Will Hanke

In St. Louis, every March and October the Yellow Pages (YP)  are delivered to the homes and businesses across the area.  These new phone books replace the ones delivered the year prior.  Delivery dates may be the same across the country, I’m not sure.

Many of you know that I do some web work on an Army contract several days a week in the Federal Center in downtown St. Louis.  Well, I make it a point to watch for the new phone books, which showed up around March 8th this year.  Because of the large amount of worker bees here (about 250), they wheel the phone books in on pallets and put them in the hallway.  Then the worker bees can just come by and grab a new book (and put their old one in a recycle bin).

This year, I kept tabs on the amount of phone books.  Over the period of 38 days, about 16 phone books were taken from the pallet of 200.

Sixteen books.

Just for giggles, I visited a few of the other floors in the building to see how many phone books were still sitting around.  Every floor (except for the IRS area) had about the same amount of books remaining on their pallets.

They finally wheeled them out yesterday. I hope they went to a recycling center somewhere.

Mr. Small Business owner, what does this tell you about the future of Yellow Page advertising?  Are you still spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on YP ads?  Your audience is shrinking, and your money is being wasted.

I have a few clients who are ahead of the curve when it comes to Internet Marketing.  They recognized the poor use of their marketing budgets with YP and have since scaled back their spending on these sources, and have put that money into building their online presence through blogging and link building.  They are reaping huge harvests on their well-placed seeds.

I’m not saying to drop your YP ad.  In fact, I think it’s still a viable source of traffic, particularly if your target audience is over the age of 50.  But I am saying don’t put so much money into it any more.  A simple ad with your company name, phone number and URL is all you need.

Shameless Plug: Quit wasting money on dying forms of marketing/advertising. Put that money into hiring someone (like me) that will help your business continue to grow and thrive. Create a presence and a following online, provide outstanding customer service, and the customers will come.

Will customer service, local marketing, small business, trending, yellow pages

Many small business owners don’t understand the huge advantage that SEO gives them over other online marketing methods such as PPC advertising or traffic buying. I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts on this topic. It’s nothing new, but may help some of my newer readers understand the benefits of “being at the top of Google”.

More People are Using the Internet than the Yellow Pages for Local Search

While this may not be a surprise to most of my readers, it should be a jolt to small business owners who are stuck in their ways when it comes to marketing.  Since most SMBs have small marketing budgets and little or no knowledge of how to get the best ROI for it, they just assume that the Yellow Pages is still the way to go.

Sorry folks, it’s not.  While I encourage any SMB to continue to put their ad in the YPs, they should drastically reduce the amount of money they are spending on it.  A simple ad that has phone number and website URL is all you need.  Target the local phone book and maybe the large ‘city version’ if there is one.  That’s it.  Put the rest of that money where more people will see your information - online.

Most Searchers Won’t Go Past Page Two of Google

This applies to all search engines, but since Google has around 70% share of the US search market, I’ll use them.

Most people when searching for something, expect it to be there when they hit the ‘Search’ button.  If it’s not, they may go to page two of those results, but most will not venture any further.  Instead, they’ll change their search string and start over until they find what they want.  So if your business isn’t listed on page one or two, those customers are just going elsewhere.

Being on Page One of a Result is Like Getting a Referral

When someone is looking for something, and you have it, they are more inclined to buy from you simply because you had the information they were seeking.  Having good content that answers questions they have is like you talking to them in person.  You become a ’subject matter expert’ and therefore gain trust.

SEO Lasts a Long Time - PPC Stops when You Stop Spending

I was talking with a client last night who has been doing SEO for about a year and a half now.  They are so far beyond their competition that it’d take a while before the others could ever catch up.  Some of his competitors are doing PPC, which is good, but once they stop spending for those clicks, they go back to a negligable amount of visitors (if not zero).

On the other hand, an SEO’d website could withstand literally cutting their budget for 3-4 months and not lose a lot of ground.  Sure, they’d lose some, but the overall effects of it would dwindle over time, not immediately.  (This isn’t something I recommend you telling your SEO clients - they may just try it!)

PPC has it’s place in the overall world of search, but it shouldn’t be the hinge you balance your entire marketing platform on.  Just like the Yellow Pages, it should be used in conjunction with your SEO efforts, but should not be the main focus.

