“The Yellow Pages Are For Old People”

Check out this forum filled with grumbling yellow pages advertisers. While the sentiment expressed in these conversations represents the opinion of only a handful of people, it seems like whenever I encounter small, local businesses I hear the same thing over and over. Regarding my post on Yellow Pages 3.0 and how these companies will need to reinvent themselves, the more I see of this stuff the more I am convinced these IYPs need to move faster. The Yellow Pages still can provide a lot of value to smart marketers but based on this conversation they need to do a better job of proving this to their customers.

Here are some choice excerpts:

“It helps to be in there but with the internet I am down sizeing my yellow page ads…”

“This year I will be tracking them all (all YP ads) VERY closely b/c I am also going to upgrade the website and downsize the yellow page listings as many others are doing.”

“I’m sure by “making it (my YP ad) work better” he (my YP sales rep) means “pay us more.”

“my ads are a complete waste of money”

“let these YP folks know you know their business revenue is way down. Just like we have to adjust our margins when things are slower (or when someone else with the same stuff is in the same home against us!) these Yellow Page dummies need to do the same thing (and they will if you stand strong!)”

“YP ad’s are a wormhole for your advertising dollars.”

“print ads mainly attract [happy days] older folks shopping around, if that your target market then pages are for you. Good bye PRINT BOOKS, Invest in serach local .”

I am still trying to figure out the “happy days” thing. Where’s the Fonz when you need him?

Update: Greg Sterling has published some Webvisible-Nielsen data about this subject in his post Yellow Pages Advertisers Questioning Print