Let Your Fingers Do the Walking…At the Keyboard, Not the Yellow Pages

Not sure how many folks remember a tagline for one of the Yellow Pages books – “Let your fingers do the walking….” Seems that our fingers are doing just that, walking right out of the Yellow Pages and over to the computer keyboard.  Or at least, that seems to be the trend as first this earlier post and now this article, Still the Gold Standard? (ABA e-report, 1/27/06) question whether yellow pages ads are still worth the money  – especially, now that the cost of ads is increasing:

Now that lawyers have a variety of options for getting their information out, it would stand to reason that Yellow Pages advertising rates would drop, right? Wrong. Because the Yellow Pages has a high level of overhead due to distribution, rates have in fact skyrocketed, says Charles Laughlin, vice president and program director at the Kelsey Group, a Princeton, N.J., firm that analyzes trends in the Yellow Pages, electronic directories and local media.

Results, however, have not risen in conjunction with rates, and experts say that reason alone should persuade lawyers to reallocate their ad dollars. But what’s the best alternative outlet? It often depends on whom you talk to.

There’s nothing in the article that gives any reason, from what I can tell, for continuing to advertise in the Yellow Pages.  Perhaps the best thing the article has to conclude about Yellow Pages is that you might be able to negotiate more favorable rates.  But Yellow Page ads will have to come down significantly in price and generate far better return to compete with these kinds of results.