Yell.com

[multilingual]

We have had a paid listing on Yell.com for about 12 months now and they are asking if we want to renew.

Having looked at our records I can find no evidence that anyone has actually contacted us through our listing, although it is not possible to be certain where everyone comes from.

The one thing that I can be sure of is my web site logs, and from those I can see that over the past 11 months we have had 82 click-throughs from our Yell ad. (Bit crap really being as Google brings us 200 each day)

Of course there is always the worry that I will cancel the ad and miss out on a big client in the future. We only need one or two each year to justify the cost. However, my gut instinct is telling me to cancel it and spend the money on building more websites.

Anyone have any views?

JB

[Jayne]

Hi JB,

You can still have a free ad in Yell.com, so you'll still be listed if you cancel your big ad. We once had one for our shop and didn't bring us anymore customers, so we didn't renew :D

Jayne

[multilingual]

Jayne,

We have the free one in Lincoln, and that will continue, but the paid one is in the central London area where most of our clients are based.

If we drop that one then we drop out of London altogether.

JB

[JoyDivision]

My dad found that he had a 5-10% increase in business due to a large add, so it only just paid for itself, now he just sticks to the one liners, and about 10% of our business comes form that.

My dad found that 0800 and fancy Yellow Pages adverts didn't work. My dads problem is he is mid priced, he is not the cheapest nor the dearest.

So you get yellow pages people wondering why he is so cheap and you get the other half asking why he is so expensive.

The reason he has much less overheads than the bigger firms, which is why he is cheap, but he does a better job than the cheap BOGOF cowboys.

[Rob Holmes]

A guy I know wrote some articles on yellow pages advertising..

http://www.powermarketingstrategies.co.uk

I think theres one yelow pages article thats free on the site and he sells a yellow pages report too.

Rob

[Alpha]

Rob

Have you successfully applied any of your friends techniques ?

[Rob Holmes]

Yep - He's a nice guy but not a friend of mine though !

I actually signed up for the marketing system and paid hard cash it was so good ;)

I believe Paresh of Whistle Ink has used some of the system too.

Rob

[ebonybailey]

Don't waste your money I did the same thing 18 months ago and got Zero, complete waste of money, they could not even report on how many clicks I got which is odd as google offer this as a basic service.
Google is the obvious answer I have won big clients through topclick who is on this forum with managed campaigns. Speak to him if you want to advertise.

Michael

[Rob Holmes]

they could not even report on how many clicks I got which is odd as google offer this as a basic service.

Strange - Yell.com you mean?

The trick is to send people through to a 'coded' page then you can count them.

But I agree unless you have a big advert and it's written correctly then I've not heard of any real results in my area of business.

I have a couple of clients who swear by yell, one is a locksmith and the other is a heating engineer.

Rob

[ebonybailey]

I would imagine that type of person would do well, if your looking for a gas man you look in the yell book, but if your looking for anything out of the norm you use google.

[Agri-Hire]

Multilinual,

I would ask other people for advice before contacting top click.

I just had a look at his member profile and it is surprisingly similar to ebonybaily.

Hey, they both come from Hampshire as well, what a surprise!

I would hazard a guess that they are one and the same and he is trying to get a sale by recommending himself.

I suppose it happens alot in forums

If I am wrong then sos.

:wink:

[fastfences]

I have a couple of clients who swear by yell, one is a locksmith and the other is a heating engineer.

Rob

Spot on! That is probably the crux of this; trades do better from Yell than, let's say, 'white collar' operations. I've had some extremely good contracts as a result of Yell. I wouldn't drop my ad' for quids. By the same token, I'm happy to remain with a 'smaller' representation.
Cheers, Nigel

[Magsite]

I've thought about placing a ad in the yellow pages about my business. But really I think the bst way of advertising a 'online' business is online. When I'm looking for something local yellow pages is very handy. I would never look in yellow pages for a internet provider

[multilingual]

Would you look in yellow pages for a translation company?

JB

[fastfences]

No way. I wanted information about Cebuano language and looked only on the net!
Cheers, Nigel

[multilingual]

Nigel,

Fair comment, but I assume that you were doing a search for information purposes only there.

Let's say you got a contract to put a fence round the Kremlin, and Putin sent you a contract in Russian. Would you pick up the yellow book to find a translator or just use the UK Google?

JB

[fastfences]

Nigel,

Fair comment, but I assume that you were doing a search for information purposes only there.

JB

Not really, I was looking for language courses.

Re my job at the Kremlin. Now that got me thinking, and the lateral thinker that I am, I'd use neither. I'd just get my local paper and check out one of those ads' for the Russian brides and do a deal with them. Now that's the power of networking!! :lol:

Seriously though, I think more and more people see the 'net as a COMPLETE source of info. I would probably 'Google' it.

One thing not covered is that it may be different for those of you in London because the amount and variety of businesses covered by the Yellow Pages is immense. That works 2 ways of copurse; people can be sure everything is in there, but also, they can think, 'what the heck, I can't be fagged going through all that.' In regional (Midlands etc) our books aren't as big; consequently there's not as much on offer, hence the trip straight to the keyboard.

Can you not just get a 'line' ad for the cheapest representation - that will probably give you Yell.com, then see how it goes for the year. I know we all like to keep our overheads down, but I'm a firm believer in advertising - it is our 'shopfront.'
Cheers, Nigel

[daveashton]

Agri Hire

I think you owe EB and Top Click a big sorry because they are very different companies!

Both also offer a good service and as you would expect often demonstrate this by the quality of their answers to other members questions. The fact that this has resulted in business that they are both happy with is a good sign this forum is working.


As for the original question.

Lead generation takes many forms and the fact that the trial of the advert did not work as expected would strongly suggest that other options are considered i.e. PPC telemarketing, online pr, SEO, Prospect profiling etc.

