I’ve just had my Yellow Pages advetising renewal and can’t really see the point of paying £450 again. Over the last year I really don’t remember more than a handful of customers mentioning that was where they found me. Far more say they were recommended by friends or just saw my shop front. My business for those that don’t know is small LBS biased more towards servicing and repairs than retail.

Your opinions?

STW is good at opinions.

Never.

Used to use them all the time, “back in the day” before the Interweb.

never. i can’t remember the last time i saw one tbh

I use http://www.yell.com quite regularly.
IIRC it’s the online version of Yellow Pages, so if you pay to advertise in the paper version, you’re probably on here too.

Nope and judging from how thin the last one i chucked away not many advertisers use it either. Good website plus online word of mouth is the way to go. Got any trail building groups or grass roots racing locally you could support? Be a better use for £450 and will give you far more local targeted publicity.

I own a small Insurance brokers and the other offices in the group (about 100) have all stopped bar a hand full. Kept an on-line contact on yell.com but that’s it.

I reckon most people would Google for it. Either on your PC at work/home or on your smart phone.

I would not pay for Yellow pages, paper or online. Google is how pretty much anyone finds things.

I think your the first person I’ve heard mention the yellow pages in about 10 years. been atleast that long since i’ve seen one.

I’d imagine you’d be better off with google, or promoting a facebook page (my wee brother does alright at that.)

I can’t imagine an ad in Yellow Pages really benefits any business nowadays except maybe plumber/sparky/etc and even then if you were any good you’d have more than enough work by word of mouth surely?

You can have a listing on Yell.com without paying for it (unless you want to be right at the top).

In a similar vein, we got a copy of the Thomson Directory through the door the other day. No idea how/why that is still going. It’s about the size of The Beano now.

Yup
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I find it invaluable for lifting up the front wheel of my bike when I am using the turbo trainer, Google for everything else

Every year we get loads of calls from some bloke or woman at a call centre offering space in thompsons or yellow pages, and then repeat calls a few days latter asking if we have changed our minds, as they seem to wanmt to book appointments, give out a false address and arrange a visit, or keep them hanging on chatting before finally saying wife says no.

Thanks for the replies, you’ve confirmed what I strongly suspected.
I’ll probably continue with the yell.com entry for now.

I have a background in direct marketing.
Rule #1 is always know what marketing activities are producing leads and what are not ie: find some concrete way of measuring the effectiveness of your marketing spend
Those that are producing leads – keep doing it, maybe even increase it
Those that aren’t producing leads – you’re throwing the money away on nothing.

I assume that Yell can give you reports of the number of people that look at your listing or the number of calls/emails you’ve had. Maybe try that for a while and see what kind of results you get from it…

Can’t recall seeing a Yellow Pages or Thompson directory for a few years now and even when they did appear, they just went straight in the bin…..

I can’t think i have seen a yellow pages since 2007. Even then i thought it was old hat.

Our FD used to phone up every year and ask for the 4 surrounding areas in addition; there was a cupboard for them 😕