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Thoughts on the phonebook and the impact of google search on local businesses.

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Phonebooks, yellow pages and your business.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I have a really interesting story that goes along with my business story and the phone book. When I was younger, telephone books for how you found people, okay, they were how you found people that you knew through the white pages of the phonebook.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with telephone directories, the pages that are white, we would normally refer to those as the white pages, because those were the ones where you had most residential, people being able to be found.

So if you knew somebody’s last name, you could find them in the white pages in most cases, okay.

Then the yellow pages were the pages where all the businesses were, and specifically businesses that paved this phone book a little more to be highlighted on the yellow pages.

And so you have larger ads there and everything else and those are separated by subject. Now, this is for people that aren’t familiar with phone books.

In the old days, you get a handful. Actually, when I was just starting out in business, there were three or four phonebook companies, and they were very thick, large manuals, and you would get from and even in a small area, you would get really large books delivered for free.

Because so much advertising went into it and so much money, it was a very lucrative thing. And it was something that entire businesses thrived off of paying for one advertising source, and that was the phonebook.

So this is a phone book. This is the latest one from the yellow book company, one of the only phonebook companies that I see out there anymore. And these guys, this one’s for Medford and Grants Pass here in Southern Oregon, also includes Ashland, Central Point, Rogue River and White City.

And I remember when I first started out that they’re not as thick as they used to be, they’re a lot thinner, there are not as many advertisements very few people are willing to pay for the advertising in back in the day. It actually cost quite a bit to get into the phonebook because you’re paying once and this is going to sit on somebody’s counter or somewhere where they can reach it, it’s going to sit there for a very long time.

Oftentimes way past the date in which, as widgets labeled that this is labeled for 2021, and 2022.

So we’ll see how long these exist, I would predict that you’re still going to see phonebooks into the future, they’re just going to have a different flavor and they’re going to go in a slightly different direction.

Because nowadays, as we all know, if you search into Google, it’s easier, quicker, faster than going into a phonebook. Google has been able to kind of develop its own phonebook algorithm as long as you’re typing in something that can be seen in a phonebook.

Oftentimes, a local section in Google is going to pop up with all the people that fit that category, based on where you’re searching for. But also, if you put the name of the town, you’re going to see that real quick.

Now, when I first started getting involved in business, this started becoming a thing and phonebook started losing power. And one of my first clients was telling me that they got all their business via the phonebook for years and years and years, 20 plus years, they had been getting all their business via a phonebook ad. And now they’re at a point where they’re getting less and less.

They know they weren’t paying enough attention to online work. So a lot of my early work was helping typical business brick and mortar businesses get over on to the online space.

What I ended up learning is, the phone book was still useful, and it might be in your market. Also, there are a few things you want to look for.

Are you playing toward an audience that would pick up a phone book and look for the subject line that you’d be under?

Are you in a subject line that’s typical or could you be in a subject line?

That is something that somebody would be looking for in a phone book, you may not fit everybody that’s in that subject. But if you can find a way to squeeze into there, is that worthwhile to you?

And then are you in an area that still has phone books?

We’re in an area that has a whole lot of retirees and an elderly population, people that still use phonebooks. Intensely, and a lot of people that just aren’t online or aren’t actively online.

But believe it or not, that that’s still very, very common. And so you can still see, I can flip through this phone book. I haven’t looked through this one much.

I can still see subjects and you can always tell it’s the ones with the biggest ads. Okay, so on the back you’ve got Direct TV. Oh, There’s a large company that can afford large advertisements like this. In the front, you’ve got the locksmith, the local locksmith.

The other ad is for the phone book itself. Not as many ads as you used to, you used to see a lot of ads for lawyers. That used to be a very common thing that you would see very large ads for all let’s say, we still have a lot of restaurants, plumbing ads, still a lot of very large plumbing ads, full-page color, plumbing ads.

But there’s a way you can find out a lot about an area by flipping through a phonebook. And whenever I’d be traveling, I’d go and I’d be in the hotel room, one of the first things I grab is the Yellow Pages and flip through and see what you know, what industries are paying for advertising in the phonebook here and it’s an interesting thing.

But the one thing you can learn from phonebooks is that technology changes. And so often people get caught up with one type of technology, one type of advertising, one way of delivering an item, and they get really scared about losing that format, instead of realizing that formats come and go.

That styles of advertising come and go that that that’s just technology that’s always going to change you know, books are never going to go away. They just changed their function because of other things, pick up the slack.

With the onset of digital with the onset of mobile phones, you’re getting a different flavor, you’re getting competition that didn’t exist before. And you have to realize this when you’re working on any type of advertising. I heard somebody talking about it the other day, and let me see what was it?

It will and I probably won’t even be able to come to my head. But I remember the conversation very clearly.

It had to do with the fact that people were it was a format that people just they refuse to give up on Oh, I know what it was. It was people saying that they it was auto dealers that years ago, these auto dealers refuse to work with internet ads because they were scared of losing their position as specifically the sales staff have lost their ability to do anything because the internet was taken over instead of taking advantage of the internet and making their jobs easier.

And finding the people that are looking for them and delivering them there. They let themselves be gobbled up and there are still ones out there, there are still salespeople out there that are allowing the internet to take over and apps to take the place of salespeople.

There’s no reason why that needs to happen. Because a human can always bring another level to things. But you can have somebody that is fully educated on what it is that you’re selling, and know exactly what they need and are, and have money in hand ready to buy. If you take advantage of the pieces of the internet that are useful to you.

And then add the thing that the internet can provide, which is human contact, back and forth question and answer that will always be needed. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, realize what you’re good at and what you’re not good at and let the rest go. This is a technology and it will never stop. It’s our entire lives.

The internet is not the last thing. Mobile phones are not the last thing. Just like these yellow pages when they first came out. They were not the last thing.

They’re just the next format of technology and it’s going to constantly change from here on out. So get ready for it. Don’t be scared of it. Learn it, figure out what you can do best and what the new technology can do best, and move forward. You’ll be out of the competition for sure.

Other ways to be out of the competition I talked about in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy by going to AmazonProofBook.com. We’ll be back here tomorrow night. You have a great night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.