Yellow Pages Call Tracking - Measure Your Yellow Book Marketing

Do you advertise in the Yellow Pages or the online equivalent Yell.com?

Do you find that it's a successful marketing channel?

The reason I ask is because I am fascinated by the big Yellow Book and particularly how the company behind the book has fallen from grace in terms of share price.

Only a few years ago, the Yellow Pages was the directory for businesses to advertise in. There were over a thousand pages of advertising...with sometimes hundreds of companies all competing under the same heading.

But then along came Google and 90% of people prefer their fingers to do the searching, as opposed to picking up the dwindling book.

I don't think that any business should ignore Yellow Pages as a potential marketing channel. The key point is that it can generate leads...you just have to know how to write a great advert, with a compelling headline and a brilliant unique selling point i.e. laser targeted advert.

And the only way you know if you are producing profitable leads is if you know how many it is generating and what you have paid for them. The answer to that is call tracking for Yellow Pages.

Let's imagine you advertise in the Yellow Pages for £1000 a year and get 100 leads. That's £10 per lead. When you convert 1 in 10 leads that makes customer acquisition cost of £100 from the Yellow Pages. a good deal or a bad deal - your profit margins will tell you that.

The only way you know though is if you track things from lead to sale and lifetime value of that customer generated from the Yellow Pages.

It's the tracking of calls that is so important when it comes to directories, and yet fewer than 50% of companies ever track the quantity and quality of their calls.

This is part of the problem for Yellow Pages too, (or HIBU as the parent company is now called). You see if they sold leads instead of advertising space, they'd still be 1000 pages thick. But they don't. They are still so very 20th century.

However this does not mean that you shouldn't stick with them if they are giving you good leads. It does mean you have to track your calls though. I have a sneaky feeling that if you get good enough leads now you'll be getting more next year because the book will have fewer advertisers competing with you.

I last checked on their business section of Yellow Pages to see what they had to say about call tracking...and whether they recommended it...or even set it up for clients in the UK.

The search results sadly showed that they are behind the times when advising clients. In fact there were no references to it at all in their knowledge bank for the UK. (See below).

I do know that the US Yellow Book and Yellow Pages South Africa are offering call tracking, (SA is using Admeter!) and I think it will happen in the UK and ultimately with all directories, whether online of offline.

Fortunately, it's easy to get call tracking for Yellow Pages Ads. Simply get us to supply you with unique numbers for your Yellow Pages adverts and tell us what you spend and we'll set up your AdMeter system for you. You use the unique number and bingo - you'll know whether your adverts a hit of a miss.

Don't ignore that Yellow Book though. It could still be generating leads for you and it's worth finding out.

AdMeter.co.uk, the UK's top rated call tracking system.