Bad Yellow Pages, Bad!
I honestly met with my yellow page "Representative" last week.
My experience was horrible. I felt like he was bullying me the whole time he was here (ONE AND HALF HOURS!!!) and that I was being taken to the cleaners.
My company has been in business for 30 years and we have been steadily "advertising" in the yellow pages for last 15.
You think we might catch a little break for being faithful? Of course not, we are in the HVAC business in the California Central Valley, over the last 5 years this business has exploded with lots of Single Man operations coming into the field.
Anyway, many of these single men are taking the BIG ads and paying way too much money,
I spent a little over a $1,000.00 a month last year. This year my "Representative" tells me the price for my same ad this year will be $1,300.00 a month and next year I can barely even say it up to $1,800.00! When does this price gouging stop!
My ad keeps getting pushed further and further down the page because of these no namers.
Why do I have to pay more every year when my ad is not half a powerful as it was say 6 years ago? My company is fortunate enough to have been in the business for 30 years so many consumers already know our name or have heard of us which gives us an edge over the no namers.
Frustrated in California
My experience was horrible. I felt like he was bullying me the whole time he was here (ONE AND HALF HOURS!!!) and that I was being taken to the cleaners.
My company has been in business for 30 years and we have been steadily "advertising" in the yellow pages for last 15.
You think we might catch a little break for being faithful? Of course not, we are in the HVAC business in the California Central Valley, over the last 5 years this business has exploded with lots of Single Man operations coming into the field.
Anyway, many of these single men are taking the BIG ads and paying way too much money,
I spent a little over a $1,000.00 a month last year. This year my "Representative" tells me the price for my same ad this year will be $1,300.00 a month and next year I can barely even say it up to $1,800.00! When does this price gouging stop!
My ad keeps getting pushed further and further down the page because of these no namers.
Why do I have to pay more every year when my ad is not half a powerful as it was say 6 years ago? My company is fortunate enough to have been in the business for 30 years so many consumers already know our name or have heard of us which gives us an edge over the no namers.
Frustrated in California
posted by Dick Larkin at 11:08 PM
4 Comments:
You can "OUT SMART" the guy by getting a smaller but more effective ad. Spend $2-10,000 or so for a better ad.
Your YP ad is not intended for anyone who already knows who you are. For all past customers your already contacting them with an easy to read, enjoyable, newsletter every month.....right?
So the YP ad is just for new customers and it tells all about how your business is unique from every other one in the listing. Right?
I was just told that if I didn’t keep my same size ad that she would take me out of the yellow book completely....completely no listing AT ALL! NO LIE! We wanted to go from a $1400 a month ad down to $350 and she refused to make the changes. They are like the mob!
Fellow Bussiness,
I found the same was true. They promised the world and we bit took out larger adds and what happened…20% decline that year in call volume. We had been in the book for 40 years and had given them Millions we no longer could make our payments. We pulled out for a year to catch up business as a whole is up but in my opinion they make good drug dealers they hook you and get you to buy more and more even if you really don’t need it. My opinion, diversify and don’t put your eggs in one basket and defiantly don’t believe the stats they give you I have numbers to prove they are wrong.
Just a side point in any given area there is a maximum saturation point for yellow page advertising you can go as big as you want but the call volume will not go up in direct proportion. Many of us dumb contractors are easily fooled because this is not our profession yet we are left to fix-it…
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