I always love the opportunity to use the Latin I was forced into taking my first two years in high school. Roy H. Williams, founder of a great company called “Wizard of Ads”, has blogged about the end of the Yellow Pages. Actually he says the YP are dead but “like a chicken with its head cut off it still runs around for awhile”!
Roy says there are some very powerful alternatives to the Yellow Pages and yes Google is one of them. Besides the omnipotent Google there are other sites such as Yelp or Angies List and even a “newcomer” named appropriately the “Word of Mouth Forum”. (What Steve Toburen calls Cheerleaders and thanks to the power of the internet these “unpaid salesmen” can become “Cheerleaders on Steroids”! Cheerleaders are more powerful than ever!)
So you should put all your marketing (not just the Yellow Pages) under scrutiny. And Roy tells you how to do it right here: Is Your Marketing Working?
Click on the link above if you would like to know more about these tools and while you are there sign up for Roy’s blog. I read it on a regular basis and recommend you do too.
Bill
NOTE: Remember that negative Cheerleaders slashing you to pieces on Google or Angieslist can destroy your business. (And many times these “trigger happy clients” haven’t even let you know they are unhappy!) That is why you absolutely should start making Immediate Quality Check Calls. Learn how HERE!
I put in a Yellow Page ad in my second year and got 2 calls, one out of my area. My website, which only showed up on local searches in my zip code, got me dozens of clients without paying for ads. And it cost me less than 2 months of YP. It’s an easy decision for me; if the YP were cheap, I’d put something in there. For that amount of money, I can buy clicks on my website.
Dan Keech
Fiber Clean Carpet Cleaning of Raleigh
I welcome the change!
This will give the little guys, like me, the opportunity to outshine the established competition
Jay Jetty
Carpet Cleaning Las Vegas
been without YP for 3 yrs now in both chimney and carpet cleaning business.. noticed over the year more and more clients when asked how did they hear about us said google, or internet. I dropped my $600a month YP ad and the ad rep told me I wouild be out of business in 3 yrs.. it been three year and we are doing better and have more money to spend where it works.. google, better site etc.
been there done that
carl
Absolute Best Carpet Care Raleigh NC
CarpetCleaningRaleigh.com
Over fifty years ago as a very little boy I saw my great-grandmother cut the head off a chicken- reflex action meant it ran around the yard for awhile without a head. Seriously. It was dead but just didn’t know it yet. The parallels to the Yellow Pages are obvious.
My thanks to the posters above. Good comments.
Steve
PS I would say that emergency water damage firms are the one exception that should maintain a presence in the YP. If the client has 3″ of water in her living room I don’t see her sitting down to Google “Water damage in Oklahoma City”! Plus the profit potential of even one loss will pay your YP bill for the entire year!