Apart from SEO a small investment will produce a CPL (cost per lead) and all of these can be expanded after you know they work.

[multilingual]

Well, that cheap representation is going to cost about £2400 if I go down the route I am currently looking at.

It's a sponsored listing covering West London so that anyone looking for a translation service in that area will bring my site as a sponsored listing above all others, but it still has the same look as a random search. (Just a small line saying 'sponsored listing'.

London itself has 6 books, and if anyone puts a search in for just London then the six sponsors get selected in a random rotation. There is only one sponsor slot available for each area. If I buy it then I will get first refusal on it next year too, but if someone else gets it then I will never get another chance.

Still thinking about it.

JB

[fastfences]

Whoa! £2400!! That puts a different perspective on it. I'd still be thinking too. You'd need a massive turnover to justify that, with the obvious need for some of it to come through Yell.
All the best! Cheers, Nigel

[multilingual]

I suppose we are lucky in the fact that our average order value is relatively high.

If we were selling packets of crisps at 30p each then I would need to generate a massive response to justify the cost.

However, fo me, the ROI on this would be relatively acheivable if I get 4-5 business customers over a 12 month period. Theory being that repeat business would be generated over the long term.

Then again it would fall flat if the business customers didn't bother and we generated a few private clients who just wanted their love letters translating into Russian so that they can impress some girl they 'met' on a Russian Bride site.

(My wife is Russian btw) :D

JB

[Alpha]

JB

The plain simple answer to advertising is that for your individual business there is no absolute answer as to what will work and what will not. The closest you will get is to find out what works for other suppliers in your industry and even then there is no guarantee (eg 99% of all accountants who have ever been asked about yellow pages advertising will say that it does not work for them but there are a lot of accountants advertising in there!!)

The only thing that you can do is trial and error so it comes down to seeing what media are likely to get you closest to your target audience and spending what you budget for on that aspect. If it does not work move on and try another.

As to £2400 if you can afford to do it then it would be worth a try but have you thoroughly analysed your required target market (At a guess companies who do a lot of international business but are not big enough to have their own specialists) and looked at the best possible routes to that market place?

[multilingual]

Our core customers tend to come from the financial, legal and oil & gas industries dealing in global markets. We either handle their business as a dedicated partner or pick up overspill from their in-house translation departments. Either way it is very difficult to get a foot in the door.

The staff are always very stressed, very busy, often working on big cases/deals with very tight deadlines, so they haven't got time to sit down with me for an hour and go through a proposal.

They tend to wait until they need someone, and that's when they come looking for us.

So I need to understand where they would look in those circumstances. If they go on Google then we build more sites and create a higher on-line profile, if they go on yell.com then we need to be there, if they look in the yellow pages book then we need to be there, etc.

With this thread I wanted to ask if anyone has any experience of using yell.com as a b2b marketing tool.

Like you say, there is no right or wrong approach. In the end it will be down to trial and error, testing, testing, testing, etc.

JB

[winton50]

We couldn't do without our Yellow pages and yell.com listings.

We've increased our spend each year and it's far and away our best £for£ after recommendations.

Important things to remember;

Plan your spend don't wait until the rep is at the door you can't make sensible decisions like that.

be an 'A' 'zs' get nothing beleive me i've tried it

Be different - don't do what everybody else does

have a USP

Have an 0800 number

remember that most people look for business close to them even if it makes no difference whatsoever!

have a website addy in there

and most important of all ask each and every customer where they found out about you and do an analysis. Use this to plan your spend next year see 1.

I reckon this is a self selecting group - of course the first place we go is to the web - we're on here all day long!

for most people the first place they go is the big yellow book.

[Rob Holmes]

Would you look in yellow pages for a translation company?

JB

Me neither - not unless I knew there was a local one and I needed to find their details and couldn't find them on the web

Rob

[multilingual]

Interesting to get some feedback on this.

Thanks all

JB

[DarrenH]

Hi

I'm gonna stick up for Yell.com here, lol

I think a lot will depend on the type of business you run.

Sure Google could very well bring you 200 visitors a day, but unless you've got a good tracking system so you know exactly why these visitors dropped into your site, they may be using keywords totally unrelated to your product/services.

With a yell.com ad at least you know each visitor or the vast majority were actually looking for what you're selling.

In my own case, I get between 8 and 20 referrals from Yell.com per month, then it's up to me to convert those visitors to customers.

If you're getting the clicks from Yell and those are not being sold on your product/service, maybe you need to look at how you're delivering your message.

for my own business, I wouldn't ditch Yell.com I'd give up yellow pages first.

A Yellow Pages rep sold me on larger ads last year and I haven't received a noticeable increase in business, I just get price shoppers, which I'm not interested in.

If you spend £1,000 on yellcom advertising and you receive £3,000 in business, that ain't bad.

So, it's down to tracking which methods of marketing work best for you.

Sorry about that, a lot of words for a very tiny point.

Darren

[SWCouriers]

In my case, Yell.com paid for itself within a week (2 phonecalls) It generates about 5-10% of new clients.
Yellow Pages Book, altough more expensive has brought in just 3 main clients this year, but its still paid for itself, as i'm taking 4 figure sums of each client eack month!

Still waiting on Business Pages results, But I will definitely be renewing YP and .com!

[winton50]

I reckon that the value to me in getting a customer from the book is that I get a chance to keep them.

if my service is good and I work hard to get them to come back the book has earned it's keep!

[Coding Monkey]

To bring back an old thread, I actually had no luck with Yell up until this month. I've so far received 2 phone calls, 1 of which has resulted in a sale.

Remember, for the Yellow Pages, you've got the issue of design and text, whereas Yell is just text. If you're not seeing results, it might not be your product, but the way it was created.