Yellowpages.com/google/yahoo

Bowsherb

I'm starting a marketing campaign and looking for a good place to put my dollars. Yellowpages.com said they would put my company into the search results for these search engines msn/yahoo/google/ and of course yellowpages.com. I would think this would be a powerful form of advert. If your currently using something like this, how has it worked for you?

Thanks in advance for the input!


Brad

silvertree

Keep in mind, anything you look at will have the salespeople telling you what they are selling works. Most of us use a combination of marketing venues. Anything that says Yellow Pages will have a million customers all being promised top results.
Take your time Grasshopper.

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orson

Bowsherb,

Yellowpages.com (AT&T) will give you a guarenteed number of clicks to your website for a set price per month.

They tell you they accomplish this by running Google Adwords and Yahoo Adwords campaigns to get you the clicks.

This is a somewhat disingenuous statement because at least a portion of the clicks they are getting you are coming from their website rather than from an ad directly promoting your website.

Have you considered doing your own adwords campaign?

Of course, depending on who you talk to, for instance the local yellowbook salesman in my area, if you are not Google Adwords certified you are just wasting your money on adwords. I'm not sure I believe that, but what do I know.

If you have a decent sized budget and don't want to invest the time to do the adwords yourself consider hiring an internet marketing company to manage your adwords campaign. They usually charge a percentage of your ad budget to manage your account, usually in the neighborhood of 10 to 20% once you are up and running.

Whatever you decide to do just realize that depending on what market you are in you may have to spend a significant ad budget(many companies that manage local adwords accounts will not do less than a $600/month plus budget, many recomend over a thousand) to generate tangible results from adwords campaigns.

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DamionR

Long Time - No Posts From Me! Maybe We'll Change That....

There are several factors you have to know about before you can determine if this will be good for you. It basically boils down to two options:

Option #1

You say "I don't want to work at figuring this out. I'll just spend my money and hope it works out"


Option #2

You say "I'm going to calculate some numbers before I make a decision"

Here's a quick checklist to consider to do this:

1. Where will your ads be placed (google/yahoo/etc.)
2. What keywords will my ad display for
3. Do these keyword get searches (search for "google keyword tool" to find a tool that shows you the number of times a keyword was searched for on Google)
4. How are you paying:
   1. If it's per click - you'll want to know what their mark-up is.. know your stats from #'s 6-8, and determine if its worth their charge to get the service, or to do it yourself.
   2. If it's a flat monthly rate - you have to know how many clicks you will get, if there is a cap, and what percentage of the monthly rate goes to them.
5. Now you have ads running, and you're getting visitors to your site. You have to know what percentage of these visitors turn into leads for you.
6. You have to know what percentage of your leads turn into sales for you.
7. You have to know what your average sale is.
8. You have to know what you want your marketing budget to be at.

Once you have this data, you can work the numbers backwards and know if the advertising option will work for you.

Let's say you're average sale is $10,000, and you want to keep your marketing budget at 10% or less.

That means, you are willing to invest $1000, to make a $10,000 sale (10%)

For simplicities sake, let's say you close 1 out of every 10 leads.

At this rate, you can invest (at most) $100 per lead. $100 per lead X 10 leads = $1000. 10 leads gives you you're one sale.

So now...

We need to know what percentage of visitors to your site turn into leads.

Let's say its 1%.

Using the above numbers, you can afford to spend (at most) $1 per visitor to your site.

1000 visitors X $1 per visitor = $1000 spent. 1000 visitors X 1% conversion rate = 10 leads. 10 leads = 1 sale.

From here - you can make your decision. If the traffic costs more than $1 per click, you will not hit your goals.

If they charge a flat rate (let's say $1000 per month)... you need to know they can deliver, at a minimum, 1000 visitors to your site.

Long-winded post - but hope it helps out!

Damion

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THINKPAINTING

I would not give them a dime..........if you dont want to do the adwords yourself contact a marketing company.