A Story Like That Has Got To Be True

Submitted by Corey Smith on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 07:07

When I wrote my post on phone books, I didn't expect to get some passionate responses in the comments kramer crazyarea. I didn't expect anyone to be so excited about phone books to argue passionately about the benefits of phone books.

One point really struck me as interesting by "kenc". He said, among other things, "The nearly $18 billion that companies spend on print and online YP speaks for itself."

His point, is that since people spend so much on advertising, it must be successful for them.

To that, I respond, "Huh?"

It reminds me of Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld. In Episode #822, "The Summer of George," Jerry asked Kramer why the producers wanted Kramer to fire Raquel Welch. His response was:

Because they're terrified of her. I heard from someone that when they cut one of her lines, she climbed up the rope on side of the stage and started dropping lights on peoples heads.
Story like that has got to be true.

"A Story Like That Has To Be True!"

Just because businesses spend $18 million on an advertising medium doesn't mean a darn thing. Business leaders waste money for a variety of reason. Not the least of which is because a skilled salesman showed them a stat that had to be true.

I am sure that some people see success. I would imagine that there are some companies that see success because of phone book advertising... and those are the stats that are bandied about. I tend to think that for the masses, it is a waste of money. In fact, even for those that are successful, I bet there are far better ways to spend those dollars.

Give me some proof other than conjecture and anecdotal evidence and I might change my mind.



Corey Smith is a businessman, writer, technology fanatic, graphic designer and web developer.

He is the webmaster for CopierCatalog.com, the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems, the Editor in Chief for OfficeProductNews.net and the VP of Technology for Seybold Scientific.

You can find him on Twitter, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.

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Submitted by Allyson (not verified) on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 14:47.
Hi Corey, Full disclosure: I'm an employee of Yellowbook-- my actual title is "media consultant"- which is just a fancy way of saying that I sell advertising, both in print and online. There is a very simple way that our company, and our advertisers, tracks the success of our print product. We offer advertisers RCF lines-- unique remote call forwarding numbers that only appear in their print ads. When a potential buyer calls the number that appears in the ad, the call is forwaarded to the advertiser's direct line. The call is tracked by a third party, not by Yellowbook, and the advertiser has access to the call results via online reporting. The reporting the advertisers who purchase metered lines receive not only give the amount of calls made, but break things down to how many were unique callers versus repeat callers, how many are from a certain zip code, and how many calls went un answered. Additionally, the reporting records caller ID information. Originally, the phone book industry utilized these metered numbers as marketing devices to prove th value of yellow pages advertising. But Yellowbook discovered that as soon as you remove the smoke and mirrors of advertising, and allow our advertisiers to see the actual, quantifiable, transparent results of their advertising campaigns for themselves, not only were our advertisers more than satsfied the results, but also our retention rate went up, as did the increase to amount of dollars spent in print advertising. I'd be happy to send you examples of metered ads. For example, an advertiser under Dance Instruction that I signed up last year had an RCF number in her 1/4 page ad that, at last count (in June), had received over 90 calls in March, 48 of which were answered. Metered ads are the most transparent, non-biased way for us to sell ads, and also for advertisers to track their investment.

Submitted by Corey Smith (not verified) on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 16:40.
Allyson, that is the first sensible thing I have heard all day. I'll send you my email address (assuming you didn't plug in a bogus one :)) and you can send them. I'll write a post on them. Quantifiable results is the way all business owners should make a decision. If those results don't track, don't do it. Unfortunately, so many business owners fly by the seat of their pants and don't even know when they are paying too much

Submitted by jmc (not verified) on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 13:56.
Corey, This is the only kind of tracking Yellowbook does. The remote call forwarding numbers (RCF). You are correct to a certain degree, sometimes the ad works and sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time the information shows that if the overall marketshare is showing positive usage and one particular client is not getting their percentage of calls or leads, then usually the ad itself has not been set up or developed properly for what that individual advertiser is trying to target. While print may not be growing in double digits as it was a few years ago and many of our clients are online through yb.com and google (by the way all of our employees are google certified or are working towards working towards their certification) as we partner with google in this industry. Remember Yellowbook is in the Information business, whatever it takes to get our advertisers the client they need we will do.