[Linds Russell]

I am meeting my Yell rep today and thought I would go armed with all my marketing stats.

In a nutshell, I've been paying £292 a month for the past year for a Yellow Pages (quarter page advert), Yell.com and 118 bundle and the return has been awful on the Yellow Pages advert and non existent on the 118 part. My Yell ads account for 60.5% of my marketing costs and only bring me 23% of my new customers or 6.3% of my total customers (Yellow Pages only counts for 2.7% of my total customers).

For those concerned with ROI figures, I made £1.29 for every £1 spent on combined Yell adverts. Split down further, the Yellow pages portion of this made a loss of over £1000.

Since the new smaller directory came out in December, I have had 3 jobs from it, so don't let the reps fool you into believing that the new book works better - it doesn't and I have a bigger ad than in the book last year.

Anyway, rant over. I'm off to practise my menacing glare and do some dumbell work outs so I look even more intimidating when I meet this poor chap 

Linds

[Colin Day]

I can't wait to find out how it went.....

[M.Acorn]

Yeah good luck in telling the to do one,more or less had to escort the bloke that came to me off the premises !!
Pulled out the book completely,and I have not noticed any drop in work,in fact I am probably busier since coming out.
Don't let them sell you a rubbish website either,wanted thousands off me for one,after telling me mine was rubbish....

[clinton]

Let us know the outcome..

Ye save the money mark to one side that you would have spent with them..

Linds maybe tell him you want a full page and then change yer mind

[Dean Cudd]

I have not advertised in the yellow pages for 3 years. I to sat down with the rep and showed her all my stats. I then showed her the door, funny thing is I still get calls and the odd jobs from the YP, and when I ask them to show me the book, they still have the old book from 4 years ago. Dean

[Linds Russell]

Well.....

I showed him my stats and he said he had never seen such detailed analysis from a small business owner (I track the source of all our work and regularly break it down to see what works). He then went on to tell me that I probably don't get very much work from yellow pages due to using an 0800 number and not a local area code. Once I told him I'd tried one of their numbers before with identical results, he soon shut up.

Anyway, he tried the same as Mark described - he ran an analytical report on my website, said it was just okay and that they could do better.

The special moment was at the end when I said "Thanks for your time. I have no intention of buying anything from you today". His face was a picture 

[Jamie Lindsay]

why did you go meet him lol

[Linds Russell]

To re-book Yell.com! He never even mentioned it and when I did, he just skipped past it. I'll probably just go direct now.

[markpowell]

YP has had its day mate
Mark

[Jamie Lindsay]

am only kiddin mate... yell.com and yell pages are bullshters

[richy27]

it will be a shame if the pages go served me very well oer the years











































best door stop out till it got so light

[M.Acorn]

best door stop out till it got so light

When I had my first rep meeting,I had to go find our book,which was propping up one of the legs on our bed.Don't think they had spirit levels in the 15th century,so our bedroom floor is a bit wonky

[clinton]

Good for leaning one of the bikes on here in the winter

The small pages just dont do the trick

[Dean Cudd]

When i first started out in 1996 the yellow pages was good but from about 2003, work has got less and less, due to the net. Dean   

[murky]

Talking of YP have you seen the size of the Thompsons recently you could get it into your back pocket.

Ours was on my desk under all the crud and only when I was clearing it did I find it. To be fair a lot of my opposition are in it, but its so titchy.

I suppose its a way of finding work but........................

Murky