There’s a study from Market Authority about Yellow Pages that is getting some attention on the blogs this week.
They claim from doing a phone survey of 15,000 people that the printed Yellow Pages are the single source for local lookup by 33% of consumers in metro areas and by 49% in rural areas. It gets even more unbelievable when they claim only 27% in metro areas use online exclusively and 9% in rural areas rely solely on the Internet for local lookup.
Tracking back to Market Authority it seems they have a business model that, in part helps Yellow Page sales people sell the printed Yellow Pages.
The comments on the Internet for the most part don’t believe the study and hypothesize that this must be skewed toward an older demographic. Market Authority didn’t share the demographic breakdown of respondents.
You always have to consider the source when you look at research and while this study is being universally panned, we should still remember that the printed Yellow Pages are still a player when it comes to local market advertising. Not anywhere near to what they were pre-Internet but a medium to be used.
That’s why your online marketing portal for your dealers should do both old and new media. So many offerings today are old and only do print or new and only do digital. You still need both.