In marketing, we divide up groups of people into demographics. Age, sex, income and education are all good ways to divide people up (for marketing purposes). One popular demographic is the 18-35 crowd. These are the prime demographic. Statistically they don’t have the most money, but they do have something more valuable than money. They have cool. If your product, service or idea flies with the 18-35 crowd, then it flies. Period.
So, if you were marketing life insurance, you probably wouldn’t spend a ton of time polling the cool crowd. 18-35 year-olds idea of cool doesn’t matter a whole lot, to life insurance companies. That product doesn’t appeal to that demographic as well as does to say, 35-50 year-olds.
I’m 34 this year. Yup. I’m leaving the cool crowd. Saying farewell to hashtag tee-shirts and hair gel. Now I gotta wear loafers and go bald. I know you probably still think I’m cool and I know I still think I’m cool, but to big ad agencies, I’m yesterday’s news. Please let me share a little perspective with you, which I have gained over my many years.
The Phone Book is Dead
I can practically hear you saying “I already knew that”. If you did, then do me a favor: tell everyone. Because it seems to me that no one really knows the phone book is dead. They just say that they know. If everyone knows the phone book is dead how come there’s a hundred yellow pages of super expensive ads in the Prince Albert phone book?
Dead is Dead … but …
Dead is dead… but some things are more dead than others. Let me qualify just how dead the phone book is. I’m 34, this means I’m the oldest guy in my demographic. Well, last October the University of Saskatchewan sent me out to a conference in Toronto. I was alone and bored, and have been to Toronto enough times to know that I don’t like the town. I spent the whole time in my hotel room.
Flying home, I realized that I didn’t know if there had been a phone book in my hotel room. I spent all my time in that room and ate fast food delivery every night. And never, once, looked for the yellow pages. And I am the oldest guy in my demographic. You wanna spend $2000 + / month on your Yellow Pages ad plus your yellowpages.ca website… that’s your call. But you are dumping your money on the dead. Old-timers, like me, don’t even remember that service.
The Yellow Pages have gotten with the times… a little. They have added a website to their services, which makes sense. They charge handsomely for that website, though. One of my clients is paying somewhere around $2000 / month. For their Yellow Pages ad. And it doesn’t rank in Google. For some reason, Google hates the Yellow Pages sites. They fall below smaller, cheaper sites in the Google Search ranking algorithm.
Don’t believe me? I’ll show you. Let me help you escape the over-priced, under-performing, garbage marketing and website curse which these companies have cast over Prince Albert.
We Need to Talk