Yellow Pages are Inferior to Your Website
Please understand, I am not saying that Yellow Pages don't work. I put my son through college and bought two houses as a commission only yellow page salesperson in a five year period. Yellow pages will generate a return on investment for certain headings. With equivocation I can say that the ROI for a website over a yellow page ad is ALWAYS higher!
Yellow Pages Do Not Work As Well As They Used To
"The Yellow Pages Do Not Work Anymore." The evidence is overwhelming. Analytic or anecdotal. There is no disputing this fact. Five years ago I would have never dared to make such a statement. It would not have been true and my yellow page clients would not have been served well by that belief.
- Yellow Page performance is difficult to track and has limited tracking capabilities. Internet advertising offers extensive tracking options through Google Analytics and other tracking software.
- Yellow Pages reach is by region only and if you advertise in more than one directory it can get very expensive. Online marketing has an unlimited reach and is very cost effective.
- You can only change your advertising message on a yearly basis with Yellow Pages. You can change your message online at any time.
- There are over 13 billion searches/month on the web and it still growing. Yellow Pages receive approximately 1 billion references/month and is declining. Less businesses advertise in the Yellow Pages every year.
Here are a few of the links that make my point for me. But I will add to these views with some analysis.
Search vs. Yellow Pages - 4 Secrets Why Search Engines Beat Yellow Pages in Local Advertising
Google Trends: Yellow Pages Will Be Toast In Four Years
Print Yellow Pages Vs. Online Yellow Pages / Local Search
Will Search Engines Slay the Yellow Pages?
Print Yellow Pages: What’s the Real Story?
Internet Marketing vs Yellow Pages
Background
I was an account executive at 2 major Yellow Pages companies from 2003 until 2009. When I started in 2003 selling print advertising, yellow pages worked. There was no doubt in my mind that yellow pages worked very well for most of my clients. I knew this because I would sell them an ad during a printing cycle and come back next year to renew the advertising. Renewals were relatively easy because the advertisements in the book were responsible for the majority if not the entirety of clients presented to these companies.
But while selling ads I would asked constantly if our yellow page company also sold web sites. At first I would say "That is not a service my company provides at this time." I was a recreational website developer up to that point and had done web sites for my self and friends. After about a year of saying no to scores of clients I decided to offer that service to prospects that I had sold yellow page advertising.
This is where I began my career as a website developer. My education as a SEO specialist began when I started my first company Bay Area Synthetic Grass. When I started my 2nd company Bradford Medical Supply and completed the optimization the BMS website my career as an SEO expert began.
I am considered a well respected salesperson and expert on the yellow page medium of advertising. I am a expert on the technical and practical aspects of search engine optimization. I learned SEO the hard way, individual study, trial and error and self correcting practices.