Yell/Yellow Pages advertising

[mjb1]

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.

[Doofus]

I don't think I've seen a Yellow Pages book for several years.

If I'm Googling for something and a yell result crops up I purposely ignore it. To me (as a consumer, but also as the owner of online businesses), a Yell listing suggests a poor (or no) website, which means I'm not going to find any further information by clicking the Yell link, so I don't.

If I were you, I'd ditch it, but not before getting something better in its place.

[MrSparks]

mjb1 said:

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.

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 used to run a services business and we were in Yell online and the book, the owner was old school and thought it was the bees knees, but the data told otherwise. It did generate some leads, but they generally weren't the type of leads we were looking for. Over a number of years I managed to make it less and less and they are no longer in the book at all. No affect on business - well, actually, less time-wasting leads like changing a light switch for an old lady - nothing wrong with those leads, unless you're a commercial contractor with a £100k / mo wages bill. So remember that different mediums will generate different results and it does depend on what you do and who you're appealing to. The older generation might still use the books...

We use Adwords for online retail (only a small amount at the minute, about £20k / year but increasing profitably) and I'm doing some lead generation for some ex-competitors using Adwords and landing pages.

In my opinion, assuming you're a service business, lead generation via PPC and landing pages is the way forward. (for online) and for certain services Facebook can be good. I don't think FB is great for responsive services like call out electricians and plumbers but it appears to do well for things like garage doors, conservatories, log burners etc.

I'm no expert though so take the above as my thoughts and get proper advice from a pro.

[Simpo Two]

At the moment it seems you're guessing. You think you're wasting money but you're not sure. You need to work out how much money you make from the work the advertising brings in. Hence the line 'How did you hear about us?'

I've had a few lucky strikes with advertising but be careful. My best was £50 out, £14K back

[mjb1]

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.

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.

[rog007]

What's Yellow Pages!?

[Si1295]

As a (slightly) vertically challenged person, the demise of the YellowPages from thick A4 catalogue of everything in your area to thin A5 magazine means that I can no longer reach the biscuit tin.

We've got the free listings on Yell.com but that's about it. As someone mentioned above, if your target market is the older person (probably 70+ now) then the yellow pages/thomson local is probably effective, everybody else typically Google's things ime

[StevieBee]

mjb1 said:

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.

My business works for public institutions up to and including national government, both UK and internationally as well as donor-institutions and the like. Our work is won via highly complex tendering processes and global networks.

I spent 15 minutes explaining to a Yell / Yellow Pages sales woman that the chief procurement assessor for the World Bank or the EBRD would unlikely be motivated to give us a call on the basis of a small ad in the South Essex edition of the Yellow Pages. She spent the same time trying to convince me they would to the point that she suggested that I knew nothing about advertising...despite my business being, fundamentally, and advertising agency!

I've seldom come across anyone so desperate for a sale!

[red_slr]

StevieBee said:

I've seldom come across anyone so desperate for a sale!

They are on their @rse tbh. They still take on a lot of new people as the reps only last a matter of months now. They get offered decent bonuses but they really struggle for sales.

We have been in since day 1. Had the same rep for the best part of 20 years.

In the last 10 years we have had at least 2 a year.

This year will be our last. We used to have a half page ad. We stopped with the book 3 years ago. We have seen our conversion rate drop off a cliff via .com

We managed to negotiate a very large discount for this year, but looking at the stats its just as bad as last year.

They come up with excuses and try and use smoke and mirrors but the tracking data does not lie.

We also find the quality of customers who make enqs via .com to be very poor and we now ignore any messages from .com

In our listing category there used to be 5-10 pages of companies - easily 30 companies. This year, 1 company took out the cheapest listing in the book. The book is now under 100 pages and half the print area.

Our spend was about £12k PA now its <£1k. The money still gets spent but with google!!

[forest172]

mines about to expire. I`ve been with them for 16 years. I pay £165 a month

I`m not going to bother for the first time ever and keep my money. I`m an established business and nobody ever says we`ve seen you in the yellow pages/yell

[mjb1]

Lo and behold, I've just had an email shot through from their CEO - announcing that they're canning the printed books after the next year.