Yellow Pages Group Canada, Internet listings and Adwords Marketing Program.
Not inherently, they have shown some flexibility of late by negotiating prices. However in their struggle for survival they are committing some sins against their customers.
These web pages-paid managed marketing through adwords start at $250/month so you would expect performance--however it just doesn't.
I called them to hear the spiel first hand. I have had my own website for about 15 years so I am up on the jargon. The salesman on the other end builds websites, so when I asked him for clarification of what he was saying he gracefully elaborated in the proper terms.
They are told to refer to "clicks" as "Leads"--they are not. A click is a visit to your website. Half those clicks leave immediately... and I bet when they see the site that yellow pages built... even more leave immediately.
They said to expect 100 "Qualified Leads" a month for your $250.00. Again... Deceptive. They mean 100 visits to the template web page that they create. Of which 50 or 75 will leave... and you may or may not get any calls at all.
They seem to prey on the people that don't know better. When you have a good website you might get a couple of calls per 100 hundred visits... A bad site, (see the photo in this article), may only see a lead for every 1000 visits.
Due to the decline of their print media--they have embarked into the on-line world. They are fighting hard, however like most directories they are having issues with traffic. They claim 11 million potential customers a year in Canada. You don't have to try very hard to dispel that myth.
If you go to Alexa and search for www.yellowpages.ca you will get very interesting stats that don't jive with what they claim.
Common sense dictates that there is roughly 30 million people in Canada. Half of those people may be a potential customer. That's 15 million potential. Go and ask 15 friends.. if you were going to hire a service business, how would you go about finding the company.
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| More info on Yellow Pages Websites |
I would bet 12 of the 15 would say Google if they couldn't find someone from word of mouth. I would bet only 1 would suggest the phone book, since the other 14 don't know where their phone book is is. I would also bet that that person is likely over 60 and not likely to be shopping for much.
By my best estimation Yellow Pages .ca gets about 90,000 unique visits a month. Of those visits roughly half are from customers searching for their listings to make sure they are correct or to figure out why they aren't getting any calls. 20% will be web searches from other countries that are coming up for certain keywords and 30% is likely actual potential customers...
Close to Retirement and female, without secondary education. (their demographic from Alexa)
Another interesting site on the
Yellow Pages Group Websites is here.
Check out our
deck business blog on Yellow Pages Group Websites.
