So lately I have been discussing the many flaws that I believe are the case for using Dex Knows, Yellow Pages, Yellow Book, Super Pages, Reach Local or Yodle for local business advertising, but this one cuts the cake for me. They don’t use your website!
I am going to use an example in this blog, so you can see what I mean, but let’s discuss what a business owner would do once they have a website. This is simple. You want to brand yourself in your local area, and offer information to potential or current clients. Now how do you get traffic to your site? Well as most may know, there are 3 main search engines to use, Google AdWords marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter. With many local business owners trying to stay as lean as they can, most do not have the time to do their own advertising, so they hire a professional Internet marketing company to get traffic to their site. For as low as around $400 a month for management fees, you can’t hire an in-house individual.
Now all the R.H. Donnelley companies are out there like Dex Knows, Yellow Pages, Yellow Book, and Super Pages advertising on the TV, Internet, radio, and even call you on the phone, and with the phone books being so popular for years, people still flock to get service from them. That is fine as long as you understand what they are doing to you.
Let’s look at an example. Search on Google for Algonquin Illinois dentist. Many searches will come up, and it will change constantly, but let’s see if you can find this ad:
Overmyer Brian DDS
Need a dentist in Crystal Lake?
Help with all your dental needs!
www.overmyerbrianddsyp.com
This a Dex Knows ad, and you know that because they add yp or dex to the end of the url. Now, let’s go to the website they are promoting; www.overmyerbrianddsyp.com. Right off the bat you will notice this is a Dex Knows storefront page, because of the logo at the top left. I believe the storefront is great for people that do not have websites, because it does provide some good information, but it is not personable. Now in blue, there is a link for website, which is Dr. Overmyer’s real website that he paid for. Click on it and you will see that it goes to www.crystallake-familydentistry.com. A beautiful website that Dex Knows has decided not to use. Why? I don’t know. In fact once you leave Dex Knows you lose that storefront, and now you are back to a site that most likely has not gotten a lot of clicks, because they did not use that site. You pretty much wasted advertising dollars, and now may be soured on ppc bid management.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your online marketing with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization and pay per click management.