Yellow Pages Advertising Stats
This is what $1,000’s in YellowPages online advertising in 2009 gets you.
- $1,000’s in Advertising Costs
- 21 Website Visitors
- and ZERO new customers
Lesson? Don’t Advertise in YellowPages
Everyone knows the YellowPages aren’t what they used to be, but I don’t think everyone realizes how truly bad it is.
The data above, provided by Google Analytics Website Tracking, is from a client of mine who has been running YellowPages online ads for quite a few years. He doesn’t do much YellowPage print anymore, but he kept the YellowPages online because he thought
“they might send over a few customers here and there,
so I haven’t decided to cancel them.”
Plus, the YellowPages sales reps send him insanely high data about how many 1,000’s of people see his online YellowPages ad on YellowPages.com, but the data above proves that those 1,000’s of people aren’t clicking through to his website.
Lesson? Track Your Marketing
By spending about 15 minutes of my time, I was able to realize that not only was YellowPages online ads not producing him much web traffic, but it was producing him absolutely zero customers! Not one person that visited his site from YellowPages.com actually contacted him through the sites contact page.
note: he also gauged how many calls he got directly from the ad (i.e. non-website visitors), which was also disappointing at best.
Needless to say, he won’t be renewing his YellowPages ads this year.
Hint: Your Answer Should Be YES
- Are you tracking your website traffic with Google Analytics?
- Do you truly know how much revenue each marketing campaign you run brings in, whether it’s a print ad, Google marketing, email marketing, etc?
- Do you know how to fully analyze your website tracking data to make sure you’re not throwing money away on useless advertising? I’m not talking about reading website traffic reports…I’m talking about understanding them.
UPDATE: If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, you should consider attending my no-cost online webinar where I’ll teach you how to avoid this mistake, and many others like it. More details on my other website.
Share Your Thoughts
- If you’re a business owner, are you advertising in YellowPages or have you in the past?
- As a consumer (which everyone is), when was the last time you used the YellowPages?
- If you are a YellowPage sales rep, enlighten us on how you possibly sell your ad space ; )
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Amen! If you’re spending money on *any* type of advertising, you should be tracking the results. As for the Yellow Pages, just say no. Google Maps local search listings are free–the easiest way to get on page one of Google without SEO or PPC.
Great article!
Thanks Julie. I agree that all advertising should be tracked. I’m a bit of a data junkie and love seeing what’s working and what’s not, and always making improvements.
Thats why you never pay for a monthly/yearly fee advertising, and that’s why you hire someone to manage your online advertising.
Those analytics reports are painful.
Thanks Toni. Yes, analytics reports are painful at times but an important part of business. We were lucky to have them in this case. If we had been in a position where we didn’t have the analytics for the past year or two, then we may have had to keep running the ads just to test their effectiveness instead of pulling them right away.
Jon,
You got the facts right,
Tracking is great, improving is better.
Tracking visits and click-through rates
is tool to measure how a campaign is doing.
Throwing away the whole campaign because
of bad numbers is not the first thing I would do.
The YP ads usueally blow big time. Becuase of
theses 3 factors:
No USP
(why should they do business with you)
No Irresistible Offer
(get something for free that educates them on what to look out of ….
in exchage for their email or contact info)
No Clear Call To Action
(coupons are a good start but “Call before Sunday for the
YP callin special valid for 60 days)
No Clear Call To Action
(coupons are a good start but “Call before Sunday for the
YP call-in special valid for 60 days, or go to the websit for the Web special)
Mediocre copy
The YP reps hate it when you put a direct response ad in there because that means
you can track and will and that’s usually why advertizers pull their ads. The best we
go on YP ads was a 4.2:1 return. Some we can’t get anything out of for our clients
because of their industry. But imagine, if you get a 4:1 return, you may think this
is great, but truely, you can’t scale that.
Because spending twice as much won’t get you twiecethe business. So even if
they spend 5k/yr in YP ads, all they’re gonna get is $20k/yr in gross revenue.
The target for our client is 15:1 returns on the money they spend on online
and offline marketing.
So first he could have tried to change the profile to a direct response
w call to action ad.
Track that and then change the offer, change the call to action etc.
test test test test.
But I agree that even that would probably have not pulled enough
business to justify the maintenance cost in time and dollars.
Yves Baggi
http://www.15MinutesBusinessMarketing.com
Well said Yves. Yes, it’s important to track, improve, track, improve, on and on. That’s the joy of marketing these days is that everything is trackable one way or another. It’s amazing.
I’ve enjoyed exchanging thoughts with you via email lately. It seems that we think alike…always nice to meet other like-minded internet entrepreneurs. Good to see you online at the webinar today.
yes i agree the yellow pages are rubbish what is the best way to get good traffic to my web site as i find it hard to contact google we are always at the top of the page but dont many clicks help thanks again jon pat brock