Is yell.com and yellow pages worth it???

[Quantum23]

hey all,


I get yellow pages ring me nearly everyday bombarding me with statistics and prices etc of how useful an advert in the yellow pages and on yell.com is, but ive heard alot of bad reports.

any advice?

we operate a IT technical services company offering everything IT basically you can check out the site at q23.co.uk

regards Dave Stevenson

Quantum23 Solutions

 

[garyk]

If you're a plumber, sparky or electrician, *maybe* otherwise forget it!

If you want national coverage then really yell is al about people searching for services and products in their local area and certainly for IT I cant see it being of benefit.

Your money would be better spent on google adwords *if* you know what you are doing or hire someone that does.

Gary

 

[Quantum23]

heyy thanks for your reply, thats pretty much confirmed my thoughts and we already use google adwords but im trying to get our company name out there in as many ways possible.


Cheers

Dave

Quantum23 solutions

 

[bovine]

Over the years we have spent a lot with both.

Have been considering ditching them. BUT last week was at a site to discuss a new system and he had the page from Yellow pages torn out in his portfolio/case. Got the deal and he got us from yellow pages.

So i cant knock it too much.

It can be worth an ad, but dont spend too much. If you are serving a local area, then work out how much business you would need to get to make it worthwhile. If you cover a wide area it can get very expensive. Have a look in your category and if there are loads of companies in your area then it may not be worthwhile.

 

[BdTS]

heyy thanks for your reply, thats pretty much confirmed my thoughts and we already use google adwords but im trying to get our company name out there in as many ways possible.


Cheers

Dave

Quantum23 solutions

Dave,


If you already do well out of Google, it might be an idea to try Yell.

80% of their users go to them directly as opposed to finding them through a portal like Google, so it would get a different audience in for you.

You're highly unlikely, at times, to get anything other than a bog-standard "it only works for tradesman" response which is understandable, but it works really well for many of my clients who are Health & SAfety Consultants, Fire Risk Assessors, EPC providers etc - all b2b.

Like with anything it's a case of how many searches they get, what they charge, and how confident you'd be about recouping your costs & making a profit.

But if you are keen to get your name out there, it's probably the only other web-source you'd need to think about if you've got the search engines cracked mate.

Hope this is of use and Good Luck.

 

[Phil_Rees]

Yell and The Yellow pages are STILL one of the highest forms of generating business - but only if you are lucky enough to be low down the alpha betical chain and get a good placement in the first page of any section that has a high compeition rate.

If you have little competition - stick with the basic listing, if you have a lot of competition well done, you have been caught by the Yell Trap and to get any business, your going to have to spend a lot of money figureing out their placement codes - lucky lucky yellow page salesman.

 

[CKG]

I have 2 Yellow pages sucess/fail stories that I like to wheel out in threads like this.

When I was doing domestic heating & plumbing work a year or so ago I took a punt on an enhanced listing on yell.com - At £300 odd it wasn't a lot to loose over 12 months.

In 12 months I got 1 call from it. And that wasn't for the want of trying different copy on the ad.

To add insult to injury I didn't get paid for that one job as the firm went bust. So the ad cost me over £400 in the end.

In the book I took out a 1/4 page ad - 4 calls and It just about broke even over 12 months.

The best advertising I did was a few years back on the CORGI gas corporate scheme. One page in the YP that lists all the local registered gas installers. I'm still getting calls from it to this day from old editions of the book. The credibility factor must have helped a lot here.

I have another business that does maintenance in commercial kitchens. Which is a massive multi billion £ industry industry but at the same time the maintenance is still quite a niche thing.

Enhanced listing on yell.com has done thousands and thousands of pounds worth of business - and continues to do so

And the book isn't too far behind.

I think the lesson here is that if your section is highly competitive don't bother with it because you'll loose your shirt - that is unless you can gain some kind of high profile industry body type credibility.

 

[streetslocal]

These people with £400 to spend with yell tell you what give me £200 and ill have a functioning website seo ready and a listing on www.streetslocal.co.uk and i promise the work enquiries will be more than yell hell would give you pound for pound.
Yes yell does work for some business owners but other's it fails miserably!

 

[BdTS]

These people with £400 to spend with yell tell you what give me £200 and ill have a functioning website seo ready and a listing on www.streetslocal.co.uk and i promise the work enquiries will be more than yell hell would give you pound for pound.
Yes yell does work for some business owners but other's it fails miserably!

