michael’s posterous

For some people this isn’t new but I am not writing this for you. I am writing this for all the business owners who feel that you must advertise in the yellow pages to make money. For years the reps from the yellow pages have done a great job in creating the illusion that we have to be in their book. Today is a new day. There are two major reasons why you shouldn’t be advertising in the yellow pages or at least reducing your spending with them significantly.

When you sign the contract to advertise in the yellow pages it is an annual contract. This means no matter what happens you have to pay that monthly amount. Business is a little slow and you need to allocate dollars elsewhere? The yellow pages will still want their money. Compare this to other forms of advertisement, direct mail, internet, billboards and etc. Those mediums do not make you sign up for the year. I know the yellow pages get printed every year so that’s why its an annual thing. That might have worked 10 years ago but now we have more efficient ways to reach our customers than soley relying on the yellow pages.

When you advertise in the yellow pages you are advertising right next to your competitors. This doesn't make much sense. Why would I spend almost $5K a month so my potential customers can see me and my competitions with a flick of the page. If you are in the middle of the particular category and want to get ahead you will have outspend the leader of that category. So you spend much more per month just to be #1 but we all know the customer will leaf through all the other companies. In the yellow pages it comes down to has the best designed ad, that’s it. You have to draw the customer to your ad and make them call you. It cracks me up when companies don’t spend money to hire an outside firm to design your ad. Yes, the yellow pages will design it for you but it looks like crap. So what if you spend $700 to have someone design, in the long run it will pay huge dividends. Just grab your yellow page book and go to the Plumbing section. The majority of the ads are done by the yellow pages and a few are done by an outside firm.

The yellow pages always had the upper hand when it came to having everybody advertise in their book. Most plumbers (I will use them because I work for a plumbing company and that category is one of the largest in the yellow pages) don’t have the time or don’t know about advertising in other places. So every year when the yellow page rep calls they look it over and sign up for year believing that they need the yellow pages. This has got to change. We are in 2009 and nobody shouldn't be thinking like this. There are tons of ways to reach your customer in more effective ways such as direct mail, billboards and internet. Ok, you are saying if I drop my advertising in the yellow pages where will I get my customers from? First, since the yellow page book comes out every year people always still hold onto previous years versions. So its not like once the new book comes out your phones will stop ringing. Before you stop advertising in the yellow pages you need to start to create your alternative marketing plan. Direct mail is the key. You can send a postcard out to your customers for around 35 cents. This will allow your message to get to the customer without interruption. They wont see your competitors, just your company. You just don’t send this out once but you keep hammering them. Do you remember America Online? They sent out those free discs to everybody and they kept doing it. This is the mentality you need to have. Increase your brand awareness. When your customer has a problem you want them to think of you not flipping through pages in the yellow pages. I am not going to go in too much detail but this is the mindset you need to have. Don’t be scared, just educate yourself so you know what to expect.

The big thing is the way the economy is right now. Everybody is looking ways to reduce their costs and one of the biggest costs in a small business advertising in the yellow pages is that cost. We spend around $9K to advertise in two yellow page books, Yellow Book and Idearc. If you read my earlier post I sat down with our Idearc reps for the upcoming year. We told them that we needed to reduce the annual budget. Of course they didn’t want to hear that. We talked and I discussed with them what other forms advertisement we were looking to divert our dollars to. They are salesmen and are very good at it. Before the meeting we wanted to reduce our spending significantly. After the meeting we left with them creating a proposal to incorporate other means of advertising other than in the yellow pages for a cheaper amount. The next meeting came and their proposal was a couple hundred dollars cheaper per month with us having a package consisting of direct mail, billboard and some internet marketing. I can’t knock the Idearc guys for creating a killer package. At first it was an awesome. I was enamored because we got all this for less money than last year. A sat on it for a few days and then it hit me. We still don’t control our advertising costs, its still an annual contract! Yes we get all these added benefits but they (Idearc) are still in charge. They are driving and we are just along for the ride.

