Yell.com & 118 Advertising

[Andyuk2007]

Hey folks, today I was contacted by a representive from yell.com who explained the beneficts of advertising my business to show on the yell.com website, He also spoke about advertising on the new 118 service aswell.

I forgot half the stuff he said about the service, Do any of you use yell.com or the 118 to advertise your business ? I see that simmy is on yell.com, I really want to know if it works for you or not.

thanks

[seedubya]

I've used the equivalent over here and found it very ineffective.

[Fixedathome.com]

Hey folks, today I was contacted by a representive from yell.com who explained the beneficts of advertising my business to show on the yell.com website, He also spoke about advertising on the new 118 service aswell.

I forgot half the stuff he said about the service, Do any of you use yell.com or the 118 to advertise your business ? I see that simmy is on yell.com, I really want to know if it works for you or not.

thanks

Hey Andy,

Being as I'm not too far away from you (Nottingham) I thought I'd chip in with my experiences with Yell.

Firstly the 118 service.
I did it last year for a year and it was absolutely rubbish. I think I only had a couple of jobs from it in the whole year.

The Yell.com website.
I've get a bit more work from this. However last year I was talked into having a sponsored link on it. Basically if anybody searches for computer in Nottingham I come out at the top of the computer maintenance listings. As you can imagine this was quite expensive. Was it worth it? No. I've not noticed any improvement in the amount of customer contact I get from Yell.com website. So I will be going back to the standard £110 listing this year.

Finally the Yellow Pages book.
I've been in here since I first setup 3 years ago and it has been fantastic. I would probably say that 75% of my work comes from here. But.....

For the first 2 years I was in the Nottingham book. Last year I decided to put the same ad in the Derby book as well as Nottingham expecting to get a similar response from it. How wrong could I be. I think I'm averaging about 2 calls a month from Derby as opposed to 10-20 a week from the Nottingham book. There is no obvious reason I can see for this. Location wise I am on the Nottingham Derby border. The only thing I can think of is the Forest-Derby rivalry and Derby folk seeing a Nottingham phone number :rolleyes:

In a nutshell then I would say it is probably worth having a go with Yell.com website. Don't touch 118 with a smelly stick and have a crack at the Yellow Pages when it comes out.

Hope this helps!

[jj2000]

andy
these prats have been chasing me for weeks,i say prats as we already advertised in their book and online and they did not even know.He then had the audacity and downright bloody cheek to tell me i did not know how to run my business so he got the "old both barrel" treatment needless to say we will not be advertising with them again, for what it was worth it did not gain us anymore custom either.
We are know being chased by a company who want to sell us space on yahoo.co.uk but at the moment i cannot be bothered dealing with these people.Just a heads up as these are quite persistant and do not want to take no for an answer.

[Andyuk2007]

Hey Andy,

Being as I'm not too far away from you (Nottingham) I thought I'd chip in with my experiences with Yell.

Firstly the 118 service.
I did it last year for a year and it was absolutely rubbish. I think I only had a couple of jobs from it in the whole year.

The Yell.com website.
I've get a bit more work from this. However last year I was talked into having a sponsored link on it. Basically if anybody searches for computer in Nottingham I come out at the top of the computer maintenance listings. As you can imagine this was quite expensive. Was it worth it? No. I've not noticed any improvement in the amount of customer contact I get from Yell.com website. So I will be going back to the standard £110 listing this year.

Finally the Yellow Pages book.
I've been in here since I first setup 3 years ago and it has been fantastic. I would probably say that 75% of my work comes from here. But.....

For the first 2 years I was in the Nottingham book. Last year I decided to put the same ad in the Derby book as well as Nottingham expecting to get a similar response from it. How wrong could I be. I think I'm averaging about 2 calls a month from Derby as opposed to 10-20 a week from the Nottingham book. There is no obvious reason I can see for this. Location wise I am on the Nottingham Derby border. The only thing I can think of is the Forest-Derby rivalry and Derby folk seeing a Nottingham phone number :rolleyes:

In a nutshell then I would say it is probably worth having a go with Yell.com website. Don't touch 118 with a smelly stick and have a crack at the Yellow Pages when it comes out.

Hope this helps!

Hi there, sounds like i wont bother with the 118 service as i thought it sounded a bit crap when the guy was talking about it, I might go ahead with placing an advert in the yellow pages and maybe yell.com, Btw what size advert do you use for the yellow pages and how do i go about getting an advert in the book ?

Thanks :D

[Fixedathome.com]

My adverts are double quarter column which is 5" x 2 1/2" although the first year of advertising I just had a quarter column and that worked well.

If you are interested in placing an ad in the book go to http://www.yelldirect.com/yellowpages/home.html

[ngillard]

If my experience is anything to go by I would not touch them with a barge pole. They signed me up but the service went live, it just did not work as it should (won't go into that now as it's complex but suffice as to say that their search engine logic sucks!). I discussed this several times on the phone but no-one ever got back to me. I refused to pay the initial invoice as it had never worked and I had requested it cancelled almost as soon as it went live but they refused to cancel the contract and got a debt collection agency onto me! Nice one Yell! Great way to get a good reputation. This debt agency was actually very reasonable and when I detailed the case in great length to them by letter, they said they would get back to Yell and I never heard from them again. Some months later I then get a letter from a different debt agency announcing they are proceeding with court proceedings. In all my days in business I have never dealt with a company as heavy handed and threatening as yell.com. I'm sure many people are lucky and never have the need to cross them but I can only offer my caution to look at other alternatives. Whatever they say, Google utterly dominates the internet search market and I would always suggest putting advertising budget there. Unlike Yell.com with Google you only pay for results!

[SOHO-NZ]

Over here in NZ, it seems as if people hardly ever use the Yellowpages book anymore. I get better results from the Yellow pages website. - that said, I agree that Google is the most cost effective advertising.

[Tesla]

I'm on yell.com. ROI is dreadful. Currently sitting on a negative investment. Can't get worse than that.

[SavellM]

Fixedathome.com what is in your ad in the Yell Book?

Im also interested in this.

But dont quite know what to put in my ad...