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Earlier this year consumers crossed a line of demarcation, preferring to find businesses with search engines rather than in the yellow pages. But yellow page directories will not go quietly into the night. Instead they have decided to fight back with…just about everything.
Video Ads
You can now add a video ad to your online yellow pages listing. You can go basic, like this photo-motion ad for Rick Cummings Insurance in Waco, Texas from YellowBook.com
Or, if you’re willing to pay a little more for production, you can get a fully-produced video ad (or use your TV spot) like one fro Villaggio Ristorante in Whitestone, New York from YellowPages.com
(Email subscribers, if you don’t see the video players, click here to watch: Yellow Pages Videos)
Search Engine Local Listings
Doing some poking around in Google local search results, I found a disproportionate number of local business results were also advertising with SuperPages.com. For example, this screen shot of a search for psychologists in Indianapolis show five of the top seven results have claimed their local business listing with Google. That’s indicated by the “More” link at the end of each result.
With a little poking around and a phone call, I found out that Superpages has a relationship with Google. Advertise with Superpages and they automatically fill out the information in your Google local business listing. That in turn, helps with local search results.
Pay Per Click Ads & Building Websites
Yellowpages.com is also getting in on the local search game, but they’re doing it with pay-per-click ads. In a recent Google search for storage in my my local area I noticed a pay-per-click ad on the right for a local facility. I knew the owner, so I called him up. He said that Yellowpages.com built the website for him, then guaranteed a certain number of clicks to his website per month. They fulfilled that obligation by placing local search ads on Google. Notice the Yellowpages.com banner in the lower right corner.
Superpages let’s you search for listings anywhere from Twitter, with their @sp411 Twitter account. You either reply or direct message your request to Superpages and they tweet you the results. For example I wanted to see pizza restaurants near Washington Dulles Airport so sent the message @sp411 Pizza 20171 (zip code) and within seconds received my reply, complete with phone number and link to the listing on Superpages.com
All Media
I spoke with a local yellow pages sales rep yesterday who told me that soon I will be able to purchase a combination of yellow pages advertising and television advertising in the same media buy. Yep, one rep, multiple media. She said the details haven’t been worked out yet, but my guess is that they are talking with cable companies. Local cable networks have a lot of empty inventory and might be eager broker some of their unused spot times to the yellow page directories.
This same rep also assured me that the print version will not go away. That’s probably true, but I think there will be fewer of them and they will become thinner. Give the Yellow Pages credit for trying to break away from the book method of distribution. Looks like they are willing to try just about anything. In fact, if you to talk to your local yellow page directory salesperson, they might just throw in the kitchen sink.
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