yellow pages negotiation and Yahoo local

[lyonsdown]

I have 2 questions:

1. Yahoo local (operated by infoserve) called me to have a listing as a computer repair company, guaranteed position no. 4. They want £150 for 6 months, which I got them to reduce to £100. Not a lot of money, but is it worth even that? I tried something similar with yell.com and got no business from it.
Has anyone advertised with Yahoo local?

2. I advertised with yellow pages for many years, with great success. Of course people hardly use it now, but I do still get some calls from the old editions I'm in.
As you'd expect, the number of advertisers has reduced by about 80%, so you'd think they'd be desperate for the money. i called them to see about advertising again, but obviously won't pay their ratecard prices when the response will be so much worse. I'm not a bad negotiator, but they simply refuse to budge from their ratecard prices. I told them no, and to call me when they're prepared to lower the price, but that was 2 months ago, and they clearly have no intention of calling me.

What would be my best tactic to try to get them to play ball?

has anyone else used YP in the last few years, and did you get a good discount?

 

[Court Jester]

Yahoo doing telesales now? - wow, first I heard of this. But for just £100 for 6 months, the link alone should easily pay for itself. Buy a separate £20 mobile phone and set it up to monitor enquiries, label this 'from Yahoo local - My biz enquiries' and use a separate number to monitor the calls. Keep a record of the sales enquiries for your biz for the 6 months, and re-evaluate later on.

but they simply refuse to budge from their ratecard prices

YP will not negotiate on advert fees, so forget that. I agree their fees are still way too over the top for my liking. Suggest to get your fees lowered, buy a black & white advert, theres no colour separation charge added to these ads, so their cheaper and you could get 2 for the price of one on the saving on the coloured versions..

Why YP and Yell.com still haven't learned that web advertising is supposed to be cheaper, I don't know.

 

[ethical PR]

Hi @Court Jester why do you feel the link alone should easily pay for itself?

Have you experience of advertising IT services through Yell which has brought you in work?

Lots of people advertise in online and printed directories and get no inquiries out of it at all, let alone work.

 

[Ashley_Price]

Yellow Pages have been in trouble for years, (at one point they were £2 billion in debt, and in 2013 their then owners, Hibu, called in the administrators) so it's not a surprise they won't budge on their prices.

However, if it has worked for you in the past with great success, why did you stop? Did you find you weren't getting the enquiries, or did you assume that people don't use it any more?

That sounds a harsh question, but it's not meant to be. A friend of mine still swears by her paid Yellow Pages advert; she is a virtual secretary and says the work generated from the advert means it more than pays for itself each year.

Don't stop using a form of advertising because you think it's not going to work.

 

[lyonsdown]

I've stopped YP this year because enquiries have been dropping every year for the last 6 years.
But people keep the old books.Only last week I had 2 jobs, both had used a book 3 -4 years old.
I service the south east of england, so even the 15mm and 30mm ads in 12 books would cost about £3000. I'm not confident I'd get even that small amount back in jobs.
10 years ago I was spending £15k with YP and getting loads of work.They still refused to negotiate at that time.I probably didn't try hard enough, but I don't think they would have ever discounted under any circumstances.

 

[Court Jester]

Hi @Court Jester why do you feel the link alone should easily pay for itself?

Have you experience of advertising IT services through Yell which has brought you in work?

Yes and Yes.

I opted for a free listing with YP Pages book years ago - we got about 45 enquiries a year and from that about 20 clients. Also bought several paid links with directories including MS sbd (I think it was £30 a year) and was getting 4 sign ups per day from sbd, until Microsoft killed it off - big mistake if you ask me.

Many had paid links from the sbd and were peeved when MS wouldn't refund them, after burying the directory.

 

[Court Jester]

Don't stop using a form of advertising because you think it's not going to work.

True, you pull your adverts/links, and you kill your business.