Record Online Ad Spend & The Death of Yellow Pages Advertising
Yesterday afternoon as I filled up my coffee cup, a colleague said to me: "You won't believe what I was on my doorstep when I got home yesterday. Another phone book. For the third time this year!"
The conversation grew to include four people and I listened as each of them complained about the frequency of deliveries, the bulk of each new phone book, the complete waste of paper, etc. Soon, the conversation turned to our customers—insurance agents—and why many of them were still wasting money on Yellow Pages ads.
"We use the internet to find everything," one colleague said. "And who's going to pick a random insurance agent out of the phonebook and give them their business? Whenever I've moved, I've asked for agent referrals from friends and coworkers."
She's right. So why are insurance agents still dumping money into the Yellow Pages? As far as I can tell, it's out of habit. It's been done for years and years and, come on, it's not that expensive.
But how many businesspeople—especially small business owners—are cool with dumping money into poor-performing, zero ROI-bringing prospecting methods? Probably not many. And if Yellow Pages advertising falls into that category for you, you've got to ax it.
The fact of the matter is that web prospecting is where it's at. And we've got the facts to back this. On Monday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that online ad spend had hit a new high in Q3 of 2007—bringing total ad spend in the first nine months of the year to a whopping $15.2 billion.
Says an exec at IAB,
The continued robust growth of the industry indicates that marketers increasingly understand and appreciate the benefits of interactive advertising. Marketers large and small have come to accept digital media as the fulcrum of any marketing strategy.
But this probably isn't news to you. So the big question is: how can we help you better incorporate the web into your business/marketing practices? How can we address your pain points?
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Comments
I will totally agree with you here: We all smell death on the yellow pages. The salesmen that come into my office get pushier and pushier every year now their trying to push their website but their using it as an "add-on" not a "value-add". That being said I still take out a big ad in both our directories every year. WHY??? Because Everytime we take a quote from the phone or one that comes over our website we ask where they heard about us. Here are the stats:
15% Billboards
20% Referred
40% Frontier Pages
20% Yellowbook
5% Other or unknown
Posted by: Aaron Wallrich | November 14, 2007 03:01 PM
Aaron,
Kudos for keeping metrics on these ad avenues. Seriously.
How do those figures stack up against targeted online marketing and e-campaigns? Further, have you then measured the conversion rate of the above mentioned methods? Have you measured those against the conversion of targeted online marketing and e-campaigns?
I'm in no way suggesting that you (or anyone else) abandon traditional methods in favor of web-only practices—the insurance verticle is a crowded one.
I would just encourage agents expand their marketing toolboxes. For some reason "a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n roll" comes to mind. Which I apologize for. :)
Posted by: Megan | November 14, 2007 04:52 PM
Megan,
I dont measure the hit ratios for each avenue seperate [yet]. Just overall. I would surmise that referral would be the highest and yellowbook would be the lowest. The one i did measure seperatly was TV ads which is in that bottom 5% (2ish). Those hit ratios for sales/completed quote was over 80% - I wish I had Geicos budget =) Do you guys measure hit ratios based on user feedback? I really need to get into the SEO game but I figure thats what insureme is for =)
Posted by: Aaron Wallrich | November 14, 2007 05:16 PM