The Yellow Pages – Have They Outlived Their Usefulness?
Does your business target a local market? Are you still advertising in the Yellow Pages? Have you ever asked your customers or patients if they found you using the Yellow Pages? I’m betting very few of your your new customers found you with the Yellow Pages. Your business may be local, but your potential customers are on the web.
Online marketing expert Kathy Hendershot-Hurd reminded me that no one checks the Yellow Pages to find a local business and that Baby Boomers are the only people on the planet who check the YP at all. She also found out that the YP people are saving money by reducing the size of the books (i.e., reducing the font size). Brilliant idea. All of us Baby Boomers are now going to have to get magnifying glasses to read the YP. If we read them in the 1st place. I won’t. I’ll just go online.
Maybe the Yellow Pages are only good for (1) Ripping apart in strength exercises, (2) Booster seats for the younger children at your holiday dinner.
Like all Baby Boomers in business, I tend to stick with the tried-and-true stuff I know, and I have been telling students for years that they need to advertise their businesses in the Yellow Pages. Now I’ve changed my tune. Everyone I know uses the Internet to find products and services locally. So why bother to advertise in the YP? The only reason I can think of is that they give two-for-one deals: if you place a book advertisement you also get an Internet ad. Of course, the Internet ad is the one you wanted in the first place.
But you can get on the Internet without going through the YP people and paying for an ad in the book. Dex (www.dexknows.com) advertises in a 14-state region, and you can place ads directly with them. YellowPages.com (AT&T) also has an online sales link.
So if you have a business that sells to Baby Boomers (or you are a Baby Boomer in business), think carefully before you put a big ad in the Yellow Pages. Survey all of your new customers to see how they found you, and be careful to ask if they found you online.
Maybe in the future, the only remnant of the “Yellow Pages” will be its name. What do you think?
Image source: Newscom