Apr 8, 2008
Our new 2008 Yellow pages directories arrived this morning. We keep these and the phone book on top of the fridge, and they never get used. Bless the internet.The old yellow pages was firmly wedged between the top of the fridge and the bottom of the liquor cabinet - I had to give the books a good yank to get them out.
When I inserted the new Yellow pages into where the old ones were, there was now plenty of room free. What was previously wedged in there tightly now has about an inch of clearance.
Hmmmmmm.
That inch of lost Yellow Pages probably represents several million dollars worth of lost advertising for Telecom (Edit: not owned by Telecom anymore, hasn't been for a few years now).
It would be a fair guess to say that more and more people are pulling the plug on their Yellow Pages advertising, and putting their spend into internet marketing activities such as Adwords.
So why is it such a job to convince people of the value of organic SEO in this country? Google has done a great job of making 'adwords' mean the same thing as 'internet marketing', just like Microsoft has done a great job in getting people to refer to Internet Explorer as simply 'the internet'.
Adwords, SEO consultants, link buying, Yellow pages, and offline marketing all compete with each other. My experience is that there is usually a fixed budget available for advertising, as opposed to an unlimited budget with a specified cost per conversion (ie spend as much as you like so long as it doesn't cost more than $30 per sale).
May the best medium win!
3 Comments
- Jul 30, 2008
Telecom dont own the yellow pages anymore. They were bought by a Canadian company. They are focusing more online and have done some good things but still dont have it right. A total generic directory doesnt really work online very well. For example we are a national directory of medical products but I have yet to find an online directory that allows you to choose all of NZ as your business area. They still make you choose regions.
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I haven't noticed the books getting any thinner, as I don't think I've ever picked up the Yellow Pages, the closest I've got is the Yellow Pages online.
In the past few years, the businesses I've worked for, and many freinds businesses have all pulled the plug on Yellow Pages advertising.
People don't want to yank the Yellow Pages out from between the fridge and the liquor cabinet, and then search for 5 minutes to find something near enough to what they're looking for. Typing a phrase into Google is easier, faster, and provides more alternatives to what you are looking for.