Do People Still Advertise in the Yellow Pages?

The internet may be a strange place to find dinosaurs but they do exist.  In my view the Yellow Pages, and its sub-brands, is one of them. Rumours about its financial situation make it timely to consider whether the Yellow Pages in any form, is worth spending advertising pounds on.

To sum up the predicament of the Yellow Pages, the world has moved on.

Online, Google is the star. And Facebook and Twitter are the supporting cast. Businesses are putting their money into online marketing support such as SEO and Pay Per Click. And if they are not doing that, they finding out how to create content for social media. This is what you should be doing. In theory you need to have several internet marketing strategies in place!

These days companies want to be active participants in their online presence.  They don’t see any value in paying the Yellow Pages to end up being a passive player. The Yellow Pages had its day, but now that day is coming to an end.

Years ago, when even basic websites were expensive, many companies got burnt. They put up a site, but were surprised when it didn’t get traffic. They jumped at the chance of someone else doing the work for them and bought ads on the Yellow Pages. The other kind of persistent advertiser may not even have a website.

About 75% of the UK population go online at least once a month and just over 10% have just never used the internet. The Facebook generation can find their own way around.  And their parents aren’t far behind them. But it appears they don’t use the Yellow Pages.  The Yellow Pages site may be one of the highest ranked sites in the world, but it’s not for human traffic.

My advice to clients is to be very wary of where you advertise.  But wherever you do advertise, go where the traffic is.

Even the argument for advertising in the offline Yellow Pages is dying a slow death. Some small businesses benefit from offline advertising. But these days there’s lots of choice available. And with that, comes competition. That benefits you, not the Yellow Pages.

My parting shot is this. If you can’t prove the Yellow Pages generates tons of enquiries for you, it’s time to spend your money elsewhere. We all know what happened to the dinosaurs.