Has the web page replaced your yellow page?

I had several discussions about customer acquisition; many bring up the days of the yellow page ad. While expensive many believe they were more effective then the web page just because of the vastness of the worldwide web- Many small business' don't even have a website and use other means of acquiring customers. Others strictly depend on their web traffic to generate business. What say you?

On a side note I think it would be great to see some of your websites- either with links or images of your home pages.

Most definitly

I've always used a few different means of generating leads but for many years my yellow page ad generated the most "new" leads by far. Not true anymore. The internet has now taken that spot. I agree that the cost and tactics of the yellow page reps is suspect at best.

It's ironic that you posted this today because just last night I spent a couple hours reading up on the internet about marketing a contracting business. Most of the sites I visited had a short list of the best methods. Yellow Pages were not mentioned in ANY of these lists.

Believe it or not I used to design YP ads while working my way thru college. I worked directly for the sales reps which earned six figures and that was always my question, "Did you ask them what their marketing position is, or what separates them from their competitors?" Most never cared just wanted something that look good and would sell the ad to their customer.

If you remember, once you signed that AD contract it was tied to your phone number and you could not cancel.

YP salespeople have been pushing their webpages and talking to us about SEO. They told me to post on facebook all the time and whatknot. They also said that they were the reason our business comes up first on Google maps. Not sure about that one.

We moved up to a 3/4 page ad in the superpages because of a sweet deal they threw us around '09. Now because of the "huge" discounts it provides on our other ads, if we drop back down to 1/2 or 1/3 page we will be paying same or more. Gotcha! :angry:

My business phone number has been 'unlisted' since the 80's. Referrals and website only here.