How well do Yellow Pages work for residential?

I've good responce to my ad in a local newspaper, especially after it was running for a while. Flyers on bulletin boards get a good response (for very little investment). But display ad on local cable servise directory was a waste of money.

I wonder how do Yellow Pages work for you guys and do you think it'll worth the investment for me, residential roof cleaner? The trick is, once you get it published, you can't pool it out - lock yourself for a year. My other concern is - do people really know under what section to look when it comes to pressure washing or they start with checking out newspapers and other sources first?

Thank you,
Sergei

We are in both the "Yellow Pages" books in our area and they have been a steady draw of leads. The Verizon book seems to draw better than The Yellow Book. We may actually stop using the Yellow Book and just use the Verizon book, the draw is so much better.

Beth

I got a few responses from my add this was the first year I put it in the Yellow Pages and I will not be putting it in their again. I will stick with newspaper and flyers and word of mouth the yellow pages were a big waste of money. They only drew in about 10 calls all year.

I'm sure it varies from area to area, but we have benefited very well from the Verizon Yellow Pages and the Former-GTE Yellow Pages.
Residential has been good from both of these. But the commercial accounts have been outstanding! (Only takes a couple of big ones)

We never did well with the yellow pages. In the area I am in now the results have been poor too. There are way to many books. Around 6 or 8 of them. It's nuts!

If you can find the book that people use the most it will do better. We have one book that draws enough to keep the ad going. The rest we will not renew. I had an ad in the main yellow page last year for the north suburbs. It got 2 calls and one job.

Some do really well, so you'll just have to test different books in your area. Go small, 1/2 inch or smaller.

When it comes to advertising you must diversify your advertisement. Yellow pages can be good, but be carefull not to let the rep talked you into getting to large of a add. We use a incollum add works just fine. Also if you have a business number you should be able to get free line adds in all the telephone books in your area, just contact that company and asked to make sure you are listed in that book. They all work from same source that supplies peoples names. How they make there money is by up selling the adds. Found this out by accident


Charlie