Do you keep a phone book in your house?
2 in the kitchen and 2 upstairs. I also keep one in each car.
I voted ‘yes’ but I’m not sure where it/they are at the moment. In fact I can’t remember the last time I used it.
Yes. I think they should be in everybody’s emergency survival kit. They can be used to start a fire, be stood on to get a better vantage point when hunting, and could even be used as some sort of club to knock prey unconscience.
So no, I don’t have one. Having said that though, I am putting my first ad in one. I took a poll of my customers, and they all said they use the phone book to some degree. Many even used window cleaners out of the book, but found them lacking, if they even showed up. Most of these customers were older, retired, and have moved down here from the north in the last 5 years - so they really don’t know who to use.
not here
The majority of my customers find me in the phone book. I wish that were not the case because I hate the monthly costs, but that the way it is in my area.
In the house and in each vehicle.
That is the way it is here too. Their prices are ridiculous!
Yep, I have 2
Use them for local services almost 100% of the time. My $8,000
wood floors are being installed right now from a YP ad.
Same with my lawn care guy and my mechanic
I live in a small town and most do not have websites.
Embarq sends us about 4 phone books each year. I usually keep 2 of them and throw 2 of them away.
Got one - still in it’s wrapper.
Yes, I keep one in the car. Found this to be very useful when I was looking for something a while back and headed off to a store I thought had it but they didn’t. Ok, what other store might - I know, I’ll stop at a phone booth and check the YP there to see what else is nearby. Ha. There are hardly any phone booths left these days because everyone has a cel phone. And those that still exist have no phone book, long ago ripped out. And many are in a terrible state of disrepair.
So for on the road hunting, it’s a requirement. I just grab last year’s copy and keep the newest one in the house. It doesn’t get much use though. Mostly I hunt on the web but I think I’m a little more internet-focused than a lot of people. I’ll bet there is still a large amount of people who flip to the phone book to find stuff.
I’d be hard pressed to consider doing a YP ad though. Maybe if I had a bustling company with plenty of income where the cost for a decent sized display ad wouldn’t be a massive cost out of the monthly budget. Especially if it really becomes a secondary (or lower) level marketing tool as in “we do this and this and this and a lot of that and, oh yeah, we also have a YP ad.”
But for a little dinky one-man-show like me, even if I wasn’t just a n00b starting out, I don’t think it’s as valuable as a good website and listing the biz on Google.
Same here. Lots of old money customers who are old school and use the book.
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Ive got one in house, one in work van…thats the main advertising i use other than postcards…a lot of my customers find me there…not too expensive, $54.00 a month for an ad under window cleaning and separate one under gutter cleaning.
I agree for the most part.
I have one in the truck too and regularly forget about it.
My area is one of the better markets for the PB, that’s why I plan on getting a small ad for next year. We will see, however, because the cost is UNBELIEVABLE for even a small 1/16th ad. Not sure if I can commit to that, seeing as my slow months are so dead, that monthly payment could be dinner.:eek:
Curious as to the deals that others have in the YP.
I’ve got a full color ad in a major book coming out in October. It’s business card size. It’ll also have a listing in “pressure washing” that will say “see my ad, pg #:” .
How much do you think an ad like that would run per month? Pretty large distribution, multiple counties. This is my first ever ad in the YP, so I don’t really have a $ figure to go by.
What is a phone book?
I use the YP’s myself from time to time. I get a great return on running my ad in our local book. 2008 I was paying near $700.00 per month for 1/4 page 2 color ad in the book. This year its around $520.00 per month for full color leader ad under two headings. Leader ads are smaller but full color. They originally wanted $440.00 each for these ads. I held out (telling them that I was going to spend my advertising on other things) and they called me on the very last day. $260.00 a piece down from $440.00 each. I took them. Nothing is set in stone with these Reps. They know that I have the money to advertise with them on a bigger level than most risk. They dont want to lose my business I guess.
I have phone books in the house, because they come “free” with my residential phone line, but I never use them. I use google to find phone numbers when I’m home, and when I’m on the road I use the free info service from google (1800-GOOG-411, or 1800-4664-411). I like that service because it also has the option to send the details as a text message and I can get a link to a map for location info.
