Tweet

3 Reasons Why Small Business Owners Should Re-Evaluate Phonebook Directory Advertising

Guest post by: Sally Witzky

Article Overview: Small business owners face many challenges when it comes to planning their marketing budget. Funds are limited so every dollar should go toward those efforts that will get fairly immediate results or that will build up their marketing efforts for the long term. Phone directory advertising has long been held as a staple in the local small business owner's budget. But these days, people just don't use the YellowPages and the YellowBook like they used to, especially with the advent of laptops, iPads, iPhones and Android smart phones. But some business owners are still talked in to advertising heavily in the phone book directories and it just doesn't make sense for them anymore. This article will give the business owner tips for reducing that expenditure and maximize it elsewhere with social media or online marketing.

3 Reasons Why Small Business Owners Should Re-Evaluate Phonebook Directory Advertising

Recently, a local small business owner told me that he spent nearly $4,000 per month to advertise in directories such as the YellowPages and YellowBook. His annual contract included some online advertising, as well as about $400/month in pay-per-click ads. He said he got tons of reports but when we really sat down and reviewed them, he wasn't getting much in results in the way of website traffic, off-page search engine optimization or phone calls to the separate numbers they had set up for him. And when we looked at his pay-per-click ads, the traffic wasn't going to his site - it was going to a replication of his site on one of their servers. Other than the information they were reporting to him, he didn't have access to any kind of detailed analytics on these efforts, like he would have with Google, even though he has Google Analytics on his website.

I just read that phone directory advertising equates to $13 billion dollars annually. And what I've heard from small business owners is that the sales folks are selling aggressively and doing everything they can to upsell them from previous year's contract, which is how they make their commissions. It's unfortunate, because small business owners often get locked in to a contractual agreement that often doesn't make the most sense for them if you look at the bigger picture of their overall online and offline marketing budget and plan.

Many local small businesses still should have basic listings in the printed directories, especially if they're appealing to an older demographic. But gone are the days that it makes sense to take out a full-page ad in a phone directory. Eventually, over the next few years, I'm guessing that the $13 billion dollar industry will shrink. But, for now, many small business owners are still not knowledgable enough about what the phone directories are selling that they get sold a service that sounds good but is really less effective in the long run.

Here are three reasons why we think small business owners should re-evaluate and reconsider their phone directory advertising spend:

1. Fewer People Use Printed Phone Directories. With the increased usage of computers especially in the form of laptops and iPads, as well as smart phones like iPhones and Androids with geo-location services, fewer people have a need to grab a paper directory to find a business product or service, a phone number and an address. For advertising to be effective, businesses have to be where people are spending their time. And very few people are spending much time with their phone book! Facebook, yes. Phone book, no.

2. Consider Better Options for Your Advertising Dollars. The business owner that I mentioned to you at the beginning of this post didn't realize that he had very little control over what was being done for him. He didn't realize that once he stopped paying, that he had no online history of the PPC advertising. He didn't realize that none of the web traffic actually went to his site like he thought it was. He didn't realize that Google Analytics as well as the Google Adwords and Google Places accounts could have been integrated but weren't even being used. Today, there are so many better options - both short- and long-term - that he could have considered such as SEO and better SEM. Heck, for $4,000 a month, he could have even considered advertising on TV (something he never thought he could afford).

3. Focus on Building Relationships, drawing people to you rather than have your ad sit in a book on someone's shelf in hopes that they' ll find you one day. There are people looking for your business and products or services every single day - and people who will refer others to you if you remind them and if you reach out and help other people and other businesses. It's not all about selling. It's about connecting and engaging with your target audience, and paid advertising - especially in phone directories - just can't do that like social media and organic search methods including effective blogging and content management.

So what should you do instead?

