Remember big hair, flared jeans, telex machines, typewriters and floppy disks?
Remember when there used to be two postal deliveries per day and one on Saturdays?
Remember, the rattle of milk bottles and the thunk of the newspaper on the front lawn each morning?
Remember when the Yellow Pages directory came in two enormous volumes each weighing 1-2 kilos?
Like a lot of people, you’ve probably noticed that one of Telstra’s cash-cows, Yellow Pages, is on it’s last legs.
Sensis is struggling to keep it’s customer base because of dramatically falling readership. When was the last time you picked up a copy of Yellow Pages or even used Yellow Pages online?
Every so often I get calls from people asking my opinion of Yellow Pages latest digital offerings.
My advice is before you sign anything offered by Sensis / Yellow Pages, ask yourself these questions:
* What guarantees do I get?
* Am I locked in to any directory, phone number or service?
* Do I own all the intellectual property?
* Can I change the content at any time?
* Do I have total control of daily budgets, keywords and offers?
You will probably find that in most cases you are better off controlling your own destiny and owning rather than renting your online presence.
This means:
* Own your web site or web sites that you can manage, edit add to if you want to
* Managing your own Google Adwords campaign
* Getting your own Google Analytics account
* Doing your own SEO or buying SEO services on a task completed basis