HB Internet Advertising

You cannot go wrong advertising on the internet. Phone books are becomming obsolete in many arears especially large metro areas as more and more consumers are using the internet. I canceled all of my yellow page books last year and I strictly use the net as my main channel of marketing.

Gordon –

Your questions are not silly at all. I was in four Verizon Yellow Page Books from Nov 2008 thru Nov 2009. Im a fanatic when it comes to tracking my advertising and I can tell you in the years time I only received 8 jobs from the yellow pages!! As you know, yellow pages are very expensive even if one was to go with a simple business card size ad. Given the extremely poor ROI I swore off the yellow page ads for good. It didnt help that the service I recieved from the Verizon sales reps was terrible. I really didnt have any business from the yellow pages per se so there was no business to loose. You are correct, I am still in the yellow pages with a free listing with the name of the business and telephone number. I know there are operators who may feel the expense of advertising in the yellow pages is “a cost of doing business” and are cautious about dropping them all together, however, I personally believe they can get a much larger bang for their buck if they were to move those dollars in to other channels including the internet. I am a strong proponent of internet marketing. So much so that 85% of my entire 2011 advertising budget is geared towards the internet!! Be well.

I am also doing away with all my yellow page advertising, except one small book in only one of my areas where I do get a fair amount of business from.

When I ask how my NEW customers how they heard about me, it’s almost always the internet. I was paying $500 per month for internet advertising but now have switched companies and am paying $295 per month. As soon as my contract expires, I will do it on my own. I have someone who knows how to do it and she will show me. (She used to do it for a living) She said it would take an hour to set up and about half an hour a week to monitor.

Right now, I have seven phone books on the corner of my desk, three that are 3 inches thick. They cover all my areas but if I need a phone number for something, I use the internet.

Good luck and don’t let the yellow page sales person say you HAVE to be in the books. Even if I have to pay to have a line listing, I won’t do it.

They need me more than I need them.

Lew

well i m planning on leanning most of my advertising to the internet,might be somewhat bold,but i feel it is time.most of yellowpage adds are smaller jobs, and they want cheap service.there are a few oher reasons to but those are the swayers.im sure the differance can be had on the internet.

Its scarey for me just drop the phone books but I’m going to reduce the size of my adds for now I have a meeting with my yellow page person on tuesday any Ideas, is this a good thing or not ?