Slightly bigger company adopting Yellow Pages advertising - my rationale

mc_blue

Hello all,

I've signed up for some Yellow Pages advertising and although I'm not expecting super results I hope to cover the initial outlay. As our business is quite large, I thought it would be a good test to see how responsive the market is to old fashioned directory listings.

The rationale behind YP advertising is that firstly it may make life for my competitors more difficult. Secondly, some people still use YP for local services who wouldn't use the internet. Thirdly, as the business was established some 27 years ago and is quite well known YP advertising may enhance brand awareness. Finally, it is used to refine information on a firm, for instance one of our suppliers mentioned that our telephone number wasn't in YP so he had trouble locating it - yes some people still don't use internet searches!

The company has gone from not even having a free listing (don't ask me why not I only became involved with the company 18 months ago when we bought it!) We'll see how the advertising goes - I've started a couple of other business activities which have paid for the advertising already but it would be nice to generate a little bit of work from it! Unfortunately, in this business it is very difficult to differentiate yourself from the competition - it's always important to indicate your unique selling points and if you offer a good service people will always pay.

Regards

martindow

It will be interesting to see how it goes for you. My experience of a free line entry has been that it has generated a lot of B2B junk mail. I know this as I changed the business title to make it more descriptive of what it did (without paying the extra for a boxed entry) and this identified letters as coming from this source.

WHA

We stopped advertising in Yellow Pages, Thomson Local, etc a couple of years ago and the reduction in junk mail and unsolicited telephone calls from other businesses touting for trade (especially website providers) has been remarkable. Stopping the advert was the best thing we ever did. But it all depends on what you are selling. If you need a constant stream of new customers (i.e. you're a shop or a tradesman typically doing lots of "one off" sales or services) then you do need something in the directories to attract the trade. However if you rely on repeat business I wouldn't bother with the directories at all. Most (well actually all in the last couple of years) of our new clients come from existing client recommendations which we find are better quality clients, less likely to be shopping around for the cheapest, and less likely to be time wasters "doing the rounds". Whatever the marketing gurus say, the best advertisement is "word of mouth", ask your current customers to recommend you to their friends and colleagues and build up your good reputation.

mc_blue

Thanks all - we provide breakdown assistance on behalf of motoring organisations and the general motoring public. The private side of the business relies on customers who will only use our services maybe once or twice. I do understand about the junk mail/telephone calls though, is there anything I can sign in terms of data protection in order to stop it?

Regards

ukbill69

Yellow pages are a rip off, only people use them are people cant use a computer to search using google and now days thats not a lot. I was in a company that was paying 17k a year for yellow pages advert, I got them to put the money in google adwords and they got super sales back from it. The yell.com listing is ok, but some cost about 5k a year, not worth it, but cheap listings are, if you cant find the company on google/msn etc then I use yell.com and good to find business via postcode to.

chinup_3

unsolicited calls to business can be stopped by telephone pref' service just as residential. a lot of businesses don't seem to realise this. worth trying mail pref' service the same too ?