Each year, lawyers and other expert professionals are confronted with a series of decisions around listings and presence in myriad business and professional directories, and the Yellow Pages.
While most would prefer work to flow from our hard-earned reputations, stand-out profiles, or referrals from trusted network contacts, for many professionals, directory listings or Yellow Pages are necessary elements of work acquisition.
Yellow Pages remains an important general directory of business and trade services for many community members. Whether in old tree-ware form, or on-line, it's a source for certain socio-demographic groups shopping for some legal services.
Yellow Pages plays - not at all - to many markets and psychodemographics.
As a doyenne of the advertising industry once said, 90% of all advertising is wasted - the trouble is, working out which 10% is effective.
Given how easy it is to make expensive mistakes, here are some Yellow Pages insights [framed in terms of legal services] to help you make better business development decisions.
While just about all firms are "listed", a relatively small proportion pay for Yellow Pages advertisements.
Smaller law firms dominate the advertisements. Few take large, high-priced space.
Our sample research indicates that return on Yellow Pages advertising expenditure varies widely. Disappointingly few firms rigorously measure results and benchmark them against other avenues for work acquisition.
Law firms who have large, well-placed ads early in the listings report satisfaction with this choice but others who've made more modest investments are similarly satisfied. Quality of leads generated is mixed, regardless.
In the United States, research by the American Bar Association reveals that including photographs is especially effective and offering consumer information (such as lists of credentials) is the next best thing. Beware: reactions in other markets are not always in line with North American experience.
The clean, uncluttered "less is more" style of many modern graphic designers is probably not the most effective ad layout for this medium.
Local sampling indicates that private client services are more effectively promoted through the Yellow Pages than small business services. Services where a lawyer is needed "in a hurry" - for example, criminal law - or in an unfamiliar location, are good candidates for Yellow Pages promotion.
That same sample of law firms tells us that their Yellow Pages campaigns have increased their revenues together with increasing time they spend dealing with enquirers, screening for suitability, and "selling" themselves over the phone.
If you choose to invest in Yellow Pages, evaluate outcomes - quantitatively and qualitatively - and benchmark against the alternatives so you can refine decisionmaking with time.
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