Over the last week, we have focused our attention to analyze the effectiveness of having an ad at the internet yellow pages. Our research shows that there are mixed opinions about the topic. For some business owners investing marketing dollars in the internet yellow pages have paid them good dividends but for some others it has been worthless, leading them to look for new ways of advertising online.
Business owners want to reach customers faster than their competitors. The Yellow Pages sales reps are aware of that and are going to show up at your business with different statistics that they are going to use to try to persuade you into the idea that there ads perform better than the competitors or other media.
Let’s take a look at some statistics:
Yellow Pages Association Perspective
“The Yellow Pages Association(TM) (YPA(TM)) announced, earlier this year, that industry research shows 2007 Yellow Pages usage grew to 17.2 billion searches in 2007, up from 16.7 billion in 2006.
Print usage remained stable with 13.4 billion print Yellow Pages references, unchanged from 2006, according to the 2007 Knowledge Networks/SRI (KN/SRI) Industry Usage Study, while comScore reports Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) searches increased 15 percent in 2007 to 3.8 billion, up from 2006's 3.3 billion IYP searches.
Additional findings regarding Yellow Pages usage include:
- Approximately 87 percent of the U.S. population used the print Yellow Pages in 2007.
- Average number of monthly IYP searchers up 16 percent: 73 million IYP searchers per month in 2007, compared to 63.1 million IYP searchers per month in 2006. (comScore)
- Of the 144 million people performing local searches online in December 2007, over half (51 percent) used IYPs. (comScore)” (Reuters, February 2008)
Source: Google Trends. August 17, 2008 at 6:45 p.m. PST
Consumer Perspective (Nielsen/NetRatings survey)
"- 24% of respondents rated yellow pages "not effective at all" or "mostly ineffective".
- 42% of survey respondents rated yellow pages as "effective" or "very effective" and 19% rated yellow pages "neither effective nor ineffective" ( 14% had no opinion or no experience with yellow pages).
Budget Allocation: Those who rated yellow pages as "not effective at all" or "mostly ineffective" allocated only 9% of their budget to yellow pages and a whopping 45% of their budget to internet advertising. Not surprising considering that 75% of this group rated internet advertising "effective" or "very effective".
What was somewhat surprising was the response from 42% of merchants who believe YP is effective. Of those merchants, 75% rated internet advertising as "effective" or "very effective". They allocate an average of 37% of their marketing budget to yellow pages and 30% to internet advertising (the remaining budget goes to newspapers, radio, TV and "other").
Willingness to Invest: Of merchants who rated the yellow pages effective, 73% would not spend more than $100/month on internet advertising. Of merchants who rated YP ineffective, 60% would not spend more than $100/month on internet advertising.
43% of merchants were willing to spend only between 0-3 hours per week marketing their business online. 40% said they would be willing to spend between 3-10 hours and 16% would spend more than 10 hours per week.” (Circle Merchant, February 2008)
Tim Somers, from the Michiganbusinesshub.com, shares his story: “The past 2 to 3 years I have cut my Yellow Pages advertising considerably. From full display ads to half inch ads and in some categories just bold line listings. So in March of 2007 I went with a $40 a month advanced listing on YellowPages.com that linked to my site. A few months had past and I did not see much activity in my Google Analytics stats in regards to traffic from the listing on YellowPages.com. I asked for my stats – first off I was told my impressions, I snapped back with the comment that impressions don’t mean much to me – I want to know how many clicks (visits to my web site) my listing received. She told me 85, I asked “Per Month”? – Nope that was from March 2007 through January 2008 (11 Months) – so I did the math, 11 months at $40 is $440. Now it gets worse, $440 divided by the 85 clicks is $5.18 per click, wow I almost fell off my chair at how much per click I paid.” ( Tim Somers, March 2008)
Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce Perspective
If your business has a decent marketing budget, a well-designed yellow pages ad certainly has a place in any good marketing program. The problem is that too many businesses rely on yellow pages ads as their sole means of advertising. With such a strategy, the chances of your business reaching its full potential are slim to none.
What you needed is an effective marketing strategy, one that overcomes the limitations of yellow pages ads and uses a variety of marketing tools to generate the biggest ROI for your marketing dollars. A well designed marketing strategy can include yellow pages ads, direct mail, newspapers ads, flyers, etc.; as well as, e-mail campaigns, e-newsletters, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-per-Click Campaigns (PPC), etc. Remember that we live in a media-saturated world and that the local search advertising market is highly fragmented. Therefore, you have to focus on what you need. Try to maximize your available resources by testing various communication channels. Eventually, you are going to be able to decide what marketing tools generate the best return on your investment. Stop wasting you’re your resources on ineffective, one-dimensional advertising and start growing your business in the most cost-effective possible manner.
We offer you an opportunity to register without cost at HISCEC. Some of the benefits of becoming a member are listed below:
1. Free listing at our Business Directory.
2. Complete Profile
3. Logo and description of your business
4. Online Catalog with your products/ services.
Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce Case Study
Business: Don Lucio’s 3 Mexican Restaurant
In business: 6 years.
Strengths: Quality service, delicious food, friendly attitude of the owners and a hard working team.
If you Google “Don Lucios 3” it comes out in the first page, right below other “Don Lucios” restaurants. Not bad at all considering that he got listed at the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce for FREE.
Other services available to Members are articles submission, online advertising and sponsored links. Coming soon the site's forum is going to be available as well as a section where we are going to be posting promotional videos of your businesses and more.
We hope that you have found this information of some value to you. It's up to you to decide whether or not an ad at the yellow pages is a good move to promote your company. You know that there are several options in the market that you can consider before spending lots of money in just one, try different advertising channels until you find the ones that are more effective for your business.
We look forward to serving you.
Sincerely,
HISCEC Staff
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