Internet Marketing in the Valley of Yellow Pages

Posted in Internet Marketing on June 29th, 2009, by Trevor Brennan. 2 Comments.

Internet Marketing vs Yellow Pages

If you were fortunate enough to be born and raised in the Wyoming Valley of Northeastern PA, you will inevitably be exposed to NEPA’s most basic life lessons: hard work is rewarded, never forget where you came from, and family is everything. However, in this beautiful valley of nearly 300,000 children and grandchildren of immigrant coal miners, one lesson reigns supreme… change doesn’t come swiftly or easily.

With only 10 minutes of browsing online a child now has access to more of the world’s information than our great grandparents had in a year of local newspapers. It’s an amazing time to be thirsty for knowledge, and even better time to share your knowledge with others, and there’s no better tool to do so than the Internet.

So why, in this cyber age, are the majority of locals still reaching for their bulky phone book to find a plumber or a lawyer instead of firing up a Search Engine? Well folks…change here doesn’t come swiftly or easily.

We live in a valley where traditions, homes, cars, customs, and the shelves dedicated to holding 400 page phonebooks are passed from parent to child, generation after generation. So what’s wrong with staying true to your roots you ask? Well, nothing, but certainly now there’s an opportunity to clear those hefty books off that dusty shelf and instead pass something even more valuable down to your children…Google!

As a local Internet Marketing Agency, one of Javaleaf’s biggest obstacles is overcoming the stranglehold traditional advertising has over the residents and businesses of this great valley. Of course it’s not to say that these marketing channels (TV, radio, billboards, yellow pages, etc.) are completely ineffective; however, a company that is not using Google, Yahoo, and MSN traffic to its advantage is missing out on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in annual business. Yes, millions.

Sure, some people still use yellow pages regularly, so we always encourage clients to have some sort of presence in their local phone directories. However, devoting the bulk of your marketing budget to yellow page ads is mind boggling to anyone who has ever spent more than a week advertising on a search engine. Simply put, there’s just no comparison.

The local yellow pages and Google results are the same basic form of marketing; however, this is where the similarities end. The inferiority of a year-long, unchangeable, and expensive phone directory program is just comical when compared to an incredibly flexible online program for the same cost. Having the ability to constantly test value props, customer’s geographic location, time of day placement, color scheme, and content of your online ads (all the while sending the traffic to your infinitely detailed website instead of a 3 inch paper ad) is a vastly superior option. Oh, and did I mention that these programs only cost you when someone actually clicks on your ad? Oh yes. Now we’re talking about a pay-as-you-go model which is nonexistent in TV and yellow page contracts.

The point is that there is a real opportunity here that local companies need to take advantage of. Capturing online leads is easy with the right help, and can certainly be the key to taking your business to the next level. As much as Change likes to take its sweet time in this area, NEPA’s next generation of those seeking a local law firm, doctor, dentist, contactor, or mortgage broker has already established its dependence on the Internet over all traditional media. The dependence grows by the day.

The days of simply throwing up some contact information on a clever domain are over. Here’s what you need to do to help your business:

• First, prioritize your marketing budget to get more serious about your website.
• Second, get your site in the hands of the marketing professionals before your competitors do the same.
• Third, have faith in the effectiveness of Internet Marketing.

Yellow pages are dying and you can’t afford to let your business die slowly with them. Local advertising is a battlefield, and by overlooking the proper online marketing you’ve shown up to the battle without any ammunition.