Another Rant Against the Yellow Pages

Last month, my wife asked me to look up the phone number of a local restaurant.

She was writing a note to her sister who is coming to visit and wanted to call the restaurant to see which hotels are located nearby.

(This was a handwritten note, the kind you shove in an envelope with postage.)

She was sitting in the living room with a book as a writing surface as she asked me for the number.

I used my Droid, did a Google voice search, pressed the number and handed the phone to my wife.

While she was talking to the restaurant, I noticed that the book the she was using as a writing surface, was The Phone Book.

It's that time of year again when phone book sales people try and get you to sign up for another year of advertising in the book.

Now days, they will try and sell you on a website too because they know that the book is dying, and being replaced by the web.

Paul Weyland wrote about The Phone Book recently in a newsletter he sends to radio and television sales reps:

Yellow Pages- Despite rumors of its imminent Internet-inspired death, many businesses still feel they absolutely must advertise in the phone book. When many consumers are ready to buy a product or service they pull out the Yellow Pages for information. Advertisers feel that many sales can be traced directly to the phone book. Many cities now have more than one book and for many advertising decision makers that poses a problem. Which book (or books) do you buy? Technology poses another problem for phone book advertisers. Younger people are relying more and more on the Internet for information on businesses. Despite it’s problems, Yellow Page advertising is still very popular, and they’re doing a lot to embrace the Internet and keep their customers.

Here are some of the strengths of the Yellow Pages:
• Perceived as reliable-People turn to the Yellow Pages when they are ready to buy.
• Room to display multiple products and services-Like the newspaper.
• Advertising by section-Yellow Pages can place ads for one client in several different product/service categories.
• Couponing-Like the newspaper, Yellow Page customers can find coupons they can bring directly to the advertiser.
• Ubiquitous-Yellow Pages are everywhere. And usually right next to the telephone.

Like newspaper, Yellow Page advertising does have its drawbacks. Here are some examples:
• High cost-Yellow Pages advertising can be very expensive, particularly when the advertiser is running full-page color ads in several product/service categories. And if you dispute your bill your phone could be cut off.
• You can’t change the copy-The advertiser is stuck with the same copy for a year. That’s a long time, especially if something new you have something new you’d like to say. And what if there’s a mistake in the ad? Too bad. You live with it for a year.
• Passive medium-Again, a Yellow Pages ad doesn’t say anything until you pick it up and turn the pages. Up to that point the book sits in a drawer or under piles of mail.
• Absolutely no competitive protection-When you a consumer shops the Yellow Pages he has the opportunity to shop all of your competitors as well.
• The biggest ads are in the front of the product/service category-Sounds nice, until you think about how many consumers really pick up and handle the phone book. “When you buy a full page ad in our Yellow Pages, we’ll put your ad right in the front of the section!” Fine, except most people thumb through the Yellow Pages from back to front. Try it yourself. Pick up the phone book and look at the way you actually handle it to get to the pawn brokers section. That means that in reality, customers will see the smaller ads before they get to the big, expensive ones in the front of the section.
• Clutter-The Yellow Pages is virtually all ads. For small businesses it’s becoming very expensive to compete in the phone book, particularly if you need multiple listings. For example, if you’re in the heating and air conditioning business you’ll need an ad in heating and another in air conditioning. If you’re in the appliance business you’d need listings in refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, etc.
• Too many books-Clients in many markets are being courted by multiple “Yellow Pages” books. Which book (or books) should you buy?
• The Internet-Many younger people use the Internet for searching out businesses. And there are many different Internet “Yellow Pages”. Older people may have trouble with the Yellow Pages as well. In big cities the books are big and the older you get, the harder it is to read the numbers.

You can read the rest of what Paul wrote here on RBR.com.

When I was in the radio business, we used the book as a directory of potential advertisers.

Now that I moved to the web based world, I can offer marketing solutions that are measurably more cost effective than the book.

Contact me at: SHoward@CirrusABS.com or 260-255-4357.

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Why I Switched Careers

It has now been a full month since I walked away from 8+ years working for a group of radio stations in Fort Wayne Indiana.

All together I have spent 25+ years in the radio business with a couple of breaks. I started as a teenage disc-jockey and moved into the advertising and marketing world which I found fascinating.

Radio uses push marketing methods. In order to get the free music, they will push advertising messages out too.

Television broadcasting works this way too. Newspapers also use push marketing methods... you want to read the news, then you have to page thru the ads too.

Yellow Pages is not push marketing. I don't know of anyone who has casually paged thru the phone book as a source of entertainment.

The selling point for yellow pages sales reps was, the book was the place people go to find a business to spend money with to solve problems. Once you pick up the book, you are ready to spend.

Technology however has made the phone book and the yellow pages outdated. When we want an answer, we Google it. The web and search engines are replacing the yellow pages as the source for finding information and answers.

The other reason I switched careers, I believe in the methods used by my team at Cirrus ABS which combines sound technology, solid strategic planning and analytics to measure the results.

Our Sunday Seth talks more about this:

Paying attention to the attention economy

Most of us are happily obsessed with the economy of money. We earn it and we spend it and we generally pay attention to what things cost.

Certainly, salespeople and marketers are truly focused on the price of things, on commissions and shelving allowances and net margin and the cost of goods sold.

With all of these easily measured activity, it's easy to overlook the fast-growing and ever more important economy based around attention.

"If I alert my entire customer base, how much will this cost me in permission?"

"How much time do we save our customers with a better written manual?"

"When we fail to ask for (and reward) the privilege of following up, are we wasting permission?"

"Does launching this product to an audience of stangers waste the attention we're going to have to buy?"

Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they're not making any more of it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value.

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