For several years, the Home Office has paid for many of our field offices to appear in local printed telephone directories like Dex. Recently we’ve been weighing the pros and cons of phone book advertising and how it stacks up against online local search marketing. Here’s how they compare.

 

PHONE BOOK VS. ONLINE LOCAL SEARCH MARKETING

• According to MSN, 70% of Americans don’t even open their phone books and only 11% use the white pages.

• According to Brightlocal’s latest annual survey, 97% of consumers have used the Internet to find local businesses in the last year.

• Even as far back as 2014, less than half of the population was using the phone book regularly.

• Unless you ask every single person who calls you how they found you, there’s no way to track leads coming in from the phone book.

• With local search marketing, you can track how many people have viewed your ad and clicked or called.

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All of this information indicates that phone book advertising is less effective than local search marketing. But phone directories are still a $3 billion a year industry, so someone must be using them. Who are these holdouts? Our latest marketing research shows that older demographics as well as people in rural areas – in other words, a significant portion of Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company of Idaho’s customer base – still use their phone books to find insurance agents. On the other hand, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find Generation X, Y, or Z picking up anything other than their phone to find your agency.

 

In order to reach these younger generations, the Home Office would like to encourage agents to give local search marketing a try and see how it works for them. You can try local search advertising by contacting Ashley Pope, Agent Marketing Lead, in the Sales department at extension 4396 or apope@idfbins.com. If your clientele fit into the older, rural categories and you’re still set on advertising in the phone book, we may give you financial assistance - but only if the following procedures and guidelines are followed. These new guidelines will go into effect January 1, 2019.

 

PHONE BOOK ADVERTISING PROCEDURES AND GUIDELINES

• The Home Office will refer all phone book representatives / salespeople who contact us to the appropriate agent(s).

• If the agent(s) would like financial assistance with a phone book ad, they must submit to Ashley the following:

  • the proposal from the phone book representative and;

  • a formal request for financial support by filling out the Marketing Request Form.

• The Sales department will review the proposal and request and may contact the agent(s) for more information.

• The Sales department will then determine how much financial assistance to invest in the advertising, ranging anywhere from 0 to 100%.

• If the Sales department does give an agent financial assistance for phone book advertising, the agent must track the source of their leads and enter them in CRM so we can determine the ROI. We’ll use this information to determine the next year’s level of financial support (if any) for phone book advertising. Since phone book advertising is purely about lead generation (not branding), it’s easy to determine your ROI. Here’s an example:

  • Cost of the campaign: $2,000

  • Value of one new customer: $1,000*

  • Number of customers needed to break even: 2

  • Number of leads needed to gain one new customer: 10*

  • Number of leads needed to break even: 20

  • Number of leads needed to achieve 100% ROI: 40

 

In this case, you’ll need to generate 20 leads from the phone book to break even. Obviously the example above is made up. You’ll have to do the math for yourself to see if it’s worth it for you to advertise your agency in the phone book. For some agents, phone book advertising might still be profitable. But even these agents will likely find that in the very near future digital marketing will have greater returns for their agency.

 

*Please determine and provide these numbers to us.

 

MARKETING TOOLS

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