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I have just discovered an eighth phonebook in our area. Our area is two counties with 250,000 people. Has anybody experienced any kind of phonebook ratio like this before. We have gone up to five phonebooks up from 2 phonebooks from last year. We are staying away from the big boys (Bell South – err AT&T) because they cost more than double than anybody else.
I appreciate any comments thanks for your time.We are not that bad, but we do have about 5 different ones. I agree with the Bellsouth book, it is not worth the money. A lot of areas are getting watered down with them. We have the Yellow Book coming in 08. Anyone use that one with any success?
Dan
Don’t be discouraged.
1 county, 24k, 4 phone books.It’s not a big deal, choose the phone book that will give you the results and don’t worry about the others.
It is true you have to be in the books. You don’t need a half page in all of them. In fact, the book isn’t always what will give you the best return. Check in to other means of advertising and keep a sharp eye in where the calls are coming from.
It’s very difficult w/so many books! But you have to try & figure out which book the real “locals” always keep in their homes – there’s always one main book that most of your customers will use. Might be interesting to see if the ad reps can share any user demographics with you – ask for it! They do tracking all the time to set their ad rates. That’s why you have to be careful of the cheap ones – because that also means they have few users (not many hits in their tracking to justify higher rates). Ask for examples of tracking on local businesses! Hope this helps – they have a lot of info….they just don’t always like to share!
I’m in 7 phone books paying right at $2k/month. I’ve noticed that Dex is way more expensive than Yellow book and doesn’t deliver as much as YB. We are going to be cutting our yellow page expenses over the next 12 months and we’re going to start hitting other forms of marketing like direct mail. I can’t justify paying $x to advertise during a slow month like say June/July (hot here). It’s great in March/April Oct/Nov but the other months it sucks. So we’re going to back off the YP’s and put the $$’s out when people are looking.
Yea, phone book advertising is a funny animal. Bellsouth is the Big Boy on the block here and it comes with a high price. I am in two of their phone books, one is a quarter page in a smaller city for about $270, the other is a half pg in my primary city (much higher population) for about $1,100.
Since last Oct (when they phone book went out) I have had only one month where I broke even with the $1,100 area (I rarely get 50% of the investment back on the other months). In the smaller area with a smaller ad, I regularly bring in 3 times the invesment and sometimes more. Most of the time, I make more in total dolars from the smaller ad in a smaller area than the bigger one does in a larger area. It doesn’t make sense, but that is the way it has been here. This year I am greatly reducing the bigger area ad. Live and learn…
And, in 08, the Yellow Book arrives here…
Danbo
We have 2 YB in our county and 1 YP and 1 Sprint. Serving approx 470K population. We have a 1/2 page ad in YBs and the YP, line only in Sprint (serves only a small area). All cost $1262.
We had a great result when we were the smallest color ad in the YP and are considering going back to that. It was at the end of the larger listings and I think, that since we were the last of the major listings, the potential customer was finished
shopping
. As we moved up closer to the front of the listing, we got a lot of shoppers and many called back later to order, but could not close due to the fact that they were going to get more numbers…
a possible advantage to being last or at least later in the listing is they may be at the end of their rope and ready to do business.Personally, I think many of us are reluctant to buy at the first number we hear on anything…we call or shop around for a better deal, usually. Of course, that may be just me.
So, to recoup $1262 we must clean a lot of carpet. And yes, we get a lot of business from the books, in addition to the referrals.
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