Yell/Yellow Pages advertising
Discussion
I know they're probably almost an irrelevance in the digital age, but I still seem to keep getting sucked in by them every year at renewals time! I hate they way that they just cold call and run though stuff quickly over the phone with you, then instruct you to logon to their website and tick the box to confirm the contract. All seems a bit high pressure, they just want to get you to sign for it, no time to look at what's included, proper breakdown of costs or anything in writing. They've messed up my renewal several times, although they've usually refunded to compensate. Last year they cancelled the wrong ad out of my package and then I had to fight them to get the discount that I'd been promised over the phone.
When i took over the business (10 years ago), yellow pages books were the only advertising in place, and I've just carried on with it. Originally we (and the previous business owner) were paying around £1800/yr to be in the two books that were covering the county. It's got cheaper over the years, and now the main component was the online (yell.com) entry. Which seems to be doing ok (ish) for us. We have a priority listing so we always come top on of searches on their site, and until now they've claimed that they paid for google results, and yell.com (with my business at the top), used to come up well in google searches etc. Our annual spend is now about £1000, including ads in (what's left of) the printed books).
Now they've phoned me today, offering some sort of loyalty package "extra services at no extra cost" apparently. The main element that they're offering is their 'Connect' service which is supposed to offer some online search optimisation (I suspect it's what they used to do all inclusive with their previous online offering). It's all 12 month minimum contract stuff, and it's a bit confusing because my main online entry isn't due for renewal for another 5 months. So I'm not convinced that what I'm signing up for now (at their no extra cost claim), isn't going to end up costing me more when my regular renewal comes through. There's no mention of the printed books for next year, even though he said that's part of the package.
I really need to get my own web site in order - it's a years old, holding page type affair, and probably losing me more business than yell is gaining me. Just never seem to get round to it. Want it done properly as a self hosted thing, not some yellow pages or Wix job really.
Does anyone else bother with Yellow Pages any more? Is the Yell.com online stuff worth bothering with? I'm tempted to tell them to do one completely, and sort myself out properly for when the yell.com entry expires, but it feels like a bit of a leap of faith after using them for so long.
I did do google adwords for a while ages ago, but again, my lack of proper website was holding that back I think. And I was never really happy with the vagueness of adwords, just asking you to set a budget and leave it to. Facebook seems a worthwhile thing for people trading with consumers, but the nature of my business is that it's 100% B2B, so I think FB advertising is a bit limiting for me.
When i took over the business (10 years ago), yellow pages books were the only advertising in place, and I've just carried on with it. Originally we (and the previous business owner) were paying around £1800/yr to be in the two books that were covering the county. It's got cheaper over the years, and now the main component was the online (yell.com) entry. Which seems to be doing ok (ish) for us. We have a priority listing so we always come top on of searches on their site, and until now they've claimed that they paid for google results, and yell.com (with my business at the top), used to come up well in google searches etc. Our annual spend is now about £1000, including ads in (what's left of) the printed books).
Now they've phoned me today, offering some sort of loyalty package "extra services at no extra cost" apparently. The main element that they're offering is their 'Connect' service which is supposed to offer some online search optimisation (I suspect it's what they used to do all inclusive with their previous online offering). It's all 12 month minimum contract stuff, and it's a bit confusing because my main online entry isn't due for renewal for another 5 months. So I'm not convinced that what I'm signing up for now (at their no extra cost claim), isn't going to end up costing me more when my regular renewal comes through. There's no mention of the printed books for next year, even though he said that's part of the package.
I really need to get my own web site in order - it's a years old, holding page type affair, and probably losing me more business than yell is gaining me. Just never seem to get round to it. Want it done properly as a self hosted thing, not some yellow pages or Wix job really.
Does anyone else bother with Yellow Pages any more? Is the Yell.com online stuff worth bothering with? I'm tempted to tell them to do one completely, and sort myself out properly for when the yell.com entry expires, but it feels like a bit of a leap of faith after using them for so long.
I did do google adwords for a while ages ago, but again, my lack of proper website was holding that back I think. And I was never really happy with the vagueness of adwords, just asking you to set a budget and leave it to. Facebook seems a worthwhile thing for people trading with consumers, but the nature of my business is that it's 100% B2B, so I think FB advertising is a bit limiting for me.
MrSparks said:
There's nothing vague about Adwords. If you consider it vague then you don't know enough about it and you'll just burn through money.
You can be very, very specific with Adwords - including locations and time schedules (do you want your ad to show if you're not open to answer the phone? - you might do, you might not but either way it can be controlled). And I've seen people burn through money when they don't know what they're doing (including me when I started learning).
I can't remember the exact specifics of my problem with adwords (it must have been about five years ago now). It was something along the lines of that it kept advising me that I'd get more matches if I included a wider area of place names. Of course I'd get more matches, but there was no point because they were out of the geographical area that I cover. I put up with them advising that, but in the end I think they tried to force it on me, which was utterly pointless, and would just have cost me money in wasted clicks. So I knocked it on the head.You can be very, very specific with Adwords - including locations and time schedules (do you want your ad to show if you're not open to answer the phone? - you might do, you might not but either way it can be controlled). And I've seen people burn through money when they don't know what they're doing (including me when I started learning).
My Yell account is an utter mess though, I've spent half the day trying to unravel it. When they phoned me to renew last year, they immediately offered me a 20% discount. Then they didn't seem to apply it on their charges, then they cancelled the wrong product (my main online entry) and took weeks to reinstate it. So I was credited for the couple of months it was missing anyway. Now I get a monthly invoice, and a monthly credit note from them with, which I had thought got the discount back to the promised price. Now I'm looking at it thinking that it probably hasn't, although it's almost impossible to tell what's going on for sure.
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff