Just got a press release from Merchant Circle that they are launching a promotion where they will buy your next yellow pages ad if you are not satisfied with the MC experience (I haven’t read the fine print yet). They are not so subtly tapping into the negative pr that exists out there in the print yellow pages world.
I am curious how many businesses will take them up on this. I think it might have been a far more effective to pull a Burger King & have the merchants send in their cancellation confirmation from a yellow pages co.
4 Response Comments
I like how quickly “Burger King” became a verb…
Remember you heard it hear first Ed!
Hey Andrew,
We considered modeling a promotion after Burger King’s “Whopper Virgin” and traveling to remote areas of the United States… but ultimately, the wording on our press release just didn’t sound right!
They should do well with the promotion.
Business owners have opened their eyes to see that with effective Internet marketing, especially Local Search, they do not need yellow pages. The Internet allows them to cover an area where they may have needed to be in multiple directories and there is a HUGE cost savings. The ability to avoid being trapped in long term contracts is another plus to cutting YP advertising.
The next thing for business owners to realize is that Internet yellow pages offered by the phone companies are not nearly as effective as Local Search mediums like Merchant Circle or Kudzu and certainly not as powerful as having an optimized website.
Our clients share a lot of unbiased info with us and their feedback supports the notion that YP advertising is on very cost effective. We know the YP world very well and offer consulting to our clients to educate them on how to make better advertising choices. The whole YP scene is carefully crafted to make a LOT of money for the publisher without offering great value for all of its customers.
Our clients have shared numbers that indicate YP advertising offering a 10-20% ROI while Local Search and SEO deliver anywhere from 45-400% ROI – some industrial clients realize even higher ROI numbers.
Local Search services are the fastest growing part of our business – the demand has to be based on the success provided by providers such as Merchant Circle.