Who Even Uses the Yellow Pages Anymore?
I had the opportunity to speak with an account rep at an Internet company recently. As we talked about different types of advertising, it became obvious that he distained old media. He said that television advertising was pointless because people TiVo past them, and that he “couldn’t begin to remember” the last time he’d looked in the Yellow Pages. Instead, he uses a smartphone, buying a new one every 3 to 6 months, because he gets bored with the old one.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Sales Fixes Everything
Those of us who follow tech companies like others follow sports heard the news that Google darling and employee number 20, Marissa Mayer, exercised her free-agent option and is now playing the CEO position for Team Yahoo. Once an industry leader, Yahoo has lost its way the past decade, and many are saying that Mayer must do a Steve Jobs-like turnaround if she’s to pull Yahoo out of its death spiral.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Get a Facebook Page for Your Business—or Else!
A small, local festival had a small problem … or a big one, depending on how you look at it. Someone had set up a Facebook page about the festival—which was fine, except they’d used the festival logo as the profile picture, giving the impression that they were the “official” page. The webmaster had even received emails saying, “but it says on your Facebook page …”
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Buying Links: Google’s Okay with It. Really
It’s as controversial as Keynesian vs. Friedman economics. Is buying backlinks okay or not?
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Bazooka Joe, the Original Content Marketer
Walking to the corner market with my best friend to buy a packet of that little pink bubble gum wrapped in a comic strip was one of the highlights of my nine-year-old existence. Sure, there were other bubble gum brands on the shelf, but none of them had the latest adventures of Bazooka Joe inside. I was too young and blissfully ignorant to realize that my purchase decision was being influenced by a well-used, little-known marketing strategy, called Content Marketing.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Yes, Your Smartphone Really Is a Computer
I have a confession to make. I don’t own a smartphone. There, I said it.
That may come as a surprise, especially from a self-professed web marketing geek like myself. It’s not that I don’t want one, it’s that I don’t really need one; I have all the computers I need in the places I need them most—at home and at work. And I don’t really feel the urgency to get online in the supermarket or at the doctor’s office. Sure, letting all my Facebook friends know I’ve been stuck in the waiting room for the past 20 minutes would be vindicating; but that’s a luxury an expensive data plan can’t justify.
Meanwhile, a debate is raging online over whether the iPad should be considered a computer or not.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Inbound and Outbound Marketing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Michael Hyatt, Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, says that when we think there’s a singular solution to our woes, we’re guilty of “silver bullet thinking.” It’s precisely this type of thinking that’s led to the debate over whether inbound or outbound marketing is “best.” Proponents of inbound marketing claim that, in new era of social media, outbound marketing is no longer effective. Yet, many companies continue to use outbound marketing with great success. Let’s take a look at each.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Base Your Marketing on Real Data, not Biased Opinion Masquerading as Fact
In my latest article on SitePoint, Transactional vs. Consultative Selling: Knowing the Difference Makes All the Difference, I compared the transactional sale with a consultative one. In Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati’s new book, he explores the fallacy that media companies are “consultative and customer focused.” According to the article, salespeople are saying “I’ll talk about your needs so long as it leads to you only buying my portfolio of solutions …” but that they are “communicating with customers through a product lens (with a pre-determined end in mind).” That’s a problem.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Act Like a Salesperson and Sell Something Already
Once you decided to freelance or start a web business, you gained a new job description: Business Owner. So what’s the purpose of this enterprise you’ve undertaken? Most people think it’s “to make money”—but that’s not a purpose, it’s a result. According to the renowned Peter Drucker, the purpose of business is “to create a customer.”
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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How Yellow Pages Converts Consumers into Leads and Sales [INFOGRAPHIC]
It’s popular to bash Yellow Pages these days. After all, everyone uses the Internet now, right? Yet, a 2010 study conducted by CRM Associates, shows that both usage and calls volumes are increasing to the 2008 level, suggesting that the decline in Yellow Page usage over the past six years was more economy than Internet-driven.
Another study shows that the average consumer uses both Yellow Pages and the Internet when making a purchase decision. A year-long study of 8,000 adults conducted by marketing research firm Burke, Inc. found that 74 percent used print Yellow Pages over the course of the year to find a local business—just slightly behind the 76 percent who used a search engine. So it’s no longer a question of Internet or print. Smart marketers know there is no single advertising method that will bring in all the business. Effective marketing is more like a team than a shotgun.
Curious how Yellow Page consumers convert into leads and sales? Here’s an infographic to show you:
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Get Web Design Clients!
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About Me
Thanks for visiting. I’m a Marketing Evangelist, Blogger and Sales Trainer.
I get excited about geek stuff. But I’m also passionate about helping people and companies reach their fullest potential and becoming wildly successful.
That’s why I love helping businesses figure out how to market (especially web marketing) and why I train sales people to be the best they can be at what they do.
