I’d argue there are still industries where a good Yellow Pages ad can be a great way to drive “non-wired” customers to your door. It still pays handsome dividends for “physical provision of service companies”. If you’re wiring houses, building fences, selling pizzas, it still generates new customers for you. At that point, it’s up to you to knock their socks off.
But the YP ad is no longer the ONLY tactic you should invest in. It just happens to be a default, a tactic which requires little consideration.
It’s like taking a multi-vitamin tablet daily. It doesn’t entirely replace eating right, but it’s a low-thought way of covering some of the daily requirements.
For smart companies, though, it’s a tactic which can be replaced with something far more nuanced. That’s the “2007” part.
At the risk of deflating an otherwise very pithy quote, I have to admit that yes, for some businesses it does make sense to be in the yellow pages. But I wouldn’t be spending the kind of $ that they used to command. I also wonder how much of it is self-perpetuating. If I’m looking for tires, I look in the yellow pages… but only because tire shops don’t have decent websites. Restaurants are very strangely similar.
I’d argue there are still industries where a good Yellow Pages ad can be a great way to drive “non-wired” customers to your door. It still pays handsome dividends for “physical provision of service companies”. If you’re wiring houses, building fences, selling pizzas, it still generates new customers for you. At that point, it’s up to you to knock their socks off.
But the YP ad is no longer the ONLY tactic you should invest in. It just happens to be a default, a tactic which requires little consideration.
It’s like taking a multi-vitamin tablet daily. It doesn’t entirely replace eating right, but it’s a low-thought way of covering some of the daily requirements.
For smart companies, though, it’s a tactic which can be replaced with something far more nuanced. That’s the “2007” part.
Mr. Gordon,
At the risk of deflating an otherwise very pithy quote, I have to admit that yes, for some businesses it does make sense to be in the yellow pages. But I wouldn’t be spending the kind of $ that they used to command. I also wonder how much of it is self-perpetuating. If I’m looking for tires, I look in the yellow pages… but only because tire shops don’t have decent websites. Restaurants are very strangely similar.