a little while ago.
http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/local-seo/local-search-behavior-by-industry-category/
Checking traffic stats from a pretty wide variety of small businesses, in both Canada and the US, I see about 1%, or less, of referrals coming from the various YP kinds of websites.
Now, that’s just referral traffic that click through from a YP website. It’s not taking into account those that make a phone call instead.
Conversion rates however are higher than for organic search traffic from Google. That’s calling an email lead a conversion. But the volumes are really so low it almost does not matter.
And $650 per month!?!? Wow, do they realize what could be done online for that kind of money if they hired a competent SEO? But, that price number might be for their print directory ads with a little extra tacked on for some premium placements on the YP website too, but still…. a lot of money for little return.
I’ve taken note that, because enough clients and prospects I’ve talked to have mentioned it, the phone directories just don’t perform like they used too, yet pricing keeps going up.
March 19th, 2009 @10:29 am
Yes, I recall reading David’s post (and see I left one of the 1st comments, ah my memory!). I am just wondering if anyone can attest to Online Yellow Pages success, something that would warrant such claims of potential by Yellow Page Sales people.
I have headed up large company eCommerce and Internet Marketing Divisions and know 1st hand how careful a company has to be about educating its sales force, and training them on setting customer expectations was well as conveying real value. I’m sure YellowPages.com is not trying to deceive, but they may need to reign in their sales people with an Internet Marketing Training Program (I have done plenty of these in my time and know their benefits lurk, but work!).
March 22nd, 2009 @7:06 am
My advertising in the local yellow pages was a complete waste. In fact my basic listing gets the same number of calls if not more. Yellow page calls were usually only interested in price. But these yellow pages are in our city phone book and affiliated with the local phone company and a book is distributed to all of their local customers in our city. Some of these yellow page advertisers are not even affiliated with a phone company and claims that their books are distributed to libraries and city halls do not seem reliable to me.
I just visited yellowpages.com they have a very impressive site and a Google page rank of 8 but I think the biggest red flag is the term “guaranteed leads”. It is always questionable when someone claims to guarantee what someone else will do. Even if you could be sure to get leads, I think having a yellow page only brings window shoppers and price queries. What about quality leads, some of which actually purchase your service?
When I get a phone call and the first thing they ask is price I ask, “What do you want on your web site?” some prospects will actually say what they want in a web site and then I can give them a price, but most say they will call back and never do.
March 23rd, 2009 @6:33 am
I wonder how many people think of the “yellow pages” interchangeably – ie. people say “Yellow Pages” but they may not actually mean YellowPages.com. Not that I’m defending anyone who charges $650 a month for a directory listing, but I had a bad experience with MagicYellow.com and I’m wondering if they might be the culprit behind some of the bad experiences mentioned by Tom Martino.
http://sporkmarketing.com/blog/149/magicyellow-com-deceptive-misleading-sales-practice/
April 8th, 2009 @11:27 am
Great dialogue. Full disclosure – I do work in the IYP field but I try to be as objective as possible.
Good points above. One VERY valuable aspect of IYP is the authority Google gives to directory listings when ranking the “10 pack” or 10 businesses that show up in Google’s local map. According to some blogs, SEO’s have found that listings in these directories are the driving force behind their local listing rankings. Even more, it appears a “featured listing” gives more “juice” than a non featured.
Mihm also had a follow up post recently about the very same subject:
http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/iyp-small-business-case-study
So, though I agree $650 is a lot, its hard to put a price on ranking a-c on the local listing map. When looking at price, I think all these things should be considered.
My $.02. Great discussion!
April 8th, 2009 @2:42 pm
Thanks for the comment. I have to admit I am thinking “with soooo many Internet Yellow Page like sites that hold weight and can help with ten pack ranking, why spend $650 on just one of those unless you are in a really competitive and lucrative local market (i.e. Locksmiths in Manhattan).
June 18th, 2009 @12:40 pm
I would advise anyone and everyone to stay away from yellowbook.com. They used deceptive sales tactics and have gone back on what they agreed upon over the telephone.
October 6th, 2009 @4:46 am
I think this article is important but missed the opportunity to stress what Mat said in his last response. The idea of spending a dime on any directory for local exposure is ludicrous until the business has taken advantage of all free venues first.
I have 2 local businesses and have discovered that using normal SEO strategies combined with local search submissions has been all the difference in the world with regards to my listings.
Now I realize that this is all relative to a businesses level of competition but based upon my research and observations. there is no better time than the present to be taking advantage of the lack of overall competition in local search.
I used to spend more than $12,000 a year in the print version of the yellow pages for 2 businesses with no tangible way to measure my ROI. It goes without saying that since I have dropped those YP ads, I’m now free to use those funds in other areas that have a much better return on investment. BTW, I haven’t seen a single bit of difference since I stopped the YP ads.
Lastly, no, I don’t spend a dime on any of my local listings and yet my businesses stay at the top of most all the local listings. This didn’t happen overnight as I paced the submissions while continuing to do SEO maintenance on my sites. IMO this works best.
October 8th, 2009 @9:41 am
Thanks for sharing Justin. I think your story says a lot and is consistent with what I’ve heard so far. Not a lot os success stories about advertising in the YP these days.
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