Top Ranking for Long Tail Keywords is Money in the Bank

As a general rule, the more specific the search, the higher rate of conversion.  This means that if you rank at the top of the search engines for ‘blue widget with 12hp motor’, the chances of that visitor buying your widget is definitely higher than someone searching for ‘blue widget’.  These longer tail keywords are easy to attain high rankings on, and they bring better overall traffic.

Ranking Brings Brand Recognition

Think about this - if a person is searching for something, and your website keeps coming up at the top, they are going to see your logo several times over the course of their searches.  Even if they don’t buy from you on that day, you still had your brand in front of them several times.  What is that worth to you?

Location, Location, Location

Just like picking out a physical location for your business, you wouldn’t want some backstreet that no one sees, would you?  Same goes for online marketing.  You’ve got to be where the traffic is driving past.

Summary and Shameless Plug

While this is far from a complete list of the reasons you should consider SEO, it’s definitely a good start.  I’d love to hear what you think about the list, and let me know what I missed.

If you are a business owner who needs to get your website to the top of the search engines, it all starts with a phone call (888-341-2551) or email.  Give me a call and I’d love to discuss what I can do, or visit my website at http://www.WhereIsMyBusiness.com

Will Marketing, PPC, SEO, site ranking, small business, yellow pages

Many small businesses are clueless about Internet Marketing - particularly smaller Mom & Pop businesses.  For many (and in some cases many many may) years, marketing meant spending money on a Yellow Pages ad and perhaps sponsoring a local baseball team or getting a booth at the Home & Garden Show.  These things may still work, but it’s not the 60’s any more.

These hyperlocal businesses have relied on the uniqueness, and have never even considered taking on the big guys.  They are run mostly by older folks who are not yet ready to embrace the Internet, nor the technology related to it.  Heck, even talking some of these people into getting a website is a chore.

This is all about to change, as these ‘older’ small business owners start to retire, they are going to either

• Close up / go out of business
• Sell off their business
• Give the business to a child/relative

No matter what they choose to do, the younger small business owner crowd will be more adaptive to the newer technology.  While some of these new owners may still be older than the Apple IIe generation (remember using that in school?), a majority of them are going to be more receptive to websites, Internet Marketing and even Social Networking.  That means you still have a shot at getting their business, but you’ve gotta take it slow.

Will Marketing, beginner sem, local marketing, small business, yellow pages

Seems that the Yellow Pages, contrary to popular belief, are continuing to take the same path as newspapers had to take a few years back.  Dwindling usage and interest is forcing them to either stay innovative or eventually go out of business.

It’s a wonder that my small-town newspaper is still in existence.  Most likely its only because there are plenty of old-timers still in this town.  But not forever.

Enter the new Yellow Pages opt-out proposal? A genius idea, considering more and more people are going green as well as using them less and less.

While many people are saying this is a new idea, it’s actually not.  Years ago, Southwestern Bell started sending me a CD called LitePages.  It was the entire Saint Louis yellow and white pages on a CD.  I could load the CD onto my server and place an icon on everyone’s PC desktop.  They’d click the icon, and up would pop a virtual yellow pages.  From there they could search and read listings and ads just as if they had an actual phone book in front of them.

And what did I have to do to get the CD?  Simply sign a statement that said we’d order X number fewer books than we had in years past.  It was a win-win.  The environment won, and Bell didn’t really lose any of their usage.  At least in theory.

But still I wonder if my kids, when sitting around the Christmas tree reminiscing twenty years from now, will mention some new techno way to find a local business.  I’ll respond by looking at my beautiful bride of forty years and say “Remember when we had to look up phone numbers in a book?  Those were the days…” as my mind drifts back to thoughts of Pong and amber-colored screens.

Those days are numbered, for sure.  Several of my clients are scaling back on their YP spending and instead putting that money into online efforts.  These efforts can pay long-term, something the current print Yellow Pages can’t promise.

Along these lines, I’ve also heard rumors that some of the smaller Yellow Page companies (print) are even changing their tactics to keep advertisers.  In the past, businesses could list just business name, phone number and URL.  Now, in order to do that,  they are being asked to ‘upgrade’ their current ad so that they can ‘keep’ the URL mention in the print version.  Sounds to me like instead of embracing the future, these YPs are isolating their customers (and losing plenty along the way).

Will Marketing, local marketing, yellow pages