Print Yellow Pages Ads Drive Traffic to Web, Phone

May 29, 2009

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Local & Directories / Small Biz | Retail & E-Commerce | Telecom

More than four in ten (44%) leads generated by an average print Yellow Pages ad come from consumers visiting an advertiser’s website after seeing the ad, while 56% of leads generated from a Yellow Pages ad come from call traffic, according to (pdf) a study of web activity spurred by Yellow Pages advertising by Telmetrics.

The study, which revealed the extent to which? Yellow Pages users visit a business’s web site after reviewing their print ad data, suggests that leads from traditional print media are being underestimated and that traditional print media remains a reasonably effective way to drive people online and convert them into leads, Telmetrics said. The firm added that if URLs from a given print piece are unique, response is also easy to track, writes MarketingVOX.

For the study, Telmetrics launched a pilot that tested the effectiveness of unique URLs in print ads. It measured web activity, generated by more than 1,200 print Yellow Pages ads containing a unique URL and phone number.

Additional study findings:

  • Tracking unique URL activity and call measurement reflects a 78% increase in leads driven by print Yellow Pages.
  • Significantly higher volumes of web activity were seen for the following ad categories: Automobile Dealers (184% more clicks than calls) and Florists (126% more clicks than calls).
  • Select categories including Automobile Dealers and Florists, demonstrated significantly higher volumes of Web activity. Ads for Automobile Dealers resulted in 184%? more clicks than calls, while Florists generated 126% more clicks.

Telmetrics President Bill Dinan expressed surprise at the results. Prior to the study he believed users that went from print ads to a website would total 10% at most, versus nearly 50%. But during the pilot, ads that made use of unique URLS (autoshop56.com, for example) were visited even more than client-specific domains with URL extensions (usedcars.com/autoshop).

In a public statement, he added, “Our URL tracking data confirms that traditional media complements the digital media mix and echoes consumers’ use of multiple media and platforms in their purchasing decisions.”

Moving forward, Telmetrics plans to measure how offline ads drive online conversion rates by analyzing the number of clicks generated by participating websites,

About the study: The research was conducted between November 2008 and April 2009 and was commissioned by North American Print Yellow Pages publishers.

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