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Yellow Pages Ads: Do not waste your money

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By Julie Woodside

When was the last time you opened a Yellow Pages directory to search for a local business?  Most of you are probably delving deep into your memory trying to conjure an image of an interior of this once useful reference — it’s been a while.

“Yellow Pages ads are no longer a working marketing mechanism.”

HubSpot’s VP of Marketing Mike Volpe and Sales Training Manager Andrew Quinn hosted a live webinar discussion on why Yellow Pages ads are a waste of your money and where you should invest instead.

Quinn believes Yellow Pages are neither good nor bad.  But, is it worth the investment for your business?

How do you effectively reach your target market in 2011?

  • Be prepared to be found within your local market when folks are ready to buy
  • Shopping habits have changed:  Internet plays stronger role.

How do Yellow Pages ads work? “Publish & pray,” says Quinn.

Phone book is not the go-to source anymore; multiple alternatives

  • In 2000 many ads shifted to the Internet due to improved search mechanisms
  • EVERY industry is going to undergo shift to Internet.
  • What is important: When does your business/do your customers shift? How do you respond?
    • Key driver of shift:  How useful is online CONTENT on your product/service
    • Pay attention to social trends

What determines if Yellow Pages ads are useful for YOUR BUSINESS?

  • INDUSTRY/SERVICE
    • Way people research services has shifted to online search
  • LOCATION/REGION
    • ex: Northern Maine = great for yellow pages.  But, be prepared for shift!
  • DEMOGRAPHIC
    • Age, income level, etc.

Selling Yellow Page Ads in 2011 is fear-driven sales

How do customers find your ads if not in the book?

  • Tip: Really investigate the usage stats and facts that the salesperson is showing you
  • Be aware of what others in your industry are doing

What is right level of investment for your business in Yellow Pages?

  • How do you decide what to invest?
  • Where put ads?
  • Ad sizes?
  • Should be in book at all?

AT&T found 63% of small businesses still advertise in Yellow Pages.  Just because it exists, does not mean it reaches your customer base.

Why? Some telephone companies are lobbying states to try to stop printing white pages residential listings.  Only 2% of customers request a copy of white pages.  Buyer behavior is shifting.

Bottom Line

  • You need to track incoming calls.
  • Do research on where to spend your money for advertising investment.
  • Offline media (Yellow Pages) can drive business to Internet.

Conduct poll for your customers

  • How did you find our phone number to call us today?
  • When was the last time you opened a phone book to call a business?
  • When was the last time you opened a phone book to look me up?

These questions will help see if your customers use Yellow Pages ads to contact you.  Further, study Yellow Pages to see if similar businesses are shifting out of that medium.

Investing in Yellow Pages ads is a waste of money as most people shift to the Internet to research businesses.

Today’s best advertising practices

  • Be prepared to shift your best content to online,
  • Understand how your best prospects come through your door
  • Have an idea of the drastic cuts you are willing to take, and take risks.

Post-webinar Hubspot blog post.

Marketing with Mobile with Newport Interactive Marketers

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One in four mobile subscribers in the US is using a smartphone to use apps, browse the Web, check email, play games, text, and more.  Major publishers like ESPN and the Weather Channel have more mobile traffic than traffic from the web.

How businesses should leverage mobile devices for marketing purposes was the topic of the first Newport Interactive Marketers gathering of 2011 held on January 20 at Christie’s.  Tamara Gruber of Red Giant Consulting guided attendees into the mobile marketing world.  Topics such as mobile web and apps with customer identity and access management, mobile search, QR codes were all discussed.

Follow along and learn more with Tamara’s slides.

Mobile marketing matters.  Why?

  • The majority of cellphones owned in 2011 will be smartphones
  • Mobile users will outpace desktop by 2014, 120 million next year alone
  • Less clutter, more personal on mobile
  • Google doesn’t always direct you to the mobile site, not always user-friendly
  • If you want a restaurant, need phone number, hours, location
  • 1/3 of online shoppers browse on mobile
  • Mobile search volume has grown 130% year-over-year

Mobile Web

  • Pros 35% mobile subs use browsers, cross-device support
  • Best practices Create mobile appropriate content & use tools that optimize by platform
  • Getting started Mofuse, Wapple, Netbiscuits can help move your website into the mobile space.

Mobile Apps

  • Pros More than 60 apps downloaded for every Apple device sold & a rich user experience
  • Best practices Be the most best helpful with your content: consider what someone really wants/needs
  • Getting started Chomp, Appolicious, Appitalism

Local businesses and services should be taking advantage of mobile search, click to call, book.

  • Leverage “click to call” on mobile + click to map + click to share, etc.
  • Encourage customers to check-in to get your biz/location onto customers’ social networks, such as Facebook

SMS Marketing

  • More than 7 trillion texts will be sent in 2011
  • Use short message service (SMS) to promote your business:  contests, coupons, votes, etc, we recommend seeking for the best sms solutions for small business

QR Codes

  • Quick response:  2-D barcode scanned by mobile app or camera phone
  • Delivers information, coupons, links, etc.
  • Example of good use of QR code: A house for sale, get more pix, info on the home
  • QR codes gaining traction and legit: Key is to think of user experience, lots of steps to deliver info, consider carefully
  • QR codes are here to stay so create your code, add content, and PROMOTE it.

