Is Yellow Page Advertising Worth The Cost To Your Medspa?

Simple answer: Not for me. I have pulled the Yellow Page ads for all of our Medspas. Over the last seven years, I have found that the money that is spent or should I say gouged on Yellow Page ads is better spent elsewhere.

Yellow Pages were at one time popular before the Internet and competition. In Surface's current Utah markets, there are currently six Yellow Page competitors who are all publishing books. In order to run a full-page, full-color ad in all of them, I would be looking at about $20,000 a month, which I think is absolutely ridiculous.

Yellow Page salespeople will tell you that 50% or 40% or some other percentage of people who are looking for your type of business are going to be able to find you in the Yellow Pages. That is true... kind of.

What really happens is people hear about your business and then they will search for you in order to find out your telephone number, which is a vastly different value proposition as opposed to what Yellow Pages are really sold to you as which is direct advertising. The Internet has made it so easy to find any amount of information that Yellow Pages for the most part I feel are irrelevant.

Now, we have tried individual phone numbers and a number of other things in order to track our ROI, but what we find out when we actually talk to our patients (every patient that comes into one of our clinics is given a questionnaire in which case they fill out where they heard about us and also if they have heard about us before) the vast majority are just using Yellow Pages in order to look up our phone number. (I think probably 100% of people who fill out that they called us from the Yellow Pages also fill out that they have heard of us someplace before) Of those same patients only about 3% do not have Internet access. As more and more people switch to the Internet for their information needs, the Yellow Pages become less and less relevant, and the opportunity cost for that money becomes greater and greater.

So, this year I decided to pull all of our Yellow Page ads, and we have seen no decrease in the growth of our business.

I would be interested in hearing what other people what their thoughts are on the Yellow Page ads that they run.