Yellow Pages, Thomson Local, Business Directories?

[cloudweb]

Just after people thoughts and experiences about which business directories are the best?

- value for money?
- results on sales?

Your thoughts...

 

[streetslocal]

Just after people thoughts and experiences about which business directories are the best?

- value for money?
- results on sales?

Your thoughts...

What type of business are you in?

 

[wood1e2]

Yellow Pages and Thompson local fairly good idea for generating local business I think. Although with 'geo keywords' it might not even be worth them anymore, with more and more people just searching online.

online directories complete waste of money. As none of them can give individual stats as to who has visited, how many searches are made for your niche keywords etc etc etc

 

[cloudweb]

What type of business are you in?

Web design, print design & ecommerce.

 

[streetslocal]

online directories complete waste of money. As none of them can give individual stats as to who has visited,

Our control panel has a visitor stat counter that our customers can view detailed stats about how there listing has performed.

 

[wood1e2]

Streetslocal well you are the only one that has ever offered that.

 

[eventdomain]

We deliver full stats including clickthroughs and client pageviews. But you're right, hardly any directories provide stats, but then many just want to make money and aren't in it to run a proper company nor contribute to society.

Most directories are run by kids, that sell listing fees based on pagerank, but the traffic won't be there nor targeted anyway. They aren't proper companies......

 

[streetslocal]

Streetslocal well you are the only one that has ever offered that.

And of course freeindex..
Its truly something everybody in the field should offer regardless.

 

[UKSBD]

I can't be bothered with tracking individual listings and find the people
who ask about it are in general a PITA anyway, so would rather not take
their money.

 

[Business News]

You can research the feelings for all channels of advertising from numerous sources, including away from print search engines and radio ads by searching threads on this site. As far as print is concerned, from my own experience raising the size of ad doesn't deliver a raised level of contacts generated.

Check out what your major players in your geographic area are doing and that should give you a good feel for what is appropriate in the different directory books. In my own market the major players don't book advertise at all, beyond the free listings, it tends to be the minor players that do take advertising space. Over a number of years of varying printing ad spend (ramped up then ramped down) I've come to the same conclusion as the major competitors and now direct my advertising spend elsewhere into promotional gifts and on-line spend. It's amazing how much stuff you can buy with just some of the £7,500 once spent on paper directory ads and the work ware clothing is a good advert in itself.

 

[E-wholesale]

results on sales, I think

 

[MASSEY]

Business directories are so over saturated and awfull and the ones that do give you statistics are generally bumped up because their trying to impress you so you stay with them

The yellow pages is an ok idea you will get at least some work from it but you wouldn't want to rely on that only, tompson local = a pile of rubbish,.

Their is about 3 good free directories that are on the up. The freeindex is a good directory because you can boost yourself up to the top of the pile with reviews.

also brownbook and hotfrog, they have a good keyword structure so you can rank well on certain pages for terms even if your own site is falling short of the mark, and their free which is great.