When was the last time you pickup a phone book and looked up a phone number or tried to find a business to use? Almost everyone these days has the same answer, they haven’t in a very long time. Teenagers don’t even know what a phone book is they just know that you can “Google it” or ask Siri. The yellow page directories know this too and are moving their sales efforts to online marketing. It makes sense less and less people use phone books, they look things up on their phone or computer. If you go to a local condo or apartment complex the week they give the large yellow phone books out, you will see most of them in the dumpster. Now they are selling small businesses online marketing and will include a listing or preferred listing on their website. In addition, they will offer small businesses the opportunity to run a PPC (pay per click), organic SEO (search engine optimization) and local SEO campaigns. They will even create a website or landing page where they direct this traffic to online, instead of your current website.
For our example we will say that the business is spending $500 a month for their marketing ($250 towards PPC and $250 to the marketing company or Yellow Page directory). Both advertising plans will include local directory listings, local and organic SEO, PPC, and reporting.
Yellow Pages Online Programs
- They will place a PPC ad in a lower position (4-10) on Google Adwords, Yahoo or Bing. Your business will pay a fixed rate monthly. these positions get less than 1% of all the clicks and cost a fraction of the price (usually under $3 per click).
- Will work with your direct competition to offer the exact same services at the same time.
- A flat rate is charged to you, usually only about $50 of the $250 you are paying is actually spent on clicks. The rest is just profits for the Yellow Pages company.
- Paid placement on their Yellow Page online directory.
- SEO is done only to the landing page or small site they created for you. Once the page is removed (usually at cancelation), so is all of your SEO you paid for.
- Regularly breach Google guidelines, your ranking can be penalized for this and even removed from Google. Additionally, this can negatively effect your primary websites SEO too.
- Print ad in phone book.
- Annual contract – lock clients into an inferior product.
Internet Marketing Companies
- They will place a PPC ad in a strategic position on google adwords. Your business will pay the cost per click directly to Google with a maximum or flexible spending limit each month. The actual cost per click will vary depending on the keyword and strategic position your ad is in on Google.
- Don’t work with any competing companies in the same market place at the same time.
- The actual amount spent on Google is charged to you. All $250 is spent on clicks to your website.
- Free placement in the Yellow Page online directory
- SEO work is done on your website, if you cancel your marketing services you will keep the work that was done.
- All White hat SEO companies (like evol Marketing) follow Googles guidelines.
- No print ad in a phone book.
- Month to month contract – we believe in what we do and know you will not leave us.
How much should your business be paying for your internet marketing monthly?
- Local business (restaurant, hardware store, carpet cleaner..) $250 – $1000*
- Local business with multiple locations $1500 – $3000 *
- Regional business $2500 – 7500*
- National business $5000 – 25,000*
*The total amount spent in a month will increase by the amount you spend on your PPC and if you have multiple office locations there will be additional charges.
Summary
You can obviously see the advantages of using an internet marketing company over a phone book to advertise your business online. Most business owners do not know enough about internet marketing and without proper education a fast talking salesman can be the downfall of a new business or small business that has a limited marketing budget.
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** For legal reasons evol Marketing must disclose that the information in this article is their opinion from information they gathered from yellow page representatives that solicited them, online research and businesses that they spoke to about their experience with yellow page marketing programs over the last 3 years.