SEO & Internet Marketing Vs Yellow Pages
One of the most strategic ways of getting close to your customers is through Internet marketing. You can market your products or services through a wide market when compared to other modes of advertising such as print media or visual media. The other common advertising medium is marketing the business through Yellow Pages or other directories. This process may involve a lot of investment in both time and money. Advertising in Yellow Pages may always be a part of the annual marketing expenditure; however you may find that the desired results alone cannot be achieved by using this particular medium alone. Yellow pages themselves have recently started offing Search Engine Optimisation in Australia so that goes to show that even they consider Internet Marketing to be highly important.
Our SEO customers in Brisbane often tell us that they are getting fed up with Yellow Pages and they don’t like the lock-in contracts. But since the advent of Internet Marketing, we believe that many businesses have started cutting down on their expenditure on yellow pages. These pages are often referred to by consumers who know what to buy and from where to find a product. The case is different when it comes to internet marketing. The customers would first try to know more about the product or service and then would purchase them. An average advertisement may cost a few thousand every year when it comes to advertising in Yellow Pages. But it is not the case with internet marketing. Leads and sales are usually cheaper and the money spend on SEO is more of an investment in the website, not an advertising expense.
We all are aware of directories or phone books and their advantages. They help the consumers connect to their suppliers of products or services. However, retention of such customers is difficult when compared to Internet Marketing wherein you can track each and every customer who is entering your website and then interact with the customer personally. Yellow pages and Internet Marketing, both would definitely give an opportunity to the customer to know what to purchase and from where to purchase. But the scope of knowing the product or service is more in Internet Marketing because the information that is provided through articles and backlinks facilitates an effective purchase process. Customers who search online will spend much longer reviewing your services, comparing you to other companies, finding review about you an more. It is not always fair to draw a direct comparison since they are used for different things.
You should also consider how differenly people use Yellow Pages to the Internet. When people use Yellow Pages to find a product or service they generally just get a small amount of information on the ad, which is information published by the business owner. They will then usually call, or possibly email the company to get the information they need. With the Web this is totally different. Customers will spend a lot of time online finding all the information from your website, but also finding reviews about your products and services online. It is a completely diferent medium so it is not always fair to try and draw a comparison.
The following chart shows YELL share prices in the UK over the past five years source.