Mobile marketing future forecast

  • Geolocation-based advertising
  • Mobile commerce:  Great increase in online shopping
  • Pay with your mobile phone

Mobile marketing is here to stay and growing in capabilities.  For your businesses’ success, learn how to harness applications for smartphones to reach out to your consumers on the platform that’s always in their pockets!

Mobile Google Ad Extensions: Get in the know

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Barb Young, PPC Strategies and Matt Van Wagner, Find Me Faster deliver tips to SEMNE members

For smartphones:  iPhone/droid/BB

Also WAP cell phone friendly, at least get smartphone enabled

Why bother with mobile?

  • 2009 saw a total of 1.2 billion mobile devices shipped
  • 65,000 androids are shipped per day
  • Smartphone sales are growing faster than WAP

Enable AdWords phone extensions

  • Select your device
  • Enable click-to-call feature
  • Have specific campaigns and metrics for mobile

Different devices have different ads

  • Smartphone ads are easier and growing faster
  • Opt-in for image ads on WAP phones

Mobile ad performance

  • 105% mobile click-thru-rate 3.5% mobile vs 1.7% desktop
  • 47% lower CPC

Coming soon to mobile ads

  • Opt-in to product reviews
  • Directly submit reviews
  • video extensions
Stay current & check out these sites

Blended search: Optimize social, video, images, PDFs – Boston SEO Meetup

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In 2007, Google first launched universal search.  Universal search has enabled forms of digital content, other than a simple web page, to appear as a search result.  As a result, search engine marketing strategies changed, too.

Four years later, on January 10, 2011, Jeff Selig of Overdrive Interactive presented on “blended search” aka “universal search” at the Boston SEO Meetup.  His presentation, “Blended search: Search engine optimization for social, video, images, PDFs, and news,” discusses how blended search has changed the way users find information online and how to optimize search engine results for your content.

Jeff will be presenting these insights in greater detail at New England Direct Marketing Association’s Marketing Technologies & Tactics Summit: Accelerate Your ROI on Feb 8, 2011 at Bentley University in Waltham, MA.

SEO Crawler’s brand monitor makes it easier to quickly adjust your content marketing strategy.

Blended search impact: What makes people click?

  • Universal search results yield higher click through rates (CTR)
  • Video viewers are 20% more likely to make a purchase, especially when looking at results further down the page
  • Images & video lead to more clicks, 84% click through rate, 12% text CTR, personalities 91% CTR
  • Stocks, maps, dictionaries, definitions and answers are diminish click-through rates — searchers get the answer on the results page & move on
  • Paid plus organic results together with images definiteky will raise click-through rates

Click influencers: How can you increase clicks?

  • The better your description matches what searchers are looking for, the more likely searchers will click
    • When the metadescription matches, you’ll see 75% CTRs
    • When the title matches, you’ll see 73% CTRs
  • Search engines love rich media, do whatever you can do to repurpose a whitepaper & post off-site
  • Video especially boost CTRs when you’re ranking lower in search engine results
  • Preview on search results pages definitely count and creates a sense of trust
  • Google Instant increased video traffic 28% vs before Instant
  • Have consistent messages
  • Know your market & know your query space

Optimizing rich video is a worthy investment

  • Create & submit video sitemap
  • Markup videos with microformats to let the search engines know what they are
  • On YouTube you want your starter image to be the most alluring
  • When optimizing, be sure to pick a screenshot that accurately depicts the content

Photos & images are worthy of optimization too

  • Bigger is better, large images are well-loved by search engines
  • Benefits some sites, not all, be sure there’s a reason to keep clicking.
  • Images optimize with Alt attributes
  • Image properties contain and can be customized w all kinds of info

Optimize your Facebook Fan Page for search engines

Facebook best practices

  • Engage fans in your posts
  • Have  Facebook resemble your website
  • Be sure to optimize your FB pages
  • Ask questions, add product news, reach out to potential fans via email
    • Ask for suggestions on how to maintain the product
    • Generate new product accessories through user-generated content

Twitter Optimization

  • Use Twitter profiles to add keywords to your brand, web address
  • Pay attention to your followers
  • Determine how many times they’ve been “listed” on Twitter Lists
  • Tweet your keywords
  • Use URL shorteners to track your influence
  • Be sure you use a URL shortener service that will stay in business: When it goes, so do your links
  • Remember: No-follow links still carry juice
  • Popularity isn’t the same as authority, want to follow 1/3 of followers

Optimize LinkedIn

  • Use a vanity URL
  • Answers provide the opportunity for lots of link juice
  • Check out opened-up Groups
  • Be sure you are in the Services Directory
  • Use keywords without stuffing, highlight your products
  • LinkedIn Insights shows how you compare to your competitors

Optimize YouTube

  • Maximize the About Me section
  • Be sure to use HD:  Google loves bigger/better.
  • Add URLs to descriptions, pollinate video
  • YouTube as PPC is inexpensive now
  • Use autoplay on YouTube
  • Label yourself as an expert
  • Internally link playlists
  • Transcribe your YouTube video: Can be as cheap as 10 cents/minute

More optimization tips

  • Can adjust Google Alerts to monitor news, blogs, social media
  • Local searches, more Yelp and Twitter coming up
  • Location-based searches are playing a bigger role
  • SEO and blogs: use at least 3 links per post, develop an interlinking strategy, think of how users will find you
  • Tools: Pingomatic
  • Be sure PDF is readable by search engines (try copy & paste) & be sure to use links
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