by: Todd Helvik
This is a very popular question I cannot help to ask local business owners as well as my personal friends, colleagues and pretty much everyone else. So what is the general answer I get? No.
In the defense of the print directories the general demographic I talk to is under 40 years of age and are familiar with technology and more specifically searching for any and everything they could possible need online. I would like to tackle this topic from both a consumer and business owner standpoint and see what kind of conclusion I come up with.
From a consumer standpoint:What is it you look for when searching for a local business or service, is it just the first name that comes up, the biggest ad or the cheapest price? From my personal experience when using a phone book some 8 or 9 years ago I would generally call the biggest ad as I felt they could be the most trusted and established company. In this day and economic climate, consumers are relying now more than ever on price and will do whatever it takes to get what they feel is the best deal and as we all know, cheapest price doesn’t always mean the best deal. Those are both still very popular ways local consumers find businesses but the new overwhelming favorite has to be reviews. The continuing growth of sites like Yelp! prove that people will eat dirt off the ground if their neighbor says it tastes good and is nutritious. Seeing 10 wonderfully glowing reviews about a company will make a consumer not even hesitate to pick up the phone and use that service. Why shop around to find another quote on your project if everyone else has nothing but good things to say about this business? This can be just as true for bad reviews about a business. If you receive literally 1 bad review out of say 5 from your clients and the next business in line is 3 for 3 on the positive side who do you think will get the job? In my opinion, online reviews and recommendations will not only be the rise and fall of particular local businesses but also the fall and elimination of phone books as people will live and die by reviews from their neighbors and why shouldn’t they?
For business owners: Virtually every business owner I talk to is migrating, some faster than others, strictly to online marketing. Statistics are definitely in their favor as online searches for local goods and services are constantly on the rise and showing no signs of slowing down. Does that mean that phone books are dead? My answer here is not yet but we’ll just say they’re standing on one leg and it is only a matter of time before the other one is knocked out from under them. Many people feel that the baby boomers are the only source keeping phone book directories afloat. Various cities throughout the US are not even distributing white pages any longer to local residents but rather a cd and request form to fill out if they wish to have one delivered at a later date. So with this downward trend wouldn’t you think the advertising rates would go along with it? If you could be so lucky. A full page advertisement costs up to $5,000…..per month, ya per month in certain local directories and I want to take a minute to put that in perspective. If you are a carpet cleaning company for instance how many jobs and carpets would you have to clean to sustain this type of advertising medium? The answer is more than you will receive without question. Convert that money into the right online advertising and the sky is the limit. In conclusion, I would just like to pose this question to you; when was the last time you used your phone book to search for a local business or service? Please provide examples and thanks again for reading…
August 20th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Your article lead me to reflect. I loved the way you presented the two perspectives of the consumer and the business-owner. The questions were objective and unbiased which leads one to really seriously think which will be a better alternative. On my part, phonebooks are obsolete nowadays, it is more practical and efficient to go to the web to get the information one needs.