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When was the last time you picked up a yellow pages book?

For me personally it has been several months. Nowadays it’s so much easier to go online and do a search through a yellow pages web site such as superpages.com, yellowpages.com or just type the name of the company into Google or my favorite search browser at the time. (After we got a dog, it became Dogpile!) I’ll even admit that at home I will turn on a computer to find a phone number rather than go fetch the book. It’s not about being lazy; rather it’s all about getting the whole package. If I turn on the computer and look online I will not only get more info (links to web sites, product reviews etc.), I certainly will get more accurate and updated information. But hey, I know I’m just one person and a whole industry doesn’t hang on one person’s point of view.

So, I did some digging. Data wasn’t hard to find and suggests that the yellow pages industry is in a steep decline. Idearc, publisher of the Yellow Pages directories, was delisted from the NYSE on November 21, 2008. The Wall Street Journal at that same time said “The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines”.

The Kelsey Group which analyzes the Global Yellow Page industry noted, “Given the structural changes in the local ad market, we believe the next downturn will favor media choices that are more flexible and
provide a lower cost per lead than print directories, which would signal a profound shift.” One trend identified was a growth in opt-out plans to better distribute books to those who really want them. Another is a rise in tracking phone numbers to gauge performance.

From an advertiser perspective, one needs to consider carefully where your leads and sales are coming from. If you have a print yellow pages advertising plan in place, how can it be more effective? How many books do you really need to be in? A thorough analysis of sections, ad size, message and cost should be in order. Can you swing some of the money to online yellow pages advertising? If you choose not to advertise in the yellow pages, where best could those dollars be spent? Would it serve you better to shift those dollars online to either paid search, yellow pages search advertising or a combination of both? Or perhaps some of that money would be best invested in a new or upgraded web site so that once someone lands on your site, it conveys the image and the message you want.

There are a lot of opinions about where the industry is headed, what the evolution will look like, who the winners will be and at whose expense.  Where do you search for business listings and where do you see the industry going? Please weigh in!

Here are some of the other articles I read before writing this post. As with all information online, be aware of the source and their potential bias in reporting.

Phone Books & Yellow Pages on Google Trends

Yellow Pages Had a Worse Than Average Week

Is It Time to Abandon Your Yellow Pages Advertising?

Internet Advertising Trends

Google Trends: Yellow Pages Will Be Toast In Four Years

Decline of Paper Yellow Pages - Rise of Online Advertising

Tags: business listings, dogpile, google, idearc, kelsey group, superpages, yellow pages, yellow pages decline, yellow pages directories, yellowpages

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 9:12 am and is filed under Gen X, Media Talk, Social Media, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.