Is Your Yellow Pages Habit Making or Costing You Money?
Over the years we’ve had many clients asking us if they should continue buying Yellow Pages advertising. My answer is the same. Look at your websites visitor data and see how many visitors are coming directly from yellowpages.ca. Use the numbers to determine if it’s good value or not.
This year I received a different call, not from a client, but a prospect out in the west coast. He asked if he left Yellow Pages could we ensure that his website still be found in Google for his business name? “Of course”, I said, “you don’t need them for your rankings. You need an optimized website.” I told him our cost and he was surprised how much less it was than what he had been doing. A lot less. So why, I asked, have you stayed with them for so long? The reason he said was simply “habit”.
Here’s the key: Most people who are searching for a specific company want to go from Google directly to the company. They don’t go through Yellow Pages. Do you?
So before your old habits of buying Yellow Pages (or print media) take over, go to your website’s analytics data and search under “referrals”. Then look down the list and see which sites are delivering the most visitors to your website. If it’s Yellow Pages by all means buy. If it’s not shift the money where the return is the best.