Several unrelated studies have come out recently trying to determine where consumers get information before going into a store to make a purchase. Billions of local advertising dollars are at stake as SMBs are looking for the best place to spend their precious advertising dollars and brand managers want to control their brand message locally.
Here’s what the Yellow Pages Association is reporting (YPA).
Not surprising results from the Yellow Pages Association, basically if you’re an SMB and read this you might decide that you have to advertise in both the printed yellow pages and the online yellow pages. That’s a win/win for the association’s members.
Unfortunately for the YPA, the choice isn’t between just two Yellow Page properties as search engines are a powerful force for the pre-buy consumer. As we referenced in a previous blog entry
The use of search engines far outpaces the Internet yellow pages for consumers looking for local information about products and services.
So what is a brand manager to do?
First, provide your dealers with single branded dealer sites where they can publish some local information but you control the content and can monitor the results. Get those sites listed in online yellow pages (it’s free). Tune those sites so they can be easily picked up by search engines so you don’t have to pay Google to be found. Provide online banner ad making tools so your dealers can build banner ads for placement online that land the consumer on the same single branded sites you control. Link to these single branded dealer sites from your dealer locator and provide dealers the tools and co-op money for running local Google ad campaigns where consumers land on these dealer sites.
In other words, control the local online consumer experience for a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to do this via traditional media.