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For decades now, businesses both small and large have spent a significant portion of their marketing budget on listings in print directories like the Yellow Pages. Over the years,  it has proven to be an effective method of advertising as many consumers turned to phone book directories to get in touch with service providers.

Over the past few years however, many business have stopped renewing advertising in the directories due to lack of effectiveness, and it’s really quite easy to understand why when you take a look at how Yellow Pages advertising stacks up in terms of effectiveness vs. online marketing via paid search or organic search engine optimization.

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3 Reasons Why The Yellow Pages Stink Compared To Search Marketing

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1.  Consumers are flooded with info.

Take a look at your local Yellow Pages and search for an attorney, chiropractor, lawn service, etc. and you will find several pages of ads… many times with the total number of ads into the hundreds.  Think about this…. people are paying to be in a directory listed right next to all of their local competitors.  Not only do you have to bank to on potential customers picking up the Yellow Pages, you have to bank on the small chance that your little ad will stand out amongst the dozens/hundreds of competitors.

With search marketing, websites that are optimized for local search terms can easily dominate the results on major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  This works well for companies due to the fact that more and more consumers are utilizing search engines for information instead of print directories.  Plus, if your site is ranked at the top of the search engine results, you (and you alone) stand out as the “authority” business… you don’t have to worry about consumers comparing your “ad” to dozens of other ads, research clearly shows that searchers favor the site that is at the top in the organic search engine rankings.

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2.   The Number Of Print Directories Continues To Grow

It seems that each year, another print directory enters the market.  Many companies feel they are forced into purchasing advertising simply because their competition is doing it.  This is causing companies to throw a larger percentage of their marketing budget at a medium that is slowly suffocating.  Do yourself a favor, don’t fall for these new directories… put the cash towards some optimization for a couple targeted local keywords.

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3.  You Are Stuck With Your Ad For A Year

Another real disadvantage of advertising in print directories is the fact that once your ad is submitted, it cannot be edited.  You get once chance each year to update your listing, and if something changes, or if you would like to add some additional messaging, you are S.O.L.

When marketing via online search, your ad (which can be a landing page on a website, a paid ad, a banner, etc.) has the ability to be edited at any point in time, with the changes takign effect immediately.  Not only does this provide more flexibility for advertisers, it allows for much more targeted advertising as messages can be varied towards time of year, location of the site visitor, etc.

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