Comments on: Case Study: Yellow Pages & Print Advertising vs. Internet Marketing

By: Jason Gervais

Jason Gervais — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:39:57 +0000

Peter this is one case study, yes. However I have never had a single client in 7 years as a Digital Marketing Consultant say that they felt their advertising spend on Yellow Pages advertising was worthwhile. In fact 100% of my customers are cutting back on both print and digital yellow pages advertising because it has prove over the past 10 years or so that it does not work for their business. You can’t argue with that fact.

By: Peter Chapman

Peter Chapman — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:54:35 +0000

Hello Jason, surely a study of one customer doesn’t make great science. Your figures are also misleading as you say
“$60,000 that they were investing annually for multiple print directories” but you are comparing digital traffic. One more point to consider is that Yellow Directory sites offer contact details on the search results page so it is not necessary to click to a customer website if you are ready to purchase. Obviously a good digital strategy is high in importance for any business but so is accurate tracking and reportiing of Return on Investment for each lead source not just a poor study aimed at your personal benefit.

By: Ian Cheow

Ian Cheow — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:58:38 +0000

Fantastic article, thanks for sharing this. I am in the SEO/SEM business in Singapore and one of the key market that we tackle is the Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) market. And most of them are still loyal customers of Yellow Pages because they think Yellow Pages are still converting for them.

Your blog post serves as a fantastic case study for us.

Once again, thanks for sharing.

-Ian

By: Jason Gervais

Jason Gervais — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:54:55 +0000

Hi Lori, as long as links are used for ranking websites, there will always be followed and no-followed links. What Google is against is paid link schemes which passes pagerank. We can’t argue with the reach and distribution data of YP, but this case study is a comparison of the ROI per money spent. In this case, a 6742% in search traffic is a clear indication which method of marketing was best for this client.

By: Lori

Lori — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:18:54 +0000

My understanding is, that passing page rank with “follow” links does not always follow Google’s best practices and can harm a business website more than help – which would be in this instance? My understanding is that the reach & distribution of data from yellowpages.ca & the YellowAPI adds tremendous benefit, along with a higher conversion rate as Adam has mentioned as well.

By: Joe R

Joe R — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:01:00 +0000

How is it that yellowpages.com usage ranks in the top 50 url’s searched within the USA using Quantcast.com?

By: Jason Gervais

Jason Gervais — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:31:33 +0000

Mike they are located in Oakville, Ontario Canada. The .ca site is our Canadian YP directory.

By: Mike Muskat

Mike Muskat — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:38:50 +0000

Jason, on the analytics why isn’t http://www.yellowpages.com or yp.com on the report? http://www.yellowpges.ca is a small site.

By: Jason Gervais

Jason Gervais — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:44:01 +0000

You make a good point Adam. Typically visits from the yellow pages does have a higher conversion rate but we don’t have systems to track the actual revenue generated.

In the case of Van Beek’s, they were able to measure the leads they were getting from the Yellow Pages by including a unique tracking phone number in their online YP ad. The results proved that the YP ad was not working.

The success was measured by the sheer volume of leads and the fact that their actual sales grew significantly in general, with the only change being the Internet Marketing.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:07:20 +0000

Hi Jason,

I would like to hear your thoughts on the value of the leads from each source. Do you have any metrics on the conversion rates between the sources? In my experience Yellowpages.ca does deliver lower traffic, but can be very profitable when you look at the cost per sale. At the end of the day it is not about how many clicks a campaign delivers but the value of the business it delivers and the cost associated.