Jan 05, 2006
Posted by Mike in Advertising,Marketing,Media
0 Comments
Dude, It's Just the Yellow Pages
So we’re 5 days into 2006, and this is my first post for the new year, and I used the word “Dude” in the title… quite an auspicious start, huh?
The title of this post is actually my response to an over-zealous “canary-colored paper directory of services and businesses” salesperson’s request for a fifth (5th !) meeting trying to sell me advertising space in his publication. Now his persistence has to be admired, but at the time, I was in the middle of the busiest season for the company I was working for, and I had already had 4 meetings with the guy. He knew my budget was shot, and there was really no getting blood from that stone, so when he started with a high-pressure sales push to increase the size (and cost) of the ads he had already sold me (I hadn’t signed a contract yet, because he was trying to maximize the size of the ads I was buying), I cancelled the ads altogether with the line in the title.
What brings this up? I just saw a piece in MediaDailyNews titled Yellow Pages Get Their ‘Nielsens,’ Unveil New Ratings Service, which reminded me of that incident, and how the whole world of directory and “canary-colored paper directories of services and businesses” is changing these days.
Here’s my take on it all:
There are VERY few businesses these days that use these directories as their primary marketing vehicle; plumbers, florists, pizza places, general contractors maybe, but the off-line world of paper directories is loosing ground quickly to on-line search. I can’t tell you the last time I used one, and neither can most of the people I know (I know, very scientific data, huh?). What will be interesting to see from the new Yellow Pages Market Reporter is just how broad a reach these directories still have. Businessweek had a piece on December 8, 2005 with an interestingly unsubstantiated claim on their effectiveness:
So as the market crowds and ads shift to the Web, how long can the business of selling ad space in fat yellow books stay profitable? And which players will ultimately win?
The short answer is that the traditional yellow pages business is expected to remain profitable for at least five more years. Although they seem like relics, the paper-bound tomes are still an effective advertising tool.
So if you’re currently spending thousands of dollars on Yellow Page advertising, what are you to do? Well… adapt. When I canceled the ads in the “canary-colored paper directory”, I was a little leary of what might happen to sales, but I learned over the following year, that not being in that directory had absolutely no effect on sales for that year. What was happening was that the company that I worked for, while still fairly reliant on off-line media, was targeting a highly web savvy market group, so as we ramped down on yellow page advertising, our web search and web marketing filled the gap, and then some. Traffic for the site was steadily growing, and prospective clients who found us on the web, were not even looking at a paper directory for the information.
The next year we pulled all non-phone company directory advertising, and again, it had no effect on sales. So why didn’t we pull ads from the phone company Yellow Pages as well? Being in a highly mobile part of the country, new prospects were moving in all the time, and the phone company directory was always delivered to new phone customers when they moved in. The other directories are only delivered once a year, and if a new prospect moved in after their delivery, they don’t get a directory until the next year’s edition.
So if you’re looking for some place to find a few extra thousand dollars in next year’s marketing budget, take a long, hard look at the money you’re spending on “canary-colored paper directory of services and businesses” advertising, after all, Dude, It’s Just the Yellow Pages.
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