We still haven’t had our follow up meeting since they offered us their package deal. The key is having control of your ad dollars and it is so true in today’s economic conditions. Idearc doesn’t want people reducing spending in their book. If you haven’t heard they just filed for bankruptcy. I don’t know the particulars but the word bankruptcy for a company whose majority of revenues comes from a printed paper product isn’t good. I want to educate other business owners and let them know to start thinking about reducing your spending in the yellow pages. If you don’t your competition will. I know my competition might be reading this but its ok, no other plumbing company has someone like me working for them. We are getting serious at Ingram’s. When we come never say you didn’t see it coming because if you’re reading this we just gave you a heads up.

This post was fueled by a comment from someone who read my earlier post. Thanks Bill.

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When I first started my blog about a couple weeks ago, I immediately signed up for Google Analytics. I ran some small websites in the past and the tracking of visitors was pretty rudimentary when compared to what Google has. I love numbers and combing through piles of data to see trends, habits and etc. A couple days ago as I was doing my daily Analytics reading when I saw about 20 page views from Texas. This immediately hit me in the face. Most of the time when I get visitors across the country it is about 3 or 4 daily visitors at the most from a particular state. So when I saw 20 and it wasn't from Philadelphia I had to check it out and see what was up. So when I saw the visitors were from Texas I dug I little bit deeper I found out they were from a city/town called Euless. I pulled it up on Google Maps and saw it wasn't too far from Dallas. I still didn't know who Euless was so interested in my small personal blog. I needed to dig deeper some more and went to pull up the network location of the users for that day. Thats when it hit me who in Euless, TX was checking out my site and probably this post. The network location Google had was "Idearc Media Corp". I put two and two together and kind of made a bet with myself that Idearc corporate headquarters was in that area. I went to Idearc's website and it was. Then I remembered that the Idearc rep I had meeting with said he just got back from Dallas on getting training for the SuperGuarantee program.

There you have it. The folks from Idearc have been reading my blog. Since my blog is small I'm sure they got to it my doing a Google search. If you google "Idearc Super Guarantee" my site is number 1, yup ahead of Idearc's own website. There aren't too many sites out there that give their own view of this program so I didn't have a lot of other sites to compete with. As of today there have been 42 page views from Idearc. Here is a video clip of a commercial from Idearc. Enjoy.

What's funny is the line "If you don't get the job right, we'll make it right". Very nice Idearc. In the next commercial I think you should say "If you don't get the job right, we'll make it right in about six weeks while you still live with the problem". 

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Today I met with an Idearc rep and his manager about our advertisement we have in their yellow pages book (Super Pages). I really do hate these negotiations because it's the same thing every year. They come in ask how business is doing, blah, blah, blah and then say our ad costs are going up 5% just because. They try to get us to spend more money but when you have a two page ad in their Philadelphia Super Pages how much more can you spend? I’m waiting for the day the rep comes in and says we have this new holographic imaging tool that when your customer turns to your ad they will instantly see a brief 15 second video of your company. The biggest thing I don’t like about any yellow pages book is that you are in the same place as your competitor. The homeowner sees you and the other 15 companies offering the same service. But anyways what I’m here to talk about is their new SuperGuarantee Program they mentioned to us today.

What the program is basically is they (Idearc) will stand behind the work performed by the advertisers in their Super Pages. If a person has a problem with the services performed by a company they got out of their Super Pages book they will come in as an intermediary. Basically they will do what all credit card companies do for their cardholders, act in a way to protect their cardholders from merchants who don't do right. Why Idearc is doing this is to increase the amount of people looking at their Super Pages book. I guess if people know that if they call Company X and if something goes wrong Idearc has their back. The Idearc reps said the company is spending $60M on advertisement to increase awareness about this program. Throughout the hour long meeting this had to be his biggest selling point to keep us from reducing or leaving the Super Pages all together. I am very hesitant to get happy about what somebody is selling me without thinking it through and doing my homework. Shortly after the meeting I concluded this Super Guarantee Program was stupid, a product that is all show with no substance.

