They find themselves at a disadvantage, even when they are a quality business (the old adage that “the angry customers complain the loudest”).Īs a society, we just don’t often refer to a printed book to find what we need. For the most part, this is a great change for the consumer, though it has its downfalls with businesses who don’t know how to manage online reputations. We’ve simply been trained to investigate every company that we consider doing business with, and make informed decisions. The Yellow Pages show you an advertisement, but the internet has community-written reviews in the form of sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, various scam-lists and more. Better yet, you will find no shortage of information, reviews and more for each business. Type a quick query into your preferred search engine, and you’ll have a wealth of information pretty much immediately. It’s simply easier to look for a business online. The problem, which is fairly obvious, is the internet – especially the internet in everybody’s pocket. So What’s the Problem? The Yellow Pages Sound Awesome. Even today, the book is still actively distributed to homes whether or not the residents want it. It used to be a no-brainer, especially if you were a local service-oriented company. For a couple thousand dollars a month, you could have your business information in front of every person that would be looking for your services. Businesses paid for listings in the yellow pages, and that listing was included in the phone book that was distributed to every doorstep in the area. The Yellow Pages subsidized the white pages. Also, many states have changed the laws that used to require delivery of the white pages to every home. It’s just not very cost-effective for companies to publish when they only have 1/3 of the market share of numbers in an area. Add the different rules and regulations governing cell phone numbers being publicly available, and the result is that there is no longer an effective way to distribute a printed directory of phone numbers. What does that mean? Cell phone networks aren’t managed (usually) by the same companies that publish the phone book – phone books succeeded because in a region, only one phone company was the primary service provider (like cable companies today) cell phones have a large variety of providers in an area. On the other hand, just under 40% of American households have landlines. But over the last 20 years, the shift from land-lines to cell phones has been huge – over 96% of US adults have cell phones nowadays, and 81% have smartphones. When the internet was becoming a widely-used source of information, the book saw a decline in usage, but it was still fairly popular due to its white-pages section, as the phone companies didn’t actively publish residential numbers online. Nowadays, the phone book isn’t nearly as prevalent or relevant as it once was. It was a useful tool, and a surefire way to get your business listing in front of everyone who needed your services. The book was huge, and at the time, often included the “white pages” – a directory of all local residential phone numbers. In all seriousness, the Yellow Pages was at one time the premier directory people would reference to find businesses that offered services they needed. Believe it or not, these devices were called “phones” – the same thing we call that small computer that you stare at as you aimlessly walk into traffic. Long ago, there was a time when people used devices, connected to a spiraled wire, to communicate with one another verbally. So, without further ado… The Yellow Pages – Then and Now And, these articles will assume that you do not have an unlimited marketing budget, so you have to choose one venue over another. So we’re going to do our best to dispel the myths and rumors and get to the heart of each marketing venue, and explore if, and why, it’s a good investment for your money. This post is part of a series in which we get down and dirty to answer the questions that all businesses are asking: where can I best spend my marketing budget? Every day, business owners are bombarded by salespersons telling them why their platform or print publication is THE BEST place to advertise.
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