PR Log - May 09, 2012 - Historically phone books, otherwise known as yellow pages, have been the most known and used form of directional advertising. Yellow pages had nearly a monopoly on providing the public with business information when they wanted it and needed it, that is until the internet came along. Some business owners believed that they needed to be in all the phone books in their area because they never knew which book their prospective clients would use. This is why there are so many phone books in an area. Each new phone book introduced to an area was believed to be dividing the market share. This is how residents in Lexington, Massachusetts end up having up to 6 different phone book companies serving their area. All the while, phone book salesmen will argue that their phone book is the most used in a city or town. Most phone book surveys can be made at the time of distribution to generate reports that say that they are the most known and used in the area. In this economy, businesses need to be careful with their advertising dollars.

Now it is said that a marketing budget is about 10% of the projected revenue of a business. Advertising budgets really have to be based off of results. Marketing Media Mix, LLC performed a comparison of call results at the request of the business owner. He advertised two businesses.  Both were advertised in a big phone book campaign costing over $28,000 as well as, with internet marketing with Marketing Media Mix, LLC. Business #1 was advertised in the Lawrence, MA Phone Book that has a distribution of an estimated 96,000 books and business #2 was advertised in the Portland, ME; Biddeford, ME, Lewiston, ME, Portsmouth, NH and Lawrence, MA Phone Book with an estimated combined distribution of 554,300 phone books. In 8 months the phone book's call tracking numbers generated 88 calls and Marketing Media Mix, LLC's call forwarding phone numbers achieved 2062 calls in the same time period.  The specifics of the internet campaign and business names are not revealed to prevent leaking any useful information to competitors.

Phone book companies are now selling internet products, but beware when purchasing internet marketing from a phone book. As a business owner perspective, it as a conflict of interest to purchase internet marketing from a yellow pages company. Yellow pages representatives are selling to a business and their competitors.  One really need to be able to play favorites when it comes to Internet Marketing.  Phone books do not have the same control over the internet as they do their own printed books. Phone books typically arrange their print ads by size and seniority. Bigger ads come first and if two companies purchase the same size ad then whomever bought earlier will come first. This formula has been around for years, but search engines' algorithms are more complicated than that. So what is an algorithm? An algorithm is the formula used by search engines to calculate the order in which search results are displayed. It has been said that Google has over 200 factors for why one listing is above another. So with the internet it is more the expertise and experience of the internet marketer than how much is paid, as well as to how much time is dedicated to a campaign or company.

Now business owners have many more choices when it comes to online directional advertising and marketing to choose from, like web design, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), internet video marketing, backlinking and pay-per-click. One website can be optimized to show up well in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It is recommended to invest more in a website and web presence as opposed to having an ad in a book. The fact is phone books are less and less a part of the decision process when it comes to choosing a business or service. Yellow Pages will tell businesses that there is a generation or people that still use phone books, but its up to business owners to decide if that is enough of an audience to justify the price they will pay. One reason there are so many phone books in Eastern Massachusetts is to target all the affluent markets especially on the North Shore and Metro West areas. There are just too many eye balls on computers, laptops, smart phones and now, even tablets. In addition, so many places like the local library, fast food places, and coffee shop chains provide free public WIFI.

The next generation of directional advertising is evolving more into business owners hiring a person or company dedicated to managing their internet marketing (http://marketingmediamix.com) as opposed to having a static ad in a phone book.

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