Yell.com Worth paying for??

[craigfda]

Hi,

Just had Yell.com on the phone for about an hour, promising me the world if I choose to pay for their priority listing. It's working out about £190 pcm and guarantees top listing on their website for two areas & also top page of Google. Has anyone else paid for the privilege and is it at all worth it??

Thanks!

[Ricky]

Absolutely Not. I only pay about £49 for web presence only I don't go in the book it's not worth the money

[Graysalchemy]

I agree it's a lot of money to get back.

[craigfda]

Absolutely Not. I only pay about £49 for web presence only I don't go in the book it's not worth the money

Aye, seems a lot to be committing to; especially as I'm a relatively new business. It's not for a "web presence" really, just a guaranteed listing at the top of Google searches in the local area, and a guaranteed top listing in Yell's own website. You can be listed for free in their web directory.

I agree it's a lot of money to get back.

Cheers for the replies, folks

[pramsay13]

I have a free yell.com listing. I have put in all the info along with photos and videos etc and have had a few people leave reviews.
There are a number of sponsored listings show above mine, but I'm always fairly high up and it stands out because of the content.
http://www.yell.com/ucs/UcsSearchAction ... tlo_recent
I'm showing up third here but I'm the only one on the page with any reviews, so I think that makes it attractive.

[craigfda]

Was kind of assuming that it might be possible to get a higher listing without forking out a fortune and that confirms it for me. Cheers mate!

[craigfda]

Do you reckon you get much business off of Yell, btw? I know you have a really strong presence elsewhere on social media etc.

[Jamesnkr]

Nobody uses Yell, do they?

Make sure you have a Google Plus account. Nobody uses it, but Google promotes the web hits. (memo to self: set one up.)

[Graysalchemy]

Yes if you post to your google plus account and have back links to your website then this will supposidly help. I have a blog page which I should put posts about recent work then tweet, facebook and google plus them with links back to the main article. I use hootesuite as well you only have to type once and post to all your social feeds.

[prospero]

Advertising is a two-edged sword.

The benefits depend a lot on the nature of your business. I frequently get sales calls offering me the chance to "attract more business" - but, it's no use attracting more business if you don't have the capacity to cope with it. If it's picture framing that you mainly do, that is mostly labour you are selling. Sure, you can hire more staff but do you have the space? I frequently get sales calls offering advertising to increase my sales. I can only do so much so why pay though the nose to get work which I can't do. Another thing is, if you do a lot of advertising you will get a lot of calls from other people offer more advertising to get more sales. So you can't get your work done because you are on the phone all day explaining to people that you don't want more work because you haven't time to do it because you keep getting interrupted by phone calls.

[Steve N]

What's the use of getting to the top of the page one on Google, only to be taken to Yells page, then you have to click again to be sent to your page , puntters don't like it, most will go for the organic pages that link to the business's website

That is a lot of money for a directory, you would be better off spending half that amount a month on Google Adwords

[pramsay13]

I get one or two customers every month specifically saying they got details on yell.com. Same with facebook, same with google.
I get an email from yell.com saying how many times my listing is shown. Last month it was 59.
I spent a while going through all the free listing pages and putting on a range of photos, videos if I could, extra details, etc and would say that is definitely worth it.
Main source of customer referral is and always has been word of mouth. Unfortunately you can't buy this, you just have to make sure you are good.

[Ricky]

I've just checked Stats for my Business My initial costing figures for Yell Package were £510 per annum for book & web
I now pay £168 per annum for web only, my stats for this year to date are 1,500 clicks 480 click thru's & 20 answered calls
I don't think that too bad.

[Jamesnkr]

£168 for 20 phone calls to end of May, suggests each lead is about £4. That's assuming they're new leads, rather than old customers just looking for you which Google would do anyway.
How many of the leads turn into work?
Is one lead per week a good return?

You seem happy enough.

[Ricky]

you can analyse Statistics in so many different ways, the 20 calls I got were direct from yell and I would say that most of the calls were from in & around my local area, my calls usually consist of: Item description, how long will it take, and whens the best time to bring it in, so out of those 20 calls I'll of probably got over 50%
however what interests me most are 1500 clicks 480 click thru's to my own website, you can't really tell how many of those are going to get in touch at a later date.
the initial question was is it worth £194 pcm to advertise with yell, my answer is still no way, but at the end of the day you pays your money and takes you chance

[craigfda]

Thanks to everyone for providing such useful information. This has certainly given me new ideas about promoting my business and probably saved me a lot of cash, too!!

Cheers

[petersframing]

As with all advertising you need to know where your customers are being are finding you .
Some areas of yell are cheaper than others so explore these.
You may find that the cheaper areas actually attract contact more customers.
I have not put ad in the yellow pages this year and have not noticed any drop off here.Good Luck

[Smiffy]

We paid for Yell when we first set up a couple of years back, £50 per month inc VAT.

I can honestly say that we didn't get ONE ORDER from it.

Needless to say, it was cancelled at the earliest opportunity!

[Kwik Picture Framing]

We cancelled both yell.com and the book waste of money, best is google place for local trade