Alberta Marketing Strategy Magazine

For years they were considered the ‘lifeline’ for businesses to reach potential customers. Up until five years ago I would have considered that a true statement. (It could be because that was the last time I knew where my phone book was!)

Today, I find it hard to recommend to any of my clients that they stay in the yellow papers. The only reason I don’t tell them to pull out all together is a lingering fear that maybe telephone directories still work. But, I dismiss that fear as an irrational attachment to history. Before the Internet came along, we all used a telephone business directory of some sort. Please read that again, BEFORE THE INTERNET ....

According to my clients, every year the cost of a telephone directory ad seems to go up, yet, fewer people actually use them. The decline in use closely mirrors the adoption of broadband internet service. With that, a large portion of young adults and business buyers NEVER consult the Yellow PagesTM at all – and they are controlling an ever-expanding portion of the dollars spent.

Now, if your target market is one of the two population groups that is not adopting broadband internet services (the lower social-economic segment and the over 50 segment), you should be just fine. Is there any proof to this statement? This past June (2010), I ran the second of two market research initiatives that polled the residents of one of Alberta’s larger centres.

Here are the results of both surveys. What follows is a head-on comparison between what a Blog did for one business’ website versus the Yellow PagesTM’ website. This data was collected over a six month period.

The Internet Version of Telephone Directories

Those who read the business’ blog article visited the business’ website 203 times. In the same time, Yellow PagesTM created 151 website visits.

The website visitors from the blog also stayed longer, and looked at more of the website. Seeing these numbers, it is difficult to recommend the online telephone directories.

Please keep in mind that this is only a sample of one. The Blog - Yellow PagesTM comparison is just between the mentioned Blog (a set of three stories) and Yellow PagesTM. Had the amount of traffic that Google brought to my client’s website been added you would have seen this ratio: Google 8,000+ : Blog 203 : Yellow PagesTM 151 visits.

The Print Version of Telephone Directories

The pie chart shows the average use of each telephone directory. On average, a person in Lethbridge uses the

Yellow PagesTM 21 times per year, the Better BookTM 5 times per year, and CanPagesTM 4 times per year.

The value of the telephone directories only comes when you know how often your ad will be seen and how much it costs to be in a particular directory.

Competition within your industry and male/female targeting are other factors to consider when choosing a directory or ad size. The majority of people use these three directories as telephone books (just to find a phone number) that is, they do not use them to make a purchase decision.

Why the change in consumer behaviour? According to Stats Canada:

(1) In 2009, 80% of Canadians aged 16 and older, or 21.7 million people, used the Internet for personal reasons, up from 73% in 2007 when the survey was last conducted.

(2) Rates were highest at 85% in both British Columbia and Alberta, followed by 81% in Ontario.

(3) Among census metropolitan areas, the highest rates of Internet use were reported in Calgary and Saskatoon, both at 89%. They were followed by Edmonton, Ottawa–Gatineau, Vancouver and Victoria, at around 86% each.

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Alberta has a population of 3.7 million. Of that, Edmonton and Calgary take up about 2.5 Million. This leaves the rest of Alberta having an internet usage rate of 79.7%! The internet is probably the most used communications medium in Canada - and Albertans use it more than anyone else. So why are telephone directories just about dead? For the same reason we don’t write on cave walls, the practice is obsolete.

*To see how the data in this article were calculated visit Matterhorn Business Solutions

1. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100510/dq100510a-eng.htm