By now you have probably realized that having an ad in the local phonebook just isn’t worth the price anymore. With everything going digital and less people really wanting to fill up their cabinets with those big clunky phonebooks, more and more businesses are starting to shift their hard earned money into new directions other than the phonebook.
Here are some of my favorite places to shift your advertising and marketing budget to:
1. Onsite SEO: If your website is relatively small in nature there is a good possibility that you could be spending your money to just have your website optimized rather than paying for an expensive phonebook ad. If your website is under 50 pages large the cost could be significantly lower than the price of taking out a 12 month ad in the phonebook.
2. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC): If you really want to spend some advertising dollars you would be much better off doing it through Bing or Google. The probability of generating any phone calls from the phonebook is very slim, whereas the search engines could bring in nice volumes of traffic once the account has had time to mature.
3. Blog Writing: Have a blog installed on your website and start writing a few times per week in order to get some traction with articles. Depending on your industry, a blog could bring in very nice targeted traffic if you position the writing correctly.
4. Niche Advertising: Every niche out there usually has some sort of blogs surrounding it where you can purchase some ad space in order to be that much more visible in front of your target audience.
5. Social Media Marketing: Get involved in some targeted online discussions that are happening all around you on a daily basis. In today’s online market place it is all about joining the conversations that exist around us.
The days of advertising in the phonebook are slowly coming to an end as more and more people turn towards the search engines to find what they are looking for. Don’t waste your money paying for that large expensive ad when there are many other viable locations to list your business.
