My Boy John Over at Yellow Pages…
Continues to give me a monthly call about getting listed.
Do you guys have good response with the Yellow Pages?
I think it’s around 45 a month, but i’m not sure if that includes color ad or what.
Let me know your experiences.
It works for me well. I stick out from the crowd with color. It all depends on what others are doing in the book. If you are running a small block B&W ad and everyones doing just a line, I would guess that you may pull in a good portion of the leads. Your yellow page ad should be thought out just like any other marketing piece you put out there. Be different and dont copy cat everyone elses layout. Put some thought into it. This advice is from a residential window cleaning company. Going after commercial in the YP’s was a total waste of money for me.
Steve
I totally agree with Steve. It really depends on your market. I get a LARGE percentage of my business from the YP because my customer base is not that into the internet. I have customers that have phone books from 5 years ago that are written all over with notes and numbers etc… really “old skool” but it works for me…
It might be the single biggest waste of money I’ve spent on Advertising. Well next to what we refer to as “The Ad Book debacle of '09”. I placed a nice size ad in several YP books and so far I’ve gotten 3 calls with no closes. One book has been out for 6 months the other 9 months. It was weird because even as I talked with the people on the phone I could tell I was wasting my time with someone just price shopping and through conversation they told me they saw the ad in the YP’s. I still gave my normal estimate process and still no bite. My local paper ad and internet produce a lot more calls and about 80% close. One note is that the book is running in an area that we currently do not have any other advertising running, so it might just be the area, but there pretty big areas with very similar demographics to where the newspaper ad is running. I’ll give the salesperson this though, she had a great presentation with awesome statistics on how the YP is alive and stronger than ever. I guess that has to be your stance when your the salesman.
On a side note, our YP just got delivered about 2 weeks ago. I don’t advertise in it. The delivery person dropped it next to our mailbox by the street. It’s a group of 4 mailboxes for me and my neigbors but sits on my property. After 4 days of my neighbors picking up their mail and not picking up their phone book I picked them up and threw them in the recycling along with mine. I believe in my area phone books are dead.
I’ve always heard that it pays for itself from companies who just have their name listed in black in the group.
My experience. We payed for two different areas and went with the small business card size file which was higher end graphics with color. They were helpful and attentive while they courted us. Our proof looked just fine but when the book came out the area code was incorrect. After placing over a dozen calls without a return call I stopped paying. Naturally they called me. We agreed to a fee and I paid that.
In the first year we got a total of one phone call from 3 hours away, during a busy season. We didn’t do the job.
Our customer service rep changed 3 times in the 12 months we were supposed to be paying, didn’t matter once they had popped our cherry they lost interest in us.
We did not pay for the internet portion of the program and I believe that would have been a help in generating calls.
Oddly, I’ve had 5 calls from the YP this year (we were in it 2 or 3 years ago).
My experience sucked, but that doesn’t mean yours will.
only yesterday i had the YP /yell.com salesman call me. he was different from the norm in that he sounded depressed, wasnt go-getting as they normally are . i listened to his spiel, then cut in to tell him im snowed under with work so he is wasting his time on me ,and can he just hurry on over here and start washing windows. This perked him up and maybe wherever it is he lives he might just start doing windows in the future
< i had a bad experience years ago in a former business when a slick talking older salesman hooked me into a Very expensive YP ad / i was very lucky to get out of the contract he persuaded me to sign and ive been anti-yp ever since . ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY ! >
Waste of money. You need to target market. Good book to read: Guerrilla Marketing, 4th edition: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business [Paperback]
Jay Conrad Levinson
Just received the new Yellowbook for our area and even though I did not sign up for it this year they still have my company listed under Window Cleaners. It’s not the 1 inch ad I did in the past, but for free, I’ll take it. I’ll have to check the other books i was in and see if I’m still listed there also.
I debated whether to do yell pg ad again this year, did a website for the 1st time this year. But i still have a lot of customers finding me in yell pgs. I pay 54.00 month 2 ads 1 in window cleaning 1 in gutter cleaning. So for me, ive definitely got my moneys worth. Eventually may stop if more people find me online…always ask how they found you.
As far as I know, we have not received one call from the yellow pages. Zip, zero, zilch…
I dropped back to the smallest ad this year in the one book and dropped the other book completely. I received only 3 calls last year form the one book we stayed in and they were all price shoppers that didn’t book our service. Not worth anything in my opinion.
The simple truth is the YP is dying. Search engines have destroyed them (and online YP is a total waste)
This is not opinion, this is fact. I have no problem with someone utilizing the YP but they need
to keep in mind they are locked in for a whole year.
Ask your current customers if they use the YP. Let your market tell you where they like to shop.
Its working for me but I too feel that it will eventually be phased out. Im riding a wave and until it gets ready to slam into the beach, I’ll stay on it. Some of you guys that are doing mulitple books, why? Every city or town probably has a preferred book. Why go with so many books? I get so many books in the Jan -Feb time frame that I pitch them until the established one comes out in March. All of those little hometown books are pretty useless to me (my opionion). Who wants an desk drawer full of yellow page books?
On a side note, I get real estate companies (expecially RE/MAX) wanting me to advertise in their customer referrals book when they sell to a new home buyer. Its a book about the area and has service providers listed in there. Years ago i did it thinking “gold mine”. The truth is that the majority of new home buyers wont go back through their closing papers to find that magazine to find me. They close on a house and all that paperwork goes into a file cabinet locked away for years. This is how I see the non power hitter yellow pages that are being published. They offer low advertising fees but you hardly ever get seen. Exposure is everything. Pick a book thats been around and you see frequently in peoples homes. Some think that if they are spending $50.00 per month on an ad, the phone should be ringing off the hook. If you go into a a steak house and order a $7.00 steak and think it sucks, well your bought the cheapest steak on the menu. What did you expect? I started out with little to no results with block and line ads in the book. When I took the plunge and starting advertising with color and slightly larger ads, my phones were lighting up. It was a costly trial and error thing earlier on. I have spent around $800.00 per month on YP ads with excellent results. My competition pretty much bailed out of the picture so I made my ad smaller (In color) in half the price. Why did my competition bail? I was getting most of the market share from the books and they were getting a dismal ROI. If you run line ads and say they suck, well I agree and so do $7.00 steaks.
Steve
Nice post Steve…
We are down to only one book in one county now. All the rest have been phased out.
When I first started, many years ago, I put a 1/4 page ad in because I listened to the sweetie calling me and I had visions of riches before my eyes. I have been constantly downsizing my ad until now I am just a red line listing. I do mostly direct mail to specific zip codes to reach residential and put ads in local magazines and newsletters
Send me your $45 a month and ill get you just as many leads. Or you could burn it. I have found it a waste of money. The calls you do get are for homes 45 minutes away they want a free bid and they are calling 3 to 4 cleaners pitting each company against the other for the lowest price.
I love how you started the thread " My boy John over at YP … "
He drove me nuts calling me all the time. Finally, I said listen, I don’t have the money:)
I eventually caved in though several months later. Must of been the women on the phone because she somehow talked me right into it.
I did get a nice $350 home out of it but I would not recommend it. Just work on your website (it does look good BTW ) with little tweaks here and there.
I find most of the calls you get from the YP are tirekickers.
Thanks for all this great advice, my wife’s been going on about getting a yellow pages advert and my initial though was does anyone still use YP … I will pass I think. Then I was thinking about not reaching the older generation who do still use YP?
I love the title of this thread…
YP are so dead here… We are down to 1 book.
We dropped our last book this year and they called me back and gave me a free listing. They are really pushing their websites building, hosting, and direct mail options as a way to regenerate their customer base.
