When was the last time you used a real phone book? And I mean more than just a booster seat for your three-year-old niece. When she needed a phone number or address, she probably went directly to her computer, instead of looking in the phone book.
The truth of the matter is that the Internet is gradually replacing the phone book as the nation’s primary directory for service providers, phone numbers, and addresses. Between website mapping and search engines, it’s usually faster and easier to get information from the internet.
That’s where local online advertising comes in: while there are yellow pages on the internet, all they tend to give you is a long list of indistinguishable entries, not much help when your sewer pipe just burst and you’re looking for a sewer. . expert blowjob Also, few people use online phone books: they prefer to “Google” things. (Have you ever heard someone use “yellow page” as a verb? I didn’t think so.) The point is that local online advertising is much more relevant than an IYP because people want to search and find websites relevant to their needs, not another list they have to go through. That’s why local online advertising essentially serves as today’s phone book in terms of connecting businesses with customers: By using specific language, websites can be optimized for service and location. Which means, for example, that when you search for “broken fridge in Boston” you’re connected to an appliance repair company in Boston.
No more flipping through those flimsy pages and squinting at the tiny print: local online advertising is more efficient, and since the web space is virtually unlimited, customers get much more information than the 2 x 3 box inches provided by the phone book. Even better, as a business, your ROI is trackable – with online advertising you get hard data, including the number of visitors to your website and calls received. Phone book companies can cite statistics all day, but their numbers are based on distribution, and books delivered don’t mean books read: A large percentage of phone books end up in a landfill or in a heap in the sewer.
Of course, advertising local businesses online has some minor complications. With local online advertising, you have to keep in mind that instead of 3 dry cleaner pages, you get six million hits. That is why SEO – search engine optimization – is important in this type of advertising. The more specific keywords, both for the services provided and for the location, used on the website, the more effective it will be.
Now is the best time to get involved in online advertising, because the use of the phone book is decreasing every day. As Bill Gates, an expert at Microsoft, said, “The use of the Yellow Pages among people, for example, under 50 years of age, will be reduced to zero, almost zero, in the next five years.” And while local online advertising is the way of the future, it’s also the way of today. Thousands of local small businesses are connected to customers every day through the Internet. Whether they’ve developed their marketing strategy independently or with the help of an SEO provider like Prospect Genius, online advertising is getting them business. As phone book usage continues to decline, businesses that went online at the forefront will already be established on the Web and will benefit even more.
Internet is the best tool today to connect local service providers and businesses with potential customers. Some commercial providers may think the phone book works for them since they still receive calls, but at least 60% of people use the Internet to look up local services, not the phone book. Sure, you’ll still get the occasional call, but that’s only 40% of the population. Imagine how many more customers you would get if you tapped into people looking for business online!
And while phone books may generate a small amount of business today, they won’t forever. The number of phone book readers is decreasing every day and will eventually disappear. If you don’t expand to local online advertising, your business will stop receiving calls… As the phone book dies out, the Web becomes an increasingly important advertising medium. Because, frankly, as Paul Collins so humorously put it in Slate magazine: “Ask anyone under 30 about phone books, though, and you might as well ask about Victrola needles.”
