A comparison between SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), PPC marketing (Pay per click including Google Adwords) and Yellow Pages

I had an old tradesmen come into my office the other day. I told him that we can do our business via phone and email, but he insisted making the trip in and looking me straight in the eye, so that we can talk taipan to taipan. But really he wanted me to justify to him why he should invest in Adwords and SEO services because the Yellow Pages has worked for him for years.

I know that tech gurus for years have been telling people for years that Yellow is the devil. That they’re the old, and search engines are the new.

But I’m going to tell you what I told my now, new client - if it’s working for you, if you’re generating a positive return on investment, then continue to do use it. I think Yellow still has it’s place, and will still be useful for years to come.

I don’t care what you use as long at it works. I help my clients with a multitude of lead generation activities. Most techies will tell you that Google Local Business Centre is the answer to advertising locally. But if you ask me, I’ll tell you that it’s handy, but it’s only one pillar in your partheonon. I help my clients with everything from signage, to shopping centre promotions, to letter box drops, to local publication advertising to target customers within a geographic area.

Yellow Pages does have it’s positives, and one of the big ones is the fact that it has no other use than a directory of suppliers. I use the internet and search engines for a number of purposes. I catch up on news from home, and from the might cats. I do my banking, watch youtube and so on and so forth. Information is so accessible, that it’s easy to think on a whim, “hmmm…. I’d love a pool out back - I wonder how much it would cost.” and then I search a dozen pages looking for a pool supplier brave enough to put up their prices. I clicked a couple of Adwords text ads as well as the top organic listings.

All traffic generated to pool builders websites, but I’m not a qualified lead - I’m a curious george. Where as with Yellow Pages, you only open it when you’re looking to buy something. Over 60% of all inquiries from the Yellow Pages turn into a sale. If my clients were getting those statistics from clicks, I’d be a very rich man… which I’m not.

For now, Yellow has another advantage over the internet… it’s customer type. Young people are using the internet. Yes the older generations are rapidly catching up, but until they do, the book, the habit, the same thing they’ve been using for years, the tried and true method is what most will turn to.

And the older generation, empty nesters, grey nomads, etc. through sheer weight of years have more accumulated wealth (on average) to dispose of.

So it definitely does have it’s advantages.

But it is getting harder to generate a return on investment. The price has gone up and the readership is well down. A half page ad for some sections is pushing $30K. If your GP is only 30%, you’ll need to generation around $100,000 in business, just to recoup your investment - that’s before you make a cent of gross profit. (keeping in mind that 30% is on the lower scale.

If you compare the two (Yellow Pages Book and Yellow Online) with Google Adwords, MSN (NineMSN for Australians) and Yahoo Search Marketing, the search engines figure much more in the positive.

Firstly, you only pay for the traffic you receive and you can work towards a pay per lead arrangement. Whereas with other two, it’s cash up front, with the book, you pay in July and the book doesn’t come out until October. The same can be said for Search Engine Optimisation, but I know our bill comes in stages, and the fact is that you don’t have to pay anyone (we just make it quicker and easier).

Pay per click marketing is instant. Set up your campaign, swipe your card and you’re up and running. Yellow goes through reps either on the phone or in person which is great for the less technically minded, but if I want to make a change to my premium listing ad online, I have to call them, email them, then wait two weeks, which I still pay for with an underperforming ad.

In the book, it’s a full year’s test - with pay per click, it can be as short as a week.

However if you read my article on improving yellow pages results, you’ll see that there is definitely a lot that you can do to generate more leads with less dollars.

Search Engines Vs. Yellow Pages statistics - I couldn’t find much on the net with credibility. I saw one tech hero (the name for people trained in technical work like web design that profess to be a marketing guru) site with a big graph, but it failed to reveal it’s sources. I found another that compared Yellow costs with website costs, but the costs for the website were skewed to the positive. There was no mention of the costs for SEO. Even if you do it yourself it costs time which equals money. And there was no allowance for adwords or pay per click costs. I have one client spending well above $25,000 per year on Google Adwords alone.

Research was released in October, 2008 that showed the first source used for research of locally based services was search engines at 31%, followed by print yellow pages at 30%. This translated to a 4 point shift from Yellow to online research. But this research may have included Yellow Online - I know I use it. But it was the first time that the print yellow pages has been surpassed for local research information. Consumers still continue to research products online and buy offline. Following the local searches, consumers tended to still contact businesses by phone (39%), visit the business (32%) or contact the business through online means (12%). However it clearly shows the trend towards online research and offline purchasing.

In summary, I like PPC for it’s flexibility and it’s low drain on cash researves without reward. But I like Yellow Pages Advertising as it attracts qualified prospects to your business. I don’t think that you should necessarily choose one over the other, as each business is different. Instead for applicable businesses they both should be used as part of an integrated marketing approach and as long as they continue to generate a positive return on investment, you should continue to use them. At the Fire Dept. we’re about results - we don’t care where they come from as long as our clients are getting them.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…