Online Yellow Pages Scam?

Can a Yellow Pages Search Engine marketing program be considered an online yellow pages scam?

• If you are dealing with the major Yellow Pages Company in your region they may have a good program for advertising on their Internet Yellow Pages. The official “Phone Company” Internet Yellow Pages usually has decent usage, and may provide a good return on investment. Verizon typically has decent usage outside of their region because of their wireless brand that is known everywhere.
  
  
• You may have a good relationship with your rep if you have had the same rep for years. You probably trust them and they probably want to do what’s best for your business. Of course the turnover in the yellow pages industry sales reps is higher than ever, and the reps are becoming less and less experienced.
  

• Yellow Pages reps are under a lot of pressure to sell you as much advertising as they can-whether or not it is good for your business. This may result in them overselling their Internet Yellow Pages. They are also using the Internet to help them keep you in the print yellow pages. They try to package it all together so you think you are getting a great deal.
  
  
• Yellow Pages advertising does have merit in some cases, and some businesses do profit from Yellow Pages advertising, but usage is declining and the return on investment is not as good as it used to be-most often nowhere near as good as a sound Internet Marketing Strategy.
  
  
• Even if the rep has your best interests in mind, the experienced yellow pages rep rarely understands what the best Search Engine Marketing solution should be for your business. If they did, they probably would not sell you the Search Engine Marketing products their company offers. You may want to consider utilizing them for their online Yellow Pages, but you are probably better off utilizing an Internet Marketing Company to help you succeed with the search engines like Google, Yahoo! & MSN. Typically an SEO or PPC program will have better results than an online yellow pages campaign, but online yellow pages can be a good way to get exposure for your business. You have to know how to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of online yellow pages, and track conversions. We can help you weigh your options.
  
  
• If they are NOT from the official phone company phone book then their Internet Yellow Pages is probably close to worthless. The exception may be Verizon's superpages.com or yellowpages.com.
  
  
• Be careful of any Search Engine Marketing program they try to sell you. The Yellow Pages companies are usually not completely “transparent” with where your clicks are coming from, and they may charge you as much as a 2,000% mark up (yes-TWO THOUSAND) on your Pay-Per-Click program to manage it for you. This can eliminate the potential return on investment that a program like this COULD be providing your business.
  
  
• Some of their Website development programs can seem like a good deal, but because they are usually reselling someone else’s service the monthly fees can be significantly overpriced. Their websites are usually packaged with marketing programs that are often over-priced. While often times a package deal sounds good, in this case it may be more costly than if you were to buy them separately.

• Pay based on results: We have heard of one attorney that agreed to a certain number of calls per month utilizing a call tracking number, and when the calls did not come in, the attorney only paid the agreed upon 30% of his bill for receiving only 30% of the calls.
• Cancel you big ad, and they will come back to you with a very low offer. We have seen as much as 75% off of the listed price being offered to an attorney when they cancelled their ad.

Testimonials

• We are very proud of these actual customer testimonials, and we can provide customer references upon request...

• "For the $500 a month we spend in Internet marketing with Integrity Internet Consulting we generate over $10,000 in monthly revenue - plus residual revenue."

  - Local Denver Service Business

• "As a Denver architect I was surprised to see how many new clients I receive from my online marketing. I want to expand my Internet marketing presence with Integrity, but first I need to hire more people to handle our growth!"

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• Integrity manages my Pay-Per-Click program for the USA, the UK and Australia. We invest over $10,000 a month in our marketing and recieve over $100,000 every month in sales.

  We have now begun to implement a Search Engine Optimization program for a fraction of the PPC investment and are very excited to see the results!

  -International Retailer