5 Steps to Take BEFORE You Renew Your Contract With the Yellow Pages

Questioning whether or not you should renew your Yellow Pages Advertising contract? If so, here are five steps you should definitely consider taking before making a decision. They get straight to the point to help you make your mind up.

1. Get a full and complete summarized and itemized accounting of every single item you contract for along with publication dates, close dates, and last option to cancel or change. It is highly recommended that you ask to see copies of the contracts that you have signed to reconcile with the actual billing you are receiving.

2. Contact a local marketing company with a solid background in the Yellow Pages and their associated line of digital and other products to review with you. A reputable marketing firm should provide this to you FREE of charge.

3. Request any and all analytics available from the company and ask to have your own copy to evaluate privately. This should include any and all results tracking they provide. Ask to see the raw data for yourself, not a cleaned up version that they have scrubbed.

4. Do a down and dirty ROI calculation and see what you think. Something as simple as this:
   1. What is the gross profit you receive from an average sale. Not the sale, the profit.
   2. With that number add up how many customers you would need to achieve 130% of your overall YP spend.
   3. Check your sources to see how close you came or did not come to that number.

5. Secure an appointment with your Yellow Pages Sales Representative for exploratory purposes only. Make it clear to him/her that you are fact finding and evaluating your spend. In this meeting you should make it very clear that without proven demonstrated ROI you are not going to continue. If possible have a third party with you to assist in gathering all the information you need.

If you follow these steps and do some research, it will become crystal clear to you whether or not the Yellow Pages or their other online products is worth your valuable money. If it’s not you are going to have to bone up on online advertising. There are numerous choices there. If you want some additional tips, take a look at our FREE Whitepaper on "5 Reasons you need to stop advertising in the yellow pages".