Should you trust your Yellow Pages Company to help you successfully market your business online?

Should you trust your Yellow Pages Company to help you successfully market your business online?

Utilizing your Yellow Pages representative as your Internet Marketing consultant: This can be rather risky, but first, here are the positives of using this source:

• If you are dealing with the major Yellow Pages Company in your region they may have a good program for advertising on their Internet Yellow Pages. The official “Phone Company” Yellow Pages usually has excellent usage, and provides a good return on investment. Verizon typically has decent usage outside of their region because of their wireless brand that is known everywhere.
  
• You may have a good relationship with your rep if you have had the same rep for years. You probably trust them and they probably want to do what’s best for your business.

Here is what to watch out for:

• Yellow Pages reps are under a lot of pressure to sell you as much advertising as they can-whether or not it is good for your business. This may result in them overselling their Internet Yellow Pages, and it will keep them from letting you move money from print to Internet-even if that is the best thing for your business.
  
• Yellow Pages advertising does have merit, and many businesses profit from Yellow Pages advertising, but usage is declining and the return on investment is not as good as it used to be-certainly not as good as a quality Internet Marketing Strategy.
  
• While the rep may have your best interests in mind, the experienced Yellow Pages rep rarely understands what the best Search Engine Marketing solution should be for your business. If they did, they probably would not sell you the Search Engine Marketing products their company offers. Utilize them for their online Yellow Pages, but you are probably better off utilizing an Internet Marketing Company to help you succeed with the search engines like Google, Yahoo! & MSN.
  
• If they are NOT from the official phone company phone book then their Internet Yellow Pages is probably close to worthless. The exception may be Verizon.
  
• Be careful of any Search Engine Marketing program they try to sell you. The Yellow Pages companies are usually not completely “transparent” with where your clicks are coming from, and they may charge you as much as a 2,000% mark up (yes-TWO THOUSAND) on your Pay-Per-Click program to manage it for you. This can eliminate the potential return on investment that a program like this SHOULD be providing your business.
  
• Some of their Website development programs can seem like a good deal, but because they are usually reselling someone else’s service the monthly fees can be significantly overpriced. Their websites are usually packaged with marketing programs that are often over-priced. While often times a package deal sounds good, in this case it may be more costly than if you were to buy them separately.

Check back in the next few days for advice on dealing with these types of “Internet Marketing Consulting” options.

• A Google or Yahoo! Representative.
• A marketing firm.
• A website developer.
• An SEO firm.
• An Internet marketing firm
• A full service marketing firm