The Death of Print Advertising

One of our clients, Garage and Storage Plus , came to us concerned about the high cost of print advertising in connection with the advertising of their garage makeover business. Traditionally, home services business would advertise with either the yellow pages, local flyers, and home mailers.

Some of these print campaigns can cost $1000 a month (for a home mailer), or $500 to $2000 per month for a generously-sized yellow pages ad.

We discussed with our client our philosophy that print advertising for the home services business is dead.

First of all, home services companies serve homeowners. Homeowners have computers and know how a search works. Thus, homeowners can easily find what they are looking for with a google search. That’s where optimization comes in–a company site, optimized once, will rain targeted clients forever.

The traditional yellow pages companies know that their old business model is suffering. Television ads promote the yellow pages’ online offerings–but it’s likely too little, too late. Google’s Local service is simply too powerful to ignore–and it’s free. Why anyone would pursue a paid yellow pages ad is a mystery to us.

With our client Garage and Storage Plus, we recommended that they funnel a portion (that’s right, just a fraction) of their advertising budget into an optimization plan and a google local listing. Now, Garage and Storage Plus enjoys premium placement for the key search phrases in its industry. They have since been able to reduce their advertising budget to a trickle…