Yell will give you an SEO-page for diddly-squat with an Enhanced Listing now.

I admire your drive mate, but you've been gravely inaccurate about Yell in the past, you can't knock them too much given that you are in the same game as them.

 

[Soul_Survivor]

slightly off topic but I got my new yellow pages through last week and was amazed at how much it had gone down in size.

Was at least 200 pages less than the previous years and it combined another area into it. They have been hit really hard.

Was interesting to see though that last year I came very close to running an advert in the web design section, at the time there were around 15 companies advertising. In the new edition they have combined web design into internet services and there wasn't a single web design business advertising in it. If I as still in that game, I expect an ad this year would have done well

 

[streetslocal]

Yell will give you an SEO-page for diddly-squat with an Enhanced Listing now.
quote]
Yes but we are giving people a 3 page optimised website within the price of £189.99 as well as the optimised listing on streetslocal.co.uk
Our showcase listings are the equivlent of the sponsored listings on yell.
Yell offer a sponsored listing in Hereford for a plumber for £1988 without a website.

Also you state i knock yell....no i state they can offer results within the right field

 

[GTrotter666]

I would avoid it myself. Yell.com call me regularly trying to sell a listing. I do wonder what small percentage of people use yell.com rather than google to find people. They have even started suggesting to me that they have good coverage in google (i.e. if people search for terms relevant to my industry they will get a yell.com page). Utter tosh!

Gary

 

[BdTS]

Yell will give you an SEO-page for diddly-squat with an Enhanced Listing now.
quote]
Yes but we are giving people a 3 page optimised website within the price of £189.99 as well as the optimised listing on www.streetslocal.co.uk
Our showcase listings are the equivlent of the sponsored listings on yell.
Yell offer a sponsored listing in Hereford for a plumber for £1988 without a website.

Also you state i knock yell....no i state they can offer results within the right field

Problem being nobody goes directly to your site. I'd imagine that you rely quite heavily on portals like Google etc to bring almost every click you get through.

Yell don't always cost £400, it can be as low as £159 if you know what you are doing. Even if it wasn't, it's not about the cost-comparison, it's about what you get for your money.

 

[streetslocal]

Yell don't always cost £400, it can be as low as £159 if you know what you are doing. Even if it wasn't, it's not about the cost-comparison, it's about what you get for your money.

Do you work for yell

Yell is losing money faster than Jacko ever was and is struggling,the books are nearly as thin as posh spice and people are not going towards yell as much as they were!

Oh and did i mention that a year ago i took out a listing with yell.com,ONE YEAR AGO AND click throughs to my website design business.

Have a guess?
How many click throughs did i get to my site?

Thats a grand 44 click throughs to my design business in a year as a result of a yell listing thats 0.12 click throughs a day

Oh so lets break these click throughs down.

A staggering 64% bounce rate, so i now ask how many of these visitors were maybe rivals considering only 84% of these visitors were unique so that would reduce unique visitors to around about 35 in a year which would then in turn mean about 0.09 visitors a day would click each day.

So then i will say how many telephone calls i have had because of YELL.COM

A staggering 389 all of which have been sales calls asking if i would like to advertise blah blah blah and not one customer recruited as a result of yell.com.

 

[BdTS]

Do you work for yell

Yell is losing money faster than Jacko ever was and is struggling,the books are nearly as thin as posh spice and people are not going towards yell as much as they were!

Oh and did i mention that a year ago i took out a listing with yell.com,ONE YEAR AGO AND click throughs to my website design business.

Have a guess?
How many click throughs did i get to my site?

Thats a grand 44 click throughs to my design business in a year as a result of a yell listing thats 0.12 click throughs a day

Oh so lets break these click throughs down.

A staggering 64% bounce rate, so i now ask how many of these visitors were maybe rivals considering only 84% of these visitors were unique so that would reduce unique visitors to around about 35 in a year which would then in turn mean about 0.09 visitors a day would click each day.

So then i will say how many telephone calls i have had because of YELL.COM

A staggering 389 all of which have been sales calls asking if i would like to advertise blah blah blah and not one customer recruited as a result of yell.com.

People are not going to the book as much as they once were, but last year, as I'm sure you are aware, Yell.com revenue jumped by 40%.

.com will overtake the book within the next 18 months and some of the ideas they have will make a huge impact.

The Mark Cannon chap they've hired knows what he's doing.