Rough cost to advertise on yell.com online

[simpson7647]

Hi all, I'm looking to get some rough prices for advertising on yell.com

Prices aren't available online it seems so I'm wondering what the rough costs are and what you get for that cost?

Thanks,

 

[compareyourcalls]

Hi there,

Personally I wouldn't bother with Yell, its all personal preference, but I don't think there are many people that look at Yell anymore. If you want a service/product, you look on google.

People's mentality seems to be if you are top ten on google search for what they are looking for, you are a reputable company and they are more likely to come to you in trust as you are in the top ten on google.

I am not saying this is 100% true in every case, but businesses seem to be more successful by SEO opposed to being a sponsored listing on Yell.com

Hope this helps.

Chris

 

[simpson7647]

Hi Chris, many thanks for the reply.

I'm not actually looking to list on yell.com but just after some search in their pricing etc.

Thanks,

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Not done it for years now, but I seem to remember we paid about £250 a while ago when we tried it for a year.

Complete waste of money in my opinion, could quantify any business we actually got for it.

 

[simpson7647]

Thanks for the reply, I guess that was 250 for the year? so 20 ish pounds a month?

Thanks,

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Yes it was, I may be slightly out. But it was something of that order.

Obviously it may have changed, especially since their re-brand.

 

[simpson7647]

Okay thanks Leo, much appreciated.

Hopefully someone else can come along and verify a few things

Thanks,

 

[simpson7647]

oh yeah, one other thing. Do you remember if you had to pay a lump sum or was it per year?

thanks,

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

I'm pretty sure we had it on a monthly direct debit.

 

[lawrence147]

I did a paid Yell ad for the Tiling side of my business back in 2007 - the sold me an advert at £650 for the year. As with Leo, a complete waste of time and money, 3 enquires and zero jobs out of it.

However, as Yell is a business directory, they are almost 'obliged' to put a listing for you in for free to maintain the directory.

 

[anon154650]

I tried Yell some years ago. It cost me nigh-on £300 for the year (payable up-front) and I saw zero return. When I said "no thanks" the following year, they got quite stroppy and said I could not have a free listing any more (which was twaddle!). I think the likes of Yell and Thomson Local are becoming less relevant in the web-age. How many people actually keep their Yellow Pages, Thomson Local, or Telephone directory? I have not found a use for them for years, so they usually go straight in to the recycling! And I would not think to use their website when searching for things. Like most people, the default is Google.

 

[Claire Dymond]

I tried it for a month and I think it was about £30, I made up a landing page for the link which had one hit and zero enquiry, at the same time clicks from Google were 9000 organic only, enough said.

Hope this helps.

 

[CAEDAN]

Yell is so dead now - past it and struggling!

I listened to a Yell agent who wanted 6k to advertise (in books as well) and then wanted to add on £100-400 for each postcode district of the town.

Years ago you would get the county - now just each postcode district. We worked out for advertising in the local area would be over 40k.

Showing him the door was far, far cheaper.

Use online business directories - as this is what will pop up when people look for a service online - which is what they do now. Free listings cost you nothing but time, and work very well. You can even put an add in the local paper, if you want local offline business.

Go and ask the people you meet if their Yellow Pages is still in its' wrapping - many still are - not unwrapped one for years! Yell.com only seems to be used to get addresses for marketing - the local directories come up far higher than they do in the ranks.

 

[simpson7647]

I did a paid Yell ad for the Tiling side of my business back in 2007 - the sold me an advert at £650 for the year. As with Leo, a complete waste of time and money, 3 enquires and zero jobs out of it.

However, as Yell is a business directory, they are almost 'obliged' to put a listing for you in for free to maintain the directory.

Wow, that's not cheap. Was that supposed to be an advert with high visibility or anything?

Thanks,

 

[simpson7647]

I tried Yell some years ago. It cost me nigh-on £300 for the year (payable up-front) and I saw zero return. When I said "no thanks" the following year, they got quite stroppy and said I could not have a free listing any more (which was twaddle!). I think the likes of Yell and Thomson Local are becoming less relevant in the web-age. How many people actually keep their Yellow Pages, Thomson Local, or Telephone directory? I have not found a use for them for years, so they usually go straight in to the recycling! And I would not think to use their website when searching for things. Like most people, the default is Google.

Thanks for the input, I do totally agree most people will go straight to google which is why it pays to get high up in google

Thanks,

 

[simpson7647]

I tried it for a month and I think it was about £30, I made up a landing page for the link which had one hit and zero enquiry, at the same time clicks from Google were 9000 organic only, enough said.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply.

wow, one hit with not one enquiry is very poor, especially for a large organisation such as yell.com.
Could this partly be down to your listing or was it just a very competitive market on yell.com?

Totally agree with the 9k organic google clicks, impressive compared to yell.

thanks,

 

[simpson7647]

Yell is so dead now - past it and struggling!

