subject: Comparative Analysis: Local Search Marketing and Yellow Pages [print this page] Comparative Analysis: Local Search Marketing and Yellow Pages
Maybe you've read about articles comparing local search marketing and yellow pages. While both of them may be local marketing strategies, it's a little bit unfair to compare both of them. Obviously local search marketing has a lot of advantage compared to the other one and it's difficult to refute these advantages unless you're a hardcore yellow pages fan/believer for quite some time now.
But anyway, let's see why local search marketing has an advantage over yellow pages. Let's do this by doing an objective comparative analysis on both of them in terms of costs, features and accessibility.
Costs - Both marketing strategies could be labeled as very cheap methods to advertise locally however we could still have a point of comparison between them. Yellow pages subscription differs depending on the size of your advertisement. This means that the bigger your advertisement is, the bigger the charges are for the ad space you'll be using.
On the other hand, you don't have to spend a dime on a local search results subscription. Regardless of your rank after you've subscribed in it, search engines won't charge you anything. What's more if you're not on the number one spot and you're serious in going up the ladder, spending money for it is even optional.
In short, yellow pages lose in this aspect because of the financial freedom that local search marketing offers.
Features - A basic yellow page subscription includes your company name, address and contact numbers in the printing while big and expensive ad space subscriptions have pictures and options to add some additional info in it to depict what type of business you're in to. While this maybe appealing to the eye, spending more for another feature isn't really practical.
Local search results subscription on the other hand includes very powerful features like geo tagging that shows exactly on a detailed map where the business is in your locality. Take note, this feature comes for free.
Accessibility - This is where yellow pages could have a fight though. What's more accessible to you, is it a computer with an internet connection or the "big yellow book"? This is pretty subjective so you may call this one a tie. Although you'll have to agree with me that the internet is pretty accessible even with your phone, right?
