Business
Advertising with Online Yellow Pages or Google AdWords?

Advertising with Online Yellow Pages or Google AdWords?

Yellow pages representatives. You have to love them.

I got a call yesterday afternoon as I was leaving my office. My assistant said AT&T Yellow Pages finished my little one-inch ad.

Once on the phone, I asked for the details of my little ad to confirm that everything was correct. The phone rep didn’t know anything about the ad.

Instead, his motive was to sell me a paid listing on the Yellowpages.com website.

Hmmm…that sounds weird (my vendor radar was on)

Like all Yellow Page reps, he used the typical tactic: “You’ll never be found if you don’t buy this ad.” So, since I’m interested in online advertising, I started asking questions.

I opened the Yellowpages.com directory and noticed for the first time that the paid banners had “do not follow” links. This means that Google does not track your inbound link. I asked him about the value of the link and he had no idea what he was talking about.

I then asked, “How many people per month search Yellowpages.com for carpet cleaners in Pensacola (my business category and city)?” Surprisingly, she shared the number with me. On average, 260 people per month are searching your site.

So this is where really knowing the internet can help you make a smart decision. About 1000 people per month Google for carpet cleaners for my city. That’s four times the traffic of Yellowpages.com.

Now the big question…

“How much does an ad cost on Yellowpages.com?” It was $230 for a higher position and $85 for a lower position. And get this, a ONE YEAR commitment was required.

Let’s compare Yellowpages.com directly to Google AdWords. If 1,000 people are searching on Google, I can get 20-60 clicks from an AdWords campaign. In my city, the click for the first position costs about $1.80.

At worst I am paying $108 to appear in EVERY Google search for carpet cleaning in Pensacola. Please note that these numbers assume that my Google AdWords account is set up correctly. If not set up correctly, you could easily spend three times this amount to get the same result.

Google AdWords=$108 per 1,000 impressions.

Yellowpages.com=$230 for 260 impressions.

An impression is the number of times your ad is seen. Not everyone clicks on your ad.

In other words, if you advertise on Yellowpages.com with 260 impressions per month, you can get between 5 and 50 clicks to your site per month. You would be paying between $5 and $45 per click. Oh! With AdWords, you’d pay just $1.80 per click.

If you try Yellowpages.com for a month and find you’re paying $30 per click, you can’t cancel. With AdWords, you can cancel at any time.

The other great advantage of AdWords is that you spend what you want. If you only want to spend $50 in a month, you can. If you want to advertise for just one week, you can do that too.

So that’s my rant. I just wanted to make sure you were educated on this topic so you know how to respond. Most of the time, you can get better AdWords advertising MUCH cheaper.

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