I listened to a Yell agent who wanted 6k to advertise (in books as well) and then wanted to add on £100-400 for each postcode district of the town.

Years ago you would get the county - now just each postcode district. We worked out for advertising in the local area would be over 40k.

Showing him the door was far, far cheaper.

Use online business directories - as this is what will pop up when people look for a service online - which is what they do now. Free listings cost you nothing but time, and work very well. You can even put an add in the local paper, if you want local offline business.

Go and ask the people you meet if their Yellow Pages is still in its' wrapping - many still are - not unwrapped one for years! Yell.com only seems to be used to get addresses for marketing - the local directories come up far higher than they do in the ranks.

Many thanks for this reply, I'm not surprised you walked away from that 'amazing' offer haha.

Cheers,

 

[Talay]

Putting my consumer head on for a minute, I am within a couple of seconds reach of Google which will give me a result as fast as I can type.

On the other hand, I can get up and go look for an out of date copy of a Yellow Pages and then manually thumb through a thousand pages to the relevant section only to find the first 100 listings are AAAArrdvaaark Cleaning and so forth, which are actually all the same company, not local as they pretend and simply looking to rip me off.

If I could stop them delivering Yellow Pages I would. I haven't touched it in years.

 

[simpson7647]

Putting my consumer head on for a minute, I am within a couple of seconds reach of Google which will give me a result as fast as I can type.

On the other hand, I can get up and go look for an out of date copy of a Yellow Pages and then manually thumb through a thousand pages to the relevant section only to find the first 100 listings are AAAArrdvaaark Cleaning and so forth, which are actually all the same company, not local as they pretend and simply looking to rip me off.

If I could stop them delivering Yellow Pages I would. I haven't touched it in years.

Excellent point, the internet is where we're at in this world now, not the book I'd say. Maybe some of the older generation would still use the book if they don't own / generally use a computer.

Thanks,

 

[vvaannmmaann]

OP if you are still keen on Yell,there is always their Free Option!
http://www.yell.com/free-listing/
The wife did this.Got no work from it,and they ring monthly to see if she wants to "upgrade" to the paid listings.

 

[lawrence147]

Originally Posted by lawrence147
I did a paid Yell ad for the Tiling side of my business back in 2007 - the sold me an advert at £650 for the year. As with Leo, a complete waste of time and money, 3 enquires and zero jobs out of it.

However, as Yell is a business directory, they are almost 'obliged' to put a listing for you in for free to maintain the directory.


Wow, that's not cheap. Was that supposed to be an advert with high visibility or anything?


Was a large ad but the browbeat me into having 3 counties, that's why the price was high.

I had a ltd co at the time but had to dissolve it. Funnily enough the only debt on it was the Yell contract (which I didn't pay 'em a cent!).

So lesson learnt.

Law

 

[Cynic]

Well the money is in the advertising....

I'll assume Yell's brand was enough to convince many people in here to buy without having due diligence...

 

[lawrence147]

As you say Cynic - their brand was ...

As said above, looks like Yell is dying as Google has already taken over.

Law

 

Not done it for years now, but I seem to remember we paid about £250 a while ago when we tried it for a year.

Complete waste of money in my opinion, could quantify any business we actually got for it.

I agree, we paid £600 one year for advertising and got very little (if anything) from it. Not really worth the hassle, and your time/money is better spent working your own site, etc up the rankings.

 

[Cynic]

As you say Cynic - their brand was ...

As said above, looks like Yell is dying as Google has already taken over.

Law

I agree, one would be better off spending that money on Google Places Optimization.

Just checked the reviews for their App....seems users share the same sentiments

 

[simpson7647]

Thanks all for the replies.

I don't actually plan on using yell.com to advertise, I'm looking at starting another business like yell.com but concentrates on one industry.

There is currently nothing like this in the U.K and I'm simply the middleman between the customer and other companies.

I will be looking to rank up high in google for certain keywords regarding this particular trade.

Any opinions on this?

Thanks,

 

[serendipitybusiness]

Their sales force can be quite pushy make sure it is worth it before you buy.

One of my clients had to nearly throw a yell.com guy out of her office. He was trying to sell her online advertising. Her sole advertising before she met me was the yellow pages, now all of her business comes from her website but she still keeps her offline yellow pages advertising as she just can't let it go just incase lol. They were trying to sell her Yell.com advertising and she asked me whether she should get it in another room on the phone.

As she was in the top 3 on google for all her converting target keywords and yell was nowhere to be seen for many of them I told her that she was unlikely to see much of a difference in return on investment.

He told her I had no idea what I was talking about quite aggressively and continued to try and push her to the point where she had to ask him to leave. Don't let them pressure you into it, do your homework and only go for it if you think it will make sense. In many cases as others have pointed out here it isn't.

Hope this helps