COMMENTS
Interesting post and some great points...
Looking forward to the Webinar tomorrow.
Thanks
Another great article. It amazes me that some people have the belief that their customers "aren't online", but instead still use phone books.
I wrote a similar article in August about
saving money on Yellowpages.
Interestingly enough, Andrew Quinn was my go-to source!
I totally agree. However there's another factor that I think will "kill the radio star" and that's smart phones. With easy and fast apps to do local searches on at your fingertips and while you're on the go; it makes it even more convenient than trying to find a phone book.
I spent 18 years working for Yellow Pages in the UK. I totally agree, consumers have changed. Companies that have watched and moved with their market in this tough climate are either growing or maintaining their market share.
We have had several clients cancel their $1500 a month yellow page ad to do online marketing...
Yellow pages serve no purpose unless you don't have a computer and then shame on you!
Yellow books are good for one thing. Using as a booster seat... that's what we used them for growing up.
In general, most of my clients have been eliminating their Yellow Page ads and moving their marketing online — but I have a few clients who simply can't do so and shouldn't consider it. There are still a few demographics that rely heavily on the Yellow Pages to find service providers and it's important to make sure your clients aren't in such demographics before canceling your ads.
If your demographic is college students, you won't have any problems — but if your demographic is senior citizens, you're going to have to keep paying for that ad.
It is a shame really when testing web site usage against a newspaper ad against Google ads. Newspaper visitors stayed longer on the site and looked at more features. It may be older people have more time to waste or web browsers just want to be amused and not make a purchase.
I agree with the basic message. However, as this Ms. Georgieva points out, searches for local service providers (everything from spas, fitness centers and chiropractors to painters and auto repair shops) can't rely on local search results, since there are many dozens of potential results (and some of the best may appear beyond the first few pages of search results), and there's no quality gage to determine if your car (or sore back) is being serviced by a nitwit or a genius.
Whoever marries broad and deep listings of every potential provider within a locality AND a quality ranking (e.g., Web of Trust or epinions.com) will have the killer app to finally put the Yellow pages down.
I suspect that the organization best positioned to do this is YP.com, but they may have some difficulty killing off their cash cow to save the business.
It's still a viable option if you ask me. Think of it this way. Over 50's will still use it... who has all the weath...
>>I suspect that the organization best positioned to do this is YP.com, but they may have some difficulty killing off their cash cow to save the business.<<
Good point. YP should be the best to evolve their services to take advantage but in our city they lock their yp-web clients into old-fashioned frame-based tatty websites that never see the Google/other light of day. The YP sites sit in a black hole behind their own yp.com domain.
Disgraceful quality, but good for web developers to take advantage of. But such a pity for many YP clients who know no better. A right rip-off.
The future will be digitally led but print still has a key role to play. Currently, there are more than 4.5 million searches with the YP book each week - a lot of people still rely on the book. Together with online, digital, voice or the book, Yellow Pages Pages puts your content in more places where poeple are looking.
Did a similar post at weekend entitled
Is Yellow Pages still good value? after receiving our new YP for our local area.
It has been reduced in size and has less display ads in a couple of randomly selected categories with slogan on front cover:-
New look
New content
New handy size The question was could the cost of advertising, which isn't cheap, be spent in a more cost-effective way.
If your demographic is college students, you won't have any problems — but if your demographic is senior citizens, you're going to have to keep paying for that ad.
The last time I used the yellow pages was about five years ago!! From recent trends it seems like the cost of online ads are going to go down, mostly because of competition rather than popularity...
Myles Falvella highlights the issue of quality of local search results in comparison to YP where a browser can flip through the category listings.
However, there are no quality measures built into that activity either and the more you pay, in terms of size of ad etc, may well attract the most attention not the highest
quality advertiser.
Perhaps, one of the more important aspects for online local advertising eg Google Places listings, is the ability to leave customer reviews which addresses to some extent the quality issue.
Reviews, either good or bad, is a real opportunity for local businesses to communicate with potential customers and like any marketing activity, if managed effectively, can have major benefits.
The number of reviews a local advertisers can attract from various publishers also part contributes to display rank so may in time build in a quality factor.
