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Phone Book Advertising: What Advertisers Needs to Know

Does Phone Book Advertising worth the effort?  The answer is Yes & No – depending on who your market targets are. Though older demographics, as well as people in rural areas, are still using their phone books to find local businesses, rarely will you see generation X, Y or Z going for phone books rather they pick their phone to find your business online.

Phone Book Advertising

This post will teach you how to calculate the ROI of your phonebook advertising and know if it worth the effort and as well outline the advantage and disadvantages of using phone book advertising.

Wouldn’t it be good to calculate how much your effort on phone book advertising is yielding?

If you are like me who don’t waste time investing in something that doesn’t bring an equivalent return. Then grab your calculator let’s do the MATH…

How to calculate ROI from Phone Book Advertising

You will see how many phone calls you’d need to breakthrough from one phone book ad

The Big MATH: what is the cost of your ad? Take it and divide it by your average sale.

Try and figure out how many phone calls it took you to make a sale.

Let’s do the practical, let’s say your total ad cost is $700 and your average sale is $150.

If it took you 30 phone calls to make one sale…

Here’s the mathematics; 700/150= 4.6

 4.6×30 = 140 people.

That means 140 people would have to call your business from a Yellow Pages ad in order for your phone book advertising to break even. 140 more calls (or one more sale) and you make a whopping $150

These numbers are made up – you’ll have to do the math for yourself and figure out if it’s worth it for your business to advertise in the phone book.

Advantages of Phone Book advertising

  • Finding local business through yellow pages are still in practice in some demographics
  • The phone directories are worth a $3 billion business
  • Big brands find it easier to make their way and put their businesses in the Yellow Pages

Disadvantages of Phone Book advertising

  • It’s a commitment to a one year plan
  • It’s difficult if not impossible to track your ROI.
  • It may not be profitable for your business to advertise in the Yellow Pages, though this depends on the ROI calculation method employed
  • Phonebook advertising is less effective in many demographics than online display advertising.
  • The conversion rate of Phonebook advertising is less than 1%
  • 70% of Americans don’t even open the phone book
  • 97% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses

Over To You

Advertising your business in the yellow pages still has its merit but more of demerits compared to digital marketing though sometimes depending on the demographics you want to reach. The numbers we have given you above should simply tell you that giving digital marketing a try is worth it. Digital marketing not only yield high ROI but can easily be tracked.