1. Well, first, don't eliminate your phone directory listings altogether. If you've always maintained a presence there, then reduce your spending by reducing the ad size. And always keep your online listing up-to-date. For example, AT&T's Yellow Pages will allow businesses to maintain a free and fairly detailed listing as long as you update it annually. Others like SuperPages.com are similar but don't require annual updates. Yellowbook seems to want a bit more control with their sales force but you can still get a free listing if you don't want to pay for one.

2. Make sure that the basics are covered. Create and/or update your other online directory listings like Google Places, Bing, and Yahoo and any local directories like Richmond.com. Fill them out completely and add photos and/or videos if they let you do that at no charge. And be sure to include your website URL! Keep a list of them in a spreadsheet so that you don't forget your log in information and passwords, or print out the sign-up emails and keep them handy. Also, be sure you're talking to your web developer about optimizing your website for appropriate keywords and make sure you have access to your Google Analytics account. Get familiar with the tools you probably already have in place - review results at least monthly.

3. Evaluate the status of your current online marketing efforts. If you haven't updated your website in a few years, or if you're not active on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or if you haven't even considered whether it makes sense to begin blogging, then evaluate those marketing efforts as they'll provide you with better traction in the long run. Also, be sure you have both an on-site and off-site SEO effort in place and that you know your best keywords, particularly long-tail keywords that might get less hits but better conversion for you. The idea is to do the work that will get your OWN website up in the search engine rankings - not to help the directories push yours off the first page. This takes commitment but a lot could have been accomplished with less than 25% of the $4,000/month budget my small business owner was spending on phone book directory advertising!

In addition, test and run your own PPC campaigns, even if you start with just Google Adwords. If you run your own campaign, you can learn a lot more and know what questions to ask if and when you feel you want someone else to run them for you. Even if the small business owner spends just $300/month or $10 day on Google Adwords, you'll at least get a feel for your better performing keywords.

Related Articles
  Why Paid Web Directories are Better
  Expand Your Advertising Budget By Getting Free Publicity From Local Media
  What is a Prospect Looking for Online
  How to Find Quality Web Directories
  10 Ways Writing Articles Can Improve Your Business
  Internet Home Business Tips - Using Paid Or Free Advertising?
  Australian Franchise Directory Challenges Decrease in Franchise Enquiries
  Business Directories: The Place to List Your Local Small Business When Looking for Local Customers
  W is for Why is my marketing not working?
  Is Online Advertising Cost Effective?
  Free Online Advertising Every Small Business Owner Should Use
  Is Your Online Business Plan Current?
  Directory submission of the links
  How to use Articles to Promote your Online Business
  You Want to Earn Money Online : Are You Better Than The Rest
  How to Modify the Path Variable in Linux/Unix
  Find Your Perfect Franchise Fit With the Help of a Directory
  5 Reasons to List Your Company Now
  SEO Glossary [A-D]
  Online Business Directories as a Source of Website Traffic

Article Tags: online marketing, phone directory marketing, small business, small business marketing, yellow pages marketing, yellowbook marketing