And, unlike other directory listings in yell.com and others you can't buy a higher placed rank.
Sure, YP usage is on the decline, but to state that it's dead is a very dangerous statement. This year alone (2010), my half-page ad (Pizza) has delivered 17,000 phone calls! Would social media and online really replace all of those calls? I doubt it. If you are a business owner, know that HubSpot has a vested interest in killing the YP. As with anything, use your head and be smart...
Glad I sat in on the webinar. It has provided me with interesting info on how the YP market is evolving. I get asked lots of questions by small businesse on this issue. I wrote a post on my blog about it (in French). Thanks to Hubspot, I can add more arguments.
http://www.michelinebourque.com/2010/12/08/avec-ou-sans-pages-jaunes-svp/
Look even Santa Claus uses an iPad and iPhone these days. It's much quicker to google or tweet to find what you need than to find a booster seat (or wrapping paper) to use.
Watch this funny viral Christmas video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsXKF9POF8
Good points on industries that have tipped and others that are still wavering.
I agree. It is tough to get a solid ROI from the print yellow pagers with internet traffic increasing daily.
In your post you reference: "Consumers increasingly consider online services before Yellow Pages as they make purchase decisions [source}" When you click on the source link, the TNS Global Research report identifies YP as the SECOND BEST MARKETING VEHICLE!!! Why would you cut out your #2?? Maybe the blog should be renamed "Why radio, billboards & Magazines are becoming obsolete"
Your webinar identifies INBOUND MARKETING as the new focus. While I agree, YP print will shift, the traffic is being compensated through the IYP. Ask your YP rep if they have traffic studies of the number of people that click on a heading in your local market? When investing with the YP you are not buying an ad in a book, you are buying an inbound marketing program. STILL RELEVANT AND GOOD VALUE FOR $ spent
YP.com will never really be positioned to compete with effective optimization because in the end, YP.com is simply PAID placement. People know the difference between paid and free placement and rankings. However, I think Yelp may be on to something by incorporating paid placement into the mix because they started with crowd-sourced ratings, so their credibility is going to be higher than YP.com.
Has anyone ever gone to YP.com as a destination? I haven't.
By the way, this comment is for Brad (the Pizza guy with the half page ad)...before getting locked in to a year-long contract with the yellow pages, I think you might want to spend a fraction of the cost on hiring an effective web person. It has been my experience that my fees are less than half (more often less than a third) the cost of a monthly ad, and I have pretty much replaced the yellow pages for one client (a veterinarian) while totally bumping their traffic. They are really happy not to be paying through the nose for yellow pages and their crappy metrics anymore.
Thanks. Did you know that Amdocs is one of the first companies that published Yellow Pages in many countries world-wide and they earned a lot from this (probably vanishing) business. I believe they have changed their business strategy and moved to software development mainly for telephony carriers.
Clearly the yellow pages people don't understand that the main reason why so many people are so passionate about their hatred for phone books is because the yellow pages keep dumping their books on our doorsteps, mailboxes, and doing so by the truckload at apartments, dorms etc. We simply want off your list. And... instead of providing an easy way to do this, or maybe just an easy way to order for the few that may want one... you make it difficult as possible. Did you know that in some communities you would have to contact up to 9 publishers to opt-out? And... even by doing so, you're still likely to have these things dumped on you and all over your neighborhood 5 times a year.
The worst part is that the yellow pages people are still doing everything they can to convince business owners that they are still relevant. And that somehow their yp.com ad is going to get them business... people don't go to properties to search, they go to search engines!
That's my rant for the day.
I wanted to use this concept in my new business campaign for SEO+ that targets a specific type of local business. A lawyer I consulted with shared some concerns about calling YP out like this in my business proposal/campaign. Did you feel confident in using their business name because of your supporting facts, or simply because you felt they wouldn't care or notice? Any input is appreciated!
Sun Jana...so many of these obsolete directories refer to themselves as "yellow pages" it seems as though it would be tough for them to sue. They should start by suing one another for using the same name. I guess "yellow pages" has been rendered a generic term at this point.