[maxcarpets]

Evening all, I have invited my yp rep on to this forum, I would like him to read you views, so here's your chance. Be gentle !

Cheers

Justin 

[Fresh Clean]

***********!!!!!! yell pag ************** you! freshi

[*paul_moss]

Used them for 3 years and never made them pay. This year stopped them, no diff in business.

[*paul_moss]

Just to add I tried Yell this year and not one job.

[lands]

Revenge is one of the seven sins Justin....poor bloke this rep once the hounds unleash.

[lands]

Where are you based Justin

[spindle]

i have got an ad in yell an yp

since ........oct last yr......6 calls....2 jobs

still not enough to pay for my ad yet!!

will not use next yr

[clive]

Been advertising in there for 21 years. Depends where on the page it is to make it work. Did ok with it last year as the ad was on the top of the right hand page.
This year it is in a terrible place- top of left hand page second to last page of carpet cleaners despite being called Astra Clean. I do not expect to even break even where it is and will be complaining to my rep. Probably, due to the crxp place they have put me-and i stil dont understand how companies begining with M and S get in front of me-I will not advertise with them next year.

Clive

[Shaun_Ashmore]

I put a poll on C'talk if you go across you'll get some details for your rep.

Shaun

[Neil Williams]

Can't really put my finger on it, but this year (in conjunction with yell.com) has more than paid for each monthly installment.
We have reduced the advert size so that it doesn't look like we are going to charge the earth, when compared to the other half page adverts.
Thomsons got well and truly dumped this year after continuous losses against what we paid them.

[Mark Lane-Matthews]

Yellow pages and yell have been a complete waste of money for me for the last 2 years ,which  cost me 5 grand.Will only be doing a basic listing from now on for reference purposes .Harlow,Essex.

                                                    Mark

 

 

[Phil Marlor]

Absolute crap, be lucky to even get half my money back this year, as Clive says, unless your at the front it wont work!

Also the new sponsord listing on yell.com which stays at the top all the time is a complete rip off, when the rep called he never mentioned this, in previous years the company at the top alternated every time a customer logged on.

I would never trust Yell or their reps.

WARNING! Spend your money on something else like Google or do leaflets the way Mike Haliday does them.

Phil

[Ken Wainwright]

As an NCCA Member, I use the Corporate Advertising facility from Yellow Pages. Two directories £114.00. Don't get many calls from it, but those that I get are not price shoppers.  The ads probably give a return of about 500% +/- a bit.  Works for me.

I feel that, despite the growth of the internet, my Y/P presence is most valuable when existing customers have lost my card/invoice/phone number and they want to seek me out.  They let their fingers do the walking

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[Shaun_Ashmore]

£114 x 500% = £570 so the return in cash I think we would have all gone bust!

not everyone has no morgage like you Ken

When I went in my local YP with the corporate NCCA bit when I was a memeber I got price shoppers, you will always get price shoppers they are the ones that ring EVERY number to compare prices it's how they work.

Shaun

[Ken Wainwright]

As I said Shaun, I don't get many calls and even if it had a negative return I would still do it because of the existing customer scenario I described. For this reason, I regard Y/P as being a necessary evil. It swallows up more than half my annual advertising budget

It's strange, but I don't advertise in Thomsons at all, just my free listing, but over the last year or so I've been getting more calls from that source. Mainly price shoppers with a poor conversion rate.

Safe and happy advertising
Ken

[maxcarpets]

Great comments guys, please keep them sensible .

[John Kelly]

Do you reckon your YP rep's even bothered to look. He has a job to do and earn his commision. I doubt he gives a toss about what we think. Yellow Pages is as thick as ever so there are plenty of people out there willing to hand over their money.

[markpowell]

You need to ask to have the small 6 A's put in the botom corner of your ad to get to the front, reps wont offer this you need to ask, this will get you to the front of the section no matter what initial your company has.
Mark

[Joe H]

If a business has to start with A to get to the front, thats why there are silly names like Aardvark.
If every one does that then one would have to go to Aaardvark, then Aaardvark and so on.
Gets silly.
One of the directories, forget which one but either YP, Thomsons or Bt Phone Book, told me they are going over to size (obviously size matters-pay more-get better treatment) and length of time a business has been a loyal customer.
That seems sensible to me - then we can all keep our names - like Extracare Carpet Cleaning

Joe H

[Ahtisham_h]

Just to let you know I work for YP in Sales and will be following the progress of this post over the next few weeks.

Please note the positioning policy for YP is not based on size and purely on your  company name that YOU supply us. YES, we allow 6 A's for those people who request this.

There are only 2 slots available for top listing on Yell.com per directory and maybe the reason why you have not been offered this.

YP is still one of the cheapest mediums to advertise in when you look at cost per 000's. For example, the Reading directory alone goes out to 191,000 households and businesses. How much would it cost you to distribute leaflets to an equivalent area?