December 10, 2009 — Posted by Anita Hamilton

Yellowpages Advertising vs PPC Internet Advertising

Every year in November/December, the new Hamilton and area phonebooks are distributed.  Although our building here in Dundas has a total of 5 phone lines in the building – we had 14 phonebooks  dropped at our door.

12 of these phonebooks went immediately into the blue box for recycling. Carbon footprint, anyone?

Since advertising rates are typically based on distribution numbers, this example (and I know we’re not the only ones this happens to) illustrates how yellowpage advertising distribution numbers can be very over-inflated.

Many small businesses pay thousands of dollars a month/year for their yellowpage advertising, especially if they want their ad to appear in different directories. This cost can be astronomical when you calculate how much they are paying a year.  All that money and they can’t even measure how many people actually see their ad (or if they just flip the page vs reading the ad content).

Compare this to PPC (Pay Per Click) Internet Advertising…you don’t pay at all for people to see your ads, even it they are presented hundreds of times on the search results page (to your target audience, people that are searching for the key words that represent your business offering). You can target as many geographic areas as you want, without paying extra.

You only pay for a PPC ad, if someone from your target audience who is interested in the services you are offering (your targeted keywords) actually clicks on the ad and goes to your website.  Now that, is pay for performance advertising.

If you would like more information about PPC and how it works, contact us and we’ll fill in the blanks for you.