Yellow Page Advertising

Does advertising in the yellow pages make any sense anymore? Everybody the yellow pages is a lost cause now because of the internet, but then why did I open my door last night to find this years yellow pages sitting there and as big as ever?

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I am guessing this can only mean one of three things. 1) the sales reps for the yellow pages are getting a lot more aggressive and cutting some really good deals, or 2) businesses that advertise in the yellow pages do not track the results of what they get for their money, or 3) the yellow pages is still a great place to get new clients. Of course there is a fourth, and that is some combination of the other three.

Are you currently using the yellow pages? If so then are you tracking your results? In all methods of marketing you need to be tracking your results to see if what you are doing is working or not. If you have very deep pockets and you have a high lifetime value of a client then getting low returns in the yellow pages is ok, as long as you are using every other method of marketing as well. Why spend money in one place when you can spend it somewhere else and make more money?

I am not one for knocking the yellow pages, I found that for my business I was able to get a lot of new clients and the 7K I spent each year was paid for quite rapidly. I did learn this method the hard way though. The first year I tried a smaller version of the yellow pages, spent 5K and only picked up 2 new clients. Yes, I track everything. This was a very low return and gave me a bad taste as far as yellow page advertising went. The following year I tried a much smaller ad in the main phone directory and found I received many more results than what my rep said I would. This was great, but the reason for this is I had learned how to create ads and how to write copy prior to placing this ad. I suggest you do the same if you are planning on advertising in the yellow pages.

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