Yellow Pages – The ancient relic of a previous technological era.
When I was a kid we had this thing that we used when we needed to find a phone number or address of a person or business. If my 32 year old memory serves me well, I do recall it being called a phone book. My kids will know this same process as Google.
In working with my new friend, Joel Nielsen of MediaShark Online Marketing and SEO, it has come to my attention that even in this age of iPhones, Android and the internet, people do still use the Yellow Pages (or whatever brand is relevant to your geographic location). Not only do they still use it, companies pay big money to be listed in there as well. One client we are working with says he pays $2,000 per month for a 3/4 page ad.
We are offering a more proactive online marketing strategy and SEO package for 1/4 of that cost.
So today I decided to try to hunt down a copy of this money-pit of a book to see who else is spending huge money to sit on the pages of an outdated medium that serves little more than to keep the tree population under control.
Before I even get to the contents of such a book, I want to tell you about the hunt for it as I’m sure that was much more exciting than actually reading a phone book.
About 2 months ago, I threw a copy of the Yellow Pages away that had been left on my doorstep. I was even annoyed that they had left it there. I probably mumbled something along the lines of “Who even uses this anymore?” to my wife as we mocked the clinging to technologically outdated processes to make a buck.
Today I found myself with little to do as I am all caught up on my web design projects. So I decided to follow Joel’s lead and try to find more business from the Yellow Pages. It seems like an easy sell.
I started my quest to obtain one of these books by going to their website. (Imagine that!) I found 2 local places where I could pick one up. I went to the first address on the site and it was a bank that apparently used to house the local Chamber of Commerce. The bank employee I inquired to about my goal chuckled and said that the Chamber had not been in that building for years and that he did not know where to find a copy of the Yellow Pages.
So I set out the the second location that was listed as a pick up point on the web site. This location was listed as what I knew to be a mom and pop type book store. Upon arriving there and asking about the availability of the Yellow Pages at that location, I was told that they were all out and expected to have another shipment next month. Now maybe in the old hay-day of the Yellow Pages, this would have been acceptable. In today’s terms, just having to drive across town was too much of a wait for something I want.
I eventually found the proper address for the Chamber (thanks to my iPhone and Google) and obtained my very own copy of the Yellow Pages. Here it sits. Waiting for me to pillage all of the potential work contained within it’s crusty and ancient pages.
As I write this, Joel just popped on Skype and I sent him a photo I took of my new copy of the book to prove that he is not the only rare book collector around.