Yellow Pages advertising.....

[goughy]

So the time is here for me to renew, and again I'm so tempted to get rid of my ad and just have the free listing. I can't imagine having the ad I had years and years ago and what that would cost me now. But with so much of my work being regulars, repeat and referral I'd just love to give it the boot. I won't lie I'm scared of the thought of not having the ad, but with so few in my business left up here we're all run off our feet. One of the other guys in town years ago did away with not just his ad, but even his basic listing (which I would keep). Spose I should chat to the boss about it too.

[Captain Nemo]

Whats the business?

[goughy]

Upholstery. Dying trade, about as many of us left in town as I used to have in staff once. We all pretty much work on our own now days. So there's no real competition between us and we're all snowed with work. I'm pretty much booked up to the end of the year. We also seem to have our main other markets - one seems to do most of the warranty work, another gets most of the commercial work. I deal with most of the decorators. It just feels like I'm paying for the advertising when really I just need people to be able to find my number, which the basic listing would do.

I started downsizing my ad a few years ago and each time I go smaller, the following year the others follow. I don't know, when things are tight you just look for things like this and wonder, if I'm constantly 3plus m months busy would it really hurt?

[markTHEblake]

From what I hear, yellow pages is still the best advertising by a million miles. The smart thing to do is to ask every new customer where they found you and evaluate whether yellow pages is worth keeping.

[Captain Nemo]

From what I hear, yellow pages is still the best advertising by a million miles. The smart thing to do is to ask every new customer where they found you and evaluate whether yellow pages is worth keeping.

Fair call Blakey, plus is the ad in paper and on the web?

[mrbluu]

My 2 cents, if you have a website you won't need yellow pages. Ppl will just google upholstery and the area. I don't anyone who uses yellow pages anymore.

[timah!]

If you're already that booked out and well known, then advertising so that you can potentially turn away people probably isn't worth it.

[Waddzy]

My 2 cents, if you have a website you won't need yellow pages. Ppl will just google upholstery and the area. I don't anyone who uses yellow pages anymore.

Must agree here mate , we use upholsterers .. plus many other different suppliers and trades and I never grab a yellow pages , simply google what im after and the area and providing you have a website you will still attract plenty of calls.

[Waddzy]

where are you based by the way mate?

[Johnny Canuck]

Upholstery. Dying trade, about as many of us left in town as I used to have in staff once. We all pretty much work on our own now days. So there's no real competition between us and we're all snowed with work. I'm pretty much booked up to the end of the year. We also seem to have our main other markets - one seems to do most of the warranty work, another gets most of the commercial work. I deal with most of the decorators. It just feels like I'm paying for the advertising when really I just need people to be able to find my number, which the basic listing would do.I started downsizing my ad a few years ago and each time I go smaller, the following year the others follow. I don't know, when things are tight you just look for things like this and wonder, if I'm constantly 3plus m months busy would it really hurt? if things are tight and you are that flat out, perhaps a pricing review is in order? Perhaps chatting to the competition in a non collusion based manner is in order.

[goughy]

where are you based by the way mate?

Toowoomba

[goughy]

if things are tight and you are that flat out, perhaps a pricing review is in order? Perhaps chatting to the competition in a non collusion based manner is in order.

It's a funny situation with pricing. I don't think I am under, but the reality is I am more so competing with Harvey Norman and amart than other upholsterers. I do lose enough quotes being too expensive, and get enough where I'm right on the borderline. And I never readjust my price to get a job. When I last tried changing my pricing work died significantly, went back to what it was and I end up flooded again. The tightness comes very much from the way we are now set up, having fine from dual income to single plus pension. Things were fine when Clikchic could work.

Business wise I know I have an extremely good name in town, the business is entering its 40th year kind of in the one family.

If anyone's interested, here's the website
www.chicupholstery.com

[goughy]

It's just one of those things, yellow pages, you just wonder how much do I really need to spend.

[GuyIncognito]

google > everything

[live4golf]

It's a funny situation with pricing. I don't think I am under, but the reality is I am more so competing with Harvey Norman and amart than other upholsterers. I do lose enough quotes being too expensive, and get enough where I'm right on the borderline. And I never readjust my price to get a job. When I last tried changing my pricing work died significantly, went back to what it was and I end up flooded again. The tightness comes very much from the way we are now set up, having fine from dual income to single plus pension. Things were fine when Clikchic could work.

Business wise I know I have an extremely good name in town, the business is entering its 40th year kind of in the one family.

If anyone's interested, here's the website
www.chicupholstery.com (http://www.chicupholstery.com)

might be worth fixing your website :)

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[goughy]

might be worth fixing your website :)

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_cache_get() in /home/clikchic/public_html/chicupholstery/wp-includes/option.php on line 49

Well, I never said it was a good one!

Clikchics looking into it.

[goughy]

It's back

[grandmasterb]

I used to advertise my business with Yellowpages but haven't done so in a long time now due to word of mouth & other advertising avenues to generate enough work eg: your own website, Facebook, Twitter, letterbox drop etc

The local rag advertising seem to work along with Gumtree listings if/when things do ever get quiet but by the sounds of it you have enough work to not stress about dropping your advertising from Yellowpages for a year to gauge what happens.

[markTHEblake]

When I think of Goughy, the first word that comes to mind is Chic. So excellent choice of name

[dc68]

Shabby Chic?

[PeteyD]

Shaggy Dog Chic.

[golfbound]

We done the surveys for the last 2 years and found most people were contacting us via google then bing, gumtree and facebook. We now have 19 websites running all for the same business this helps us take up the first 2 pages of google in alot of areas.
We dropped yellow pages last year after spending 80k per year with them, we found our work load didnt really change and the only people using yellow pages were the elderly who didnt know how to use the pc or phone.

[goughy]

Still um'ing and ah'ing about it. Talked to my parents about it (ex accountant) and dad said just lose it. Been looking at how the yellowpages online scrubs up. Currently 6 upholsterers in Toowoomba, all in the yellow pages. Yellowpages online our listing comes up first, granted we pay for the extra online presence and Clikchic has tagged it well to get us there. That is the only time we show up. All other current upholsterers show up at least twice (one as many as 5 times). Then there are 6 upholsterers who have been closed now for at least 3+ years and all of them still show in yellowpages online, some as many as 3 times. Then add to that that most of the motor trimmers in Toowoomba also list themselves in the upholstery section as well. But I think it's pretty poor that many who no longer advertise show up when using yellowpages online. When we first got the extra online package it took them about a month to get it right, and initially we weren't even showing up at all, and once we did we were only on the second page when we'd paid for better than that. Granted it eventually got sorted.

In the book I have the equal biggest ad and first position. In the basic listings I'm 4th. Had a look in the brissie yellowpages book and they have about 57 upholsterers listed with 11 of them having an ad, the rest appear in the listings, though some have their listings bolded and some have a mini ad as their listing.

I don't know how good or bad the results are for us with regards to a google search, but we show up so I guess that's key.

Clikchic's gonna check out our stats and see where people are calling us from the most - we have a different number for onlineI, book plus our normal one. I guess the idea of not having the big ad is scaring me, but then I know much of my work is repeat/regular/referral and I'll still have the basic listing. I'm also booking work for December and it's been like this for a couple of years now. Business has been in town for 40 years now and has a great rep.

Now I'm just droning on.....