Yellow pages 118 118 local trades thompson local or touch local leave me alone!

[gassafe?]

Yellow pages 118 118 local trades thompson local or touch local or maybe none of the above! These lavely charectors ring me up every day promising me the world!

Iv never needed to spend much on advertising its always been word of mouth, but i could do with a bit more work

I have a free ad with yell and i have had a few custoemers off it but mainly just other companys trying to sell me stuff.

if anyone can recommend anything i would be much appretiate it, even better if someone can 'pm' it that way theres more chance its unbiased advice if yo uknow what i mean....

On another subject does everyone else get around 5 phone calls a day from people trying to sell advertising!? id love to hear the most calls anyone has had in a day, thats a funny conversation in it self!

Cheers

 

[MASSEY]

You just have to put up with it. I put my numbers on the tps register and a lot of it has died off.

When you have free listings it makes it worse you get your phone raped by other directories that look on yell, ufindus as example cold call off the yell site.

 

[Beachcomber]

The effectiveness of Yellow pages really can depend on location.
Down here the local issue covers pretty much the whole of Devon - meaning you are paying for an advert of which 95% of people seeing it are out of your area.

Much better value for money are flyers, local advertisers, parish mags & newsagent windows.

 

[gassafe?]

Thanks for the advice guys,

Can you put a business number on TPS? Il try that though

Thats a good point about yellow pages, im in london so thing are much more compact, but on the other hand it can take me an hour to travel 5 miles at the wrong time of day

Its anoying that about ufindus, i think other compaies do it too, i had 118local ring me up the other day, so i said "where did u get my number? they said "off yell.com it where we find all of our customers!" -she admitted it, but isnt it illigal?

 

[Pete31]

So frustrating! I find yell.com the worst. Always the way massey, we need those free listings for SEO so there's nothing that can be done about it unfortunately!

 

[altwebdesign]

yell.com used to rinf mw 2-3 times a day, until i signed up, now i dont hear a peep even after emailing them to ring me

 

I get 1 to 3 calls a day from people trying to sell me stuff

 

[Feldon]

I used to get a lot of sales calls from Yell, registered with TPS and when they next called said I was registered with TPS and if they called again I would report them, not had a call from them since. Still get a few calls from other companies but mention TPS and threat of reporting and usually they get the message. Gone from 3 calls a a day to about 3 a week.

 

[ramor69]

Yell must be the worst, after phoning me on numerous ocassions around this time last year, I got some nugget who promised I would get 20 to 30 contacts a month. I then asked him if the call was being recorded so he could be kept to this promise, guess what? he hang up on me. Here is what I have learned in my short time on my own. When you get a call from salespeople like Yell, save the number so you can ignore it in future and ask them to call you back as you are too busy at the moment. At this time of year, they seem to be pushing for your business due to publishing deadlines.

I also now tend to pass all withheld numbers straight to answerphone. I realise that I maybe losing a client but sometimes it is better than stopping work every 5 minutes to hear some spotty faced Herbert telling me how he can make me the next Donald Trumpet Trousers.:|

 

[Test It]

I have an old Samsung D600 phone that has a great feature for rejecting calls without the phone ringing out. I haven't found another phone with this feature so I kept it.

As soon as I get a call from one of these firms trying to sell me something they get added to the reject list and then I'm not bothered again.

The call, if added to the reject list simply automatically diverts to the answer phone.

Quite funny to see 5 missed calls from companies like yell.com on my phone and a blessing knowing how Pee'd off I would have been to take myself away from my work to answer a useless call.

Time is money!

 

[Zeks 1999]

Funny thing is that Yell have been the only one NOT to try and sell me paid advertising!!!

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that the free listing has been used by companies to try and sell me all sorts ("do you have a watercooler", "no - what size would you recommend for a sole trader working from home" ) But the only call I had from Yell was to verify my details. I expected the hard sell (as that's usually code for "give me your money or i'll bore you to death") but nothing!

Am I the only one? I still get it from all the others though

 

[Smith's Cleaning]

From past experience, Yell has been a waste of time but i suppose it depends on location. Plus they are on thier last legs now.
Thomson Local has worked "ok" for me in the past and im about to try out Touch Local which seems to be getting bigger and bigger, but its more expensive.
As for SEO, theres plenty of info out there, ive always done it myself.

 

[ramor69]

After losing my Sony Ericsson phone the other day, I have just bought a Samsung S3370 for £35 from Tesco. It's got the reject feature. Happy days!!!

 

[builderbob]

I cant bring myself to shell out the cost of being in yell. Most people use the pages to put their coffee on these days and its just getting thinner and thinner. Got to tell you something. Plus explains why they're hassling us all the time to buy space!

 

[PortalMarketing]

Yellow pages 118 118 local trades thompson local or touch local or maybe none of the above! These lavely charectors ring me up every day promising me the world!

Iv never needed to spend much on advertising its always been word of mouth, but i could do with a bit more work

I have a free ad with yell and i have had a few custoemers off it but mainly just other companys trying to sell me stuff.

if anyone can recommend anything i would be much appretiate it, even better if someone can 'pm' it that way theres more chance its unbiased advice if yo uknow what i mean....

On another subject does everyone else get around 5 phone calls a day from people trying to sell advertising!? id love to hear the most calls anyone has had in a day, thats a funny conversation in it self!

Cheers

Ok, looks like you are doing you bit. Why not try a website? places like Google offer free website design. Just google - google site design, sign up and bobs your uncle, you will need to learn seo or get a good seo company to market your website for you. I run my own SEO company and i would charge no more then £30 per month to advertise a google website.

 

[popunder]

...to advertise a google website.

What exactly does that mean?

 

[KateCB]

SEO - Try scrubtheweb.com - been using them for years, they have a free submission service that you can use to submit to maybe 10 engines, and an annual paid one (about £60 a year I think!) but it has lots and lots of advise, meta tag and keyword analyzers, comparison tools etc.We use TPS, but still get calls from 'charity advertisers' who try hard to convince us that we authorised an advert in their safety booklet 6 months ago and that they are now sending an invoice for £400.

TPS works for most cold callers, but not these charity guys - they will argue with you for ages about the 'fact' that YOU agreed to advertise, despite the fact that they have no invoice, proofs, recording, contract - and the last one was hilarious - the salesperson said that I had personally authorised it, and approved proofs on 5th October 2009......I asked her to read me the advertisement, which she did, and it was advertising under a name we stopped using in 2005, plus on 5th October 2009 I was in an operating theatre having spinal surgery.

Did she go away? No! so I asked her to send me a copy of the proof, the recorded contract, and the invoice, and then I would cancel the 'order' as I have every right to do once I have had the proofs (within 14 days) OR I could give it all to my solicitor....she said she would have to ask her manager to do that, and that he would call me - I said no, I wasn't interested in another conversation that cost me time, just send what I have asked for - she put the phone down!

SEO - Try scrubtheweb.com - been using them for years, they have a free submission service that you can use to submit to maybe 10 engines, and an annual paid one (about £60 a year I think!) but it has lots and lots of advise, meta tag and keyword analyzers, comparison tools etc.