Quitting Yellow Pages?!

R

Rickytree

Been thinking about this for a couple years now. It is not that much money(200 mth)but just think that I can do better advertising myself with target strategies. Any thoughts?
 
I was advertising in 2 cities last year, but dropped back down to one. I dont think the yellow pages bring me many customers and the calls I do get seem to be price shoppers.

But I'm gonna stay listed in my primary city for now. I downgraded to $100/month and might even downgrade to just a listing eventually.

Only way to really find out is to ask every caller where they got your info from and I just never make that a priority.
 
All shoppers, all the time. Dropped them years ago. It took a while for me to realize that the drop in call volume of calls didn's really equal lower level of sales. Curious.
 
I get about 2/3 of my new customers from the Yellow Pages print version. Been running a half-page ad for years now in the Tampa metro market. When I first started, I ran small ads and it was lost in the mix. The price shoppers look for smaller ads and call all of them. The serious shoppers will stick to the big ads. I found out a long time ago that you have to spend money to make money. If you go cheap on the YP ads, don't bother, you're wasting money. The big ads are pricey, but worth every penny.

BTW, we ask EVERY caller how they found us. That's just good information to have.
 
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What are yellow pages?

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Yellow Pages are a directory that used to be at the front of a phone book but now they are a separate book here in Ontario Canada. I find that alot of people are going to the internet and not to a book to find a resource. I am still on the fence about the cancellation. Older folks still call but I think with more street signs I would be able to make up for those calls. Upon completion of a job I ask the customer if I can leave a sign in the front yard. Never had anyone say No. Sign says "Another Satisfied Customer" with my info. I pay 6 bucks a piece so if they blow away it's all with the price of the job me thinks. Will try to pick them up in a week or so.
 
Quit the yellow pages last year....this year the call volume is the same!! ringin off the hook!!
My provision come ffrom GOD!! but it looks like thats the topic on another thread
 
@ marlinspiker
I just did a post on Yelp before reading yours on this post. Does it work well or do you get tire kickers?
 
Lots of tire kickers but also a lot of young money. We have sold quite a few jobs over yelp in the last 4 months. The generation x/y crowd is all over it. It can't hurt and actually helps your page come up on search engines. The more exposure you can grab the better right? We also have manta and a few others that haven't been as helpful.
 
Ditto here, gave up yellow pages didn't see a rat's arse worth of difference in our call volume. That translated into $600/month we could spend on our more effective internet and local weekly paper ads.

YP kept trying to get us to do thier ONLINE stuff. I told them with google and good Website optimisation on my own I could get the same number of hits and not pay them for any of it.

They don't like me any more.
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Quit this year, the rep phoned me up asking if I wanted this and that this year, he knew it was over, we all know it's over, even their internet activities are mediocre at best. Tragic. When you actually stop and think about how much they charge and the number of customers they once had, somebody, somewhere must've become insanely wealthy during the good times.

Yellow Pages? I'm out.
 
I dropped down to a $75 ad from 250.
We are on year 10 - lots of referrals and a new website.

What gets me - the new YP book came out, has an "opt out" statement on the cover. You can 'cancel' them from leaving on your porch. That does not give me confidence as a paying advertiser.

If I could only "opt-out" of junk mail or telemarketing calls.

YP is BS
 
I really do not mind running a small ad, but the publishers of the book have a ton of rules about how they will lay out your ad. I think $1100 a month for a 2" in column ad is silly. Especially silly if they won't allow your logo in the placement that you request.

Consider that I may have gotten a dozen jobs from the book when I was running the ad - the percentage of the revenue that had to pay for the ad was something like 40%. Not effective at all.
 
Talked with the rep and cancelled everything. He did try to convince me otherwise but to no avail, it happened. Felt great! Payments stop in a couple months and by then my website should be updated. It's going to be a great year!
 
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