First off, in Philadelphia there are two major yellow page books. It is Idearc (formerly Verizon) Super Pages and Yellow Book yellow pages book. Almost all of businesses in the city advertise in both books. This means that the businesses Idearc supposedly “backs” with this program is the same business in the other yellow pages book. So it's not like you get a better product by calling Company X and getting their number out of the Super Pages.

Idearc does no type of background check on the businesses they will back. Any merchant who advertises gets included. As a potential customer to these businesses how would that make you feel?

Idearc limits their liability to $500. Yea I know thats not a lot of money and it's not a lot since that covers only the labor portion. If a problem arises and a person feels they were wronged by a business they got out of the Super Pages Idearc will refund $500 to that person. This where it's gets interesting. Before you call that particular company out to do the work you have to sign up at the Super Guarantee website and put Idearc on notice. Before you contact Idearc if there’s a problem you have to try to work out it with that business. If you cant work it out you have to log on to their site and submit the claim. Idearc will then look it over and determine if it's a worthy claim. If it's a worthy claim Idearc will ask you to provide written estimates of the the work needed to correct your problem (labor costs only) OR elect to have a third party to inspect the problem you are experiencing. If Idearc determines that there’s nothing else they can do they will refund you up to $500 of the labor costs OR the lowest amount of labor costs from the two estimates you received. Essentially they will go with the lesser amount of the two.

Idearc has about six weeks from the time you submit your claim and do all the extra stuff they require to pay you the amount up to $500. BUT, if you correct the problem yourself or hire another company to correct problem before Idearc resolves the problem then you will be denied that amount up to $500. That’s right, you will have to live with the problem while Idearc works it out.

This is why Idearc’s Super Guarantee program is all show and no substance. It makes no sense and for all the work you have to do just to get $500 and to live with the problem for at least a month and half makes no sense. Why would anybody subject themselves to this? I can see this working on small issues and non-essential items but on serious matters like your roof, a leak coming through your ceiling, heat not working and etc you would be a fool to go to Idearc for help. In our meeting the rep did not mention one thing I said above except for the fact Idearc is spending $60M to let the America know! After Facebook’s fiasco last month on their “fine print” I make sure to actually read the Terms and Conditions and read it much more carefully.

It would be better for a person to pay with their credit card than to use this route. With the credit card companies you call them up say you have a problem and tell them you’re not satisfied with services rendered and they will open a claim and in the meantime refund you the money or freeze the purchase so you wont have to pay finance charges while the situation is worked out. Either the company will come back out and fix the problem or refund you the money. Yes, there a slight chance this could not work and you might have to pursue legal action but it's better than this Super Guarantee program. What makes the credit company methods more effective is that they have control over the business you have a problem with. For an example lets use Amex, if Amex feels the merchant is not cooperating with their cardholder they can go into that merchants bank account and refund that money back to their cardholder. I know, it has happened to me a couple times. It's not a good feeling but you always know they have that power. With Idearc what are they going to do? Nothing they have no control over the merchant. 

So when you see this $60M ad campaign by Idearc just remember the points I mentioned above and don’t believe the hype. Idearc knows less people are looking at their Super Pages book and they’re trying to do whatever they can do to gain those eyeballs back. Sadly people will hear this and go to their book and believe businesses advertised in the book are somehow better just because Idearc “backs” them. All they have to do is pay by credit card and they will have a faster course of action is anything goes wrong then to deal with this slow process offered by Idearc that only refunds you $500.

I just want to see a big company not be a big company and offer something that is actually worth something and not have so many bullet points in the terms and conditions that take away from the value of the product. I know this is America and it's how big business work but believe me the company that goes against the grain and offers a killer product is the one that will be embraced by their customers. This kind of stuff always reminds of the store that offers 5% off your next purchase when you spend some absurd amount.

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