Death of the Phonebook

A friend come by the other day to tell me about a recent skiing trip she took, and her brush with frostbite.

As we were talking, she showed me her frostbitten fingers, and told me that the Canadian doctors were more into naturaopathic methods for healing frostbite, and told her to find a specific (and dangerous) mushroom, that is used to treat frostbite.

It just happened that I turned off the computer, so I grabbed the ‘yellow’ phone book to look up a number. First, I looked under naturopathic medicine, homeotherapy, and a few other categories. Only one number showed up on the list. We called and the number was disconnected.

I pulled a second (‘black’) phone book out, did a similar search. Again, we found one number, dialed it, and it was disconnected.

We tried 2 more books (Dex and Quest), and at this point, we did find 2 more listings, one of the numbers was bad, the one was good, but the address listed for the offices had changed.

I got a bit frustrated with this whole process that took nearly 15 minutes. I turned on the laptop, brought up Google, typed in my town name, the herb name, the words frostbite and doctor.

On the first try a listing came up with 5 Doctors, their numbers, their websites and their current addresses.

After finding what I was looking for on Google with one quick search, out of curiosity, I went back to the phone books to see if I could find the Doctors that Google listed.

I found all of them in the phonebooks, but not all phone books had the same categories. 2 were in the general physician guide, 1 was under Health FOods, one was under alternate medicine, and the last was under Physicians:naturopathic.

Case in point. If you do list in a phonebook, you don’t always get a choice on what category that you are listed in, and you have to pay to be in 4 seperate books to get in all categories. Not everyone has all 4 phone books (I am a consultant, that is why I have them)

People rarely use phonebooks anymore. They use search engines and mobile phones.

So let me ask you this – why would anyone pay for a listing if you gan’t get in a category no one can find?

I have been helping a few businesses determine their marketing budget for the next year. To my amasement, All of my clients intended to purchase ads in the phonebooks, costing up to $2000 each.

I asked them all why? They all said because we do every year. Then I asked if they knew how many people actually found them in the phonebook, and if their money was spent wisely and could be tracked.

Not one client could say how many clients read the book. But they all could tell me that they know how many email and website referrals they have received since I helped them with tracking them.

And consdering that All of their new customers were refered by email, search engines and so forth, its reasonable to assume that the 2k spent was a complete waste. One client did say that they had several calls from potential customers that found them in the phonebook, so I asked how many of those customers ‘bought’ anything? None. zip. nadda.

So – if spending $2000 to get a few calls that don’t turn in to sales is your thing, then have at it.

you would get exposure if you bought billboard space for the local pee-wee or highschool softball league. At least your name would be on the outfield fence for the whole season where people could see it.

What could 2k do for your marketing?

It could buy a software program for you to manage your email marketing campaigns

it could buy you a couple of radio spots perhaps, or a couple of ads in the newspaper, blinking your company jingle

it could buy you 3 months on a billboard on the freeway or some building downtown,

it could buy you a lighted doohickey to stick on your car or van, that sits in a parkinglot somewhere,

or it could buy you some professional copy from a copywriter that can create a sales letter that could bring in new customers, or get current and past customers to re-purchase from you.