Yellow Pages Advertising

For many years marketing professionals have stated that the printed yellow pages will become non existent due to their belief that internet search engine results and digital versions of the yellow pages will be the end of the big yellow book.

The printed yellow pages book does have some major drawbacks such as the cost of publication and that an advertisement cannot be edited once the book is printed. If, by some unfortunate accident, your phone number is printed incorrectly then your advertisement will be useless to you for the whole year that the phone book is circulated. There is also no possible way to know if your advertisement is reaching your target audience even if a survey is done to try and establish how many people who have contacted your business retrieved your information from the printed yellow pages. Additionally, there are more and more people who are choosing not to receive the phone book as they prefer to use the online yellow pages directory.

What does this all mean for your advertisement?

In this digital age many of the printed telephone directories are switching to the internet and creating a digital version of their directory. Dependent on your companies advertising goals the choice of advertising on this new medium is one that you should consider seriously.

Target Market

One of the main considerations that you should think about is the age of your target market. If your target market is for the younger generation then the possibility of advertising online being successful is good as there are close to 90% of this age range that will turn to the internet and use a search engine to locate a local business. However if your target market is the older generation then there is a chance that these people will still prefer to use the printed phone book to locate the number they require and probably won’t own a computer.

You’re Purpose?

Another consideration is the purpose of your advertising. Do you want to entice people to visit your website or are you solely interested in circulating your business telephone number to enable people can find and contact you? If you wish to drive traffic to your website you will need to check that the online yellow pages allow you to link directly to your website.

Some questions that you should ask once you have decided to advertise using the online yellow pages directory are:-

1) Is it possible to change your advertisement during the contract?
2) Are there additional charges to advertise in multiple categories?
3) If the advertisement is not working for you can you delete the advertisement?
4) How much advertisement space are you allowed to have?
5) How does the directory work to keep your advertisement listed on the first page of search engine results?
6) Will there be additional advertisements (generic) placed next to your advertisement that will be competing for clicks also?