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Business Online » Monica Pitts
Digital Navigating
To phone book or not to phone book
The seasonal marketing mega-drama continues. This time of
year, we have many clients and potential clients call and ask, “Do
I need to advertise in the phone book?” Now we all know the
physical book is becoming harder and harder to throw our marketing
dollars into. People are turning to online sources to make
their buying decisions. But the institution has been around for so
long that businesses are very reluctant,
sometimes even scared,
People are turning to pull the plug on their phone
book ads.
to online sources to How do you decide if
make their buying you’re one of the rebels ready
to nix the book?
decisions. But the Once again we’re going
back to marketing 101: Look at
institution has been
your audience because it all de-
around for so long pends. Keep your ad if:
• Your target market is
that businesses older than age 60 and not very
are very reluctant, Internet savvy.
• Your audience lives in a
sometimes even rural area with limited Internet
connectivity.
scared, to pull the • You expect buyers to
plug on their phone make purchasing decisions as
they’re moving and don’t yet
book ads.
have Internet access. (However,
smartphones are fairly common
in urban areas, which may negate
this statement if your market is likely to have a smartphone.)
• All your major competitors have ads.
• You have zero online presence (in which case, please call us
or at least list your company on Google Places).
• You want to increase your marketing budget; who knows,
maybe you need a write off. (If that’s the case I know some great
designers who want to spiff up your current marketing materials.)
Should you keep your listing on the phone book website?
If you don’t have any online presence, it’s better than nothing;
however, for the prices they charge, you can build a website for
the price of your listing after a year or two.
You have a listing on the phone book website now and are
not sure if you should continue.
Consult your Google Analytics report. Check the referring
sites under traffic. This report does not lie. Look to see how many
visitors have found your site by clicking on a link from the phone
book site.
What are we doing?
Well, we’ve got an interesting mix of individuals in our target
market. Tranquility, our sister company, often receives calls from
individuals when they’re moving homes or offices or they are of
an older demographic that needs a bit more technical support.
Tranquility’s competitors both have phone book ads, so we decided
we still need one, too. They threw in an ad for MayeCreate
for another $10 a month, so we agreed to one for our Web division
as well.
As for the online listings, we visited our Google Analytics reports.
Tranquility only had 88 visitors referred from the phone
book site in the past 12 months. MayeCreate had zero. (The phone
book’s numbers said otherwise, but we know our Web stuff, so
you can’t fool us!) We decided to nix our online listing; with our
monthly rate, we paid more than $20 per visitor last year. So this
year we’re going to gamble and allocate that money to another
form of online advertising for the next six months to see how it
goes. Stay tuned for the results of our phone book dilemma/decision
and journey v
25 April 16, 2011 Columbia Business Times | ColumbiaBusinessTimes.com