Related Forum Posts
Top 19 Copywriting books - 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley. 2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner. 3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill. 4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin. 7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books. 9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association. 11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books. 12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books. 13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books. 16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books. 17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall. 18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop. 19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley. This should keep you busy for at least a year. Enjoy!
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
A ton of Great Women - You might want to profile Teresa Cascioli of LakePort Brewery. She has an amazing story! I met her at at the celebratory luncheon for the Profit/Chatelaine Top 100 Women Business Owners. The Top 100 list is also a great resource for inspirational stories of Women Entrepreneurs.
These maybe the coldest franchises out there: - Here are the worst 15 performing franchises in regards to having the highest Small Business Administration (SBA) loan failure rates. The list is dotted with sub sandwich shops, fitness centers and car shops. WORST FRANCHISE LOAN FAILURES Failure % 1 OBEE'S SOUP SALAD SUBS 55.56% 2 LADY OF AMERICA 41.94% 3 COUNTRY CLUTTER (BED & BREAKFAST) 41.18% 4 COPY CLUB 36.36% 5 ALL TUNE AND LUBE 35.71% 6 PICKERMAN'S 35.71% 7 PHILLY CONNECTION 35.59% 8 ROLY POLY ROLLED SANDWICHES 34.78% 9 COTTMAN TRANSMISSION 34.48% 10 HAIR COLOR EXPRESS 33.33% 11 LEE MYLES AUTOMOTIVE TRANSMISSIONS 33.33% 12 GODFATHER'S PIZZA 33.33% 13 SMOOTHIE FACTORY 33.33% 14 BLIMPIE 31.39% 15 GOLF U.S.A. (RETAIL GOLF EQUIP.) 30.77% Source: Small Business Administration, SBA Loan Performance Within Franchise Code for the Period of FY 2001 - 2005
Kooiii Business Resources Can Save you Thousands of Dollars - Socialtisers Social Media Advertising: Every month as a part of your membership you get a $25 coupon code for purchased of targeted pay-per click advertising from Socialtisers.com. In addition you will receive top level training and opportunities to grow as a publisher if you choose to tap into 3 amazing revenue streams from Socialtisers membership. Socialtisers members are paid for click through traffic on display advertising, they get paid to send us new advertisers, and they also get paid when they refer successful publishers as well. E-mail marketing with Rapid Marketer Autoresponder: Also included in your membership is a $200+ a month package from Rapid Marketer Autoresponder, which allows you to use our powerful bulk e-mail auto-responders to mail up to 500,000 e-mails a month. They say the money is in the list in online marketing but managing that list can be expensive. Our responders rival the top names in the business and this one comes with your Kooiii Business Social membership. Business CMS Fan Pages: A Social Media Fan Page for your business is a virtual must and can be your most powerful sales and engagement tool. Kooiii's Business Fan Pages or Biz Pages allow greater freedom in design and function even allowing promotion of for sale goods directly on site and creation of ready to run business models directly from Kooiii Business Social like this example page we have created for people Visiting Yuma Arizona. Pages like this one can generate a full time income, promote your existing business, or bolster the work of your non-profit. Coupon Directory: If your business markets using digital coupon codes then the coupon directory is a must. Combine our QR Code generator with the Coupon offering and you have a powerful mobile media promotion tool as well. Article Marketing, Forums, Niche Groups, and Blogs: From our powerful article and press release directory to your member blog, private forums, and niche business groups, Kooiii is a article marketer's dream. Members share wisdom, and interest daily and grow together in a peer to peer hot bed of ideas and know how. We sort of think of it as one big Internet Think Tank allowing connection and innovation on a global scale. Kooiii Search and Business Directory: Unlike most social media platforms we don't just embrace site search but deliver global search results, social media focused results, and a full indexing of websites and links shared on Kooiii and in the Kooiii Business Directory. Kooiii Search is accessible by our web toolbar, on site search boxes, 3rd party webmaster API, and through MyCroft for Firefox, IE, and Opera. Being on Kooiii Business Social ensures that your websites and shared content are picked up in Kooiii Search. Classifieds Advertising: List 50 of your top products with links, Google Maps, and more in the Kooiii Business Social Classifieds. Add your business opportunities, services, and private sale items as well and have them promoted by our social presence and indexed in Kooiii Search within minutes. Non Stop Training: From member added topics to robust training in social media, search engine optimization, ppc advertising, content generation, Internet marketing, and affiliate tips we help members grow their minds as well as their business. Topics range from Public Relations to business management, product reviews, and details on the latest technology. Kooiii members contribute as well so the number of new topics is limited only by the desire to learn. Affiliate Program: In addition to all of the paid membership benefits we have added an additional free bonus for you in our powerful 2 tier affiliate program. When your business sends new members to us through unobtrusive promotion tools you will earn a percentage of their membership dues every month. When they bring someone into Kooiii Business Social you will earn 20% of their commissions as well. Again this is an optional bonus


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Effective Leadership

Resolving A Conflict Between Two Sales Staffs

When Living the Dream isn't enough!

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.