In only our fourth issue, Plumbing & Mechanical’s cover story was on “The Yellow Pages Racket,” the first of a two-part series on the Yellow Pages and one that editorial director Jim Olsztynski believes put PM on the map.

The legwork had been done months before the magazine even existed when we surveyed about 4,000 PHC contractors pinpointing as best we could the residential service/repair contractor — the prime prospect to advertise in the Yellow Pages.

“… we were astonished by the scope and depth of the responses,” we wrote in our special report June 1984. “Many returned not only our questionnaire, but also attached letters, memos, newspaper clippings and other documentation of long-running legal and administrative battles against the YP industry.”

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So last year as we began planning our 25th anniversary issue, we decided it was a good time to re-visit the issue. In December, we mailed a survey to 1,500 PM readers focused on residential service and repair with some of the same questions. We received a healthy response rate of 14 percent vs. the 17 percent in 1984.

Obviously, we needed to base our poll on those contractors that do advertise so our first question was designed to separate the ones who do from the ones who don’t. Our data is based on 56 percent who said they did advertise their businesses, including more ways than just the Yellow Pages.

While we certainly continue to occasionally hear from readers about the horror stories of dealing with the Yellow Pages industry, our survey respondents didn’t send us much verbatim comment this time around. The results we did receive, however, show that the love-hate relationship still continues.

We asked those who do advertise what media they choose, including billboards, company Web sites, TV and radio advertising, direct mail, print ads other than Yellow Pages, and of course, Yellow Pages advertising. Judging from the mean and median rates of responses, Yellow Pages advertising clearly still makes up much of our readers’ annual marketing/advertising expenses.

Let’s look at the type of advertising and the reasons that Yellow Pages might still be a top choice among our readers.

Then and now, we asked what kind of Yellow Pages advertising contractors choose. In 1984, 44 percent went with display ads, 36 percent went with columnar ads and 20 percent just chose listing only. Twenty-five years later, the rate of display ads has grown to 56 percent.

How much do contractors spend annually on Yellow Pages advertising? That might be hard to compare over a quarter century, but let’s put it this way: In 1984, we reported that the average contractor spent between $1,000 and $5,000 each year. Here’s what contractors reported spending in 2008:

Approximately, how much money do you spend
annually on Yellow Pages ads and/or listings?

2008
Less than $2,000  …  37 %
$2,000 to $5,999  …  21 %
$6,000 to $29,999  …  25 %
$30,000 or more  …  17 %

Mean = $12,754
Median = $4,207

Why You Love To Hate Them

Most of the common complaints about Yellow Pages are the same after 25 years. Even more current respondents said rates were too high — 84 percent vs. the 63 percent in 1984. Interestingly enough, the No. 2 complaint in 1984, unlicensed advertisers, was no longer as much of a concern — 54 percent then vs. the current 30 percent.

You’d think a bigger ad would mean more business. But you’d think wrong: Almost half (49 percent) said that running a larger Yellow Pages display ad than they had done previously had no effect on increasing business. Another 27 percent said their businesses remained about the same regardless of ad size, while 24 percent said it had meant more business.

Certainly, recent years have brought many other ways of reaching customers. When we asked, in the past five years, have ads/listings in the Yellow Pages become more important, less or about the same to their businesses, the majority (55 percent) said “less important.” However, a healthy 37 percent said they were of “the same importance” and 8 percent even indicated they were “more important.”

Why You Hate To Love Them

While most people don’t see a future for the Yellow Pages empire, they still currently bring in a respectful amount of business. Of our respondents who track the source of their phone calls — about two-thirds — 38 percent indicated Yellow Pages brought in responses from first-time callers with the No. 1 source being referrals at 48 percent. In comparison, other common advertising/marketing ploys, such as direct mail, truck signage, company Web site or print/broadcast advertising brought in single-digits when it came to first-time business.

We couldn’t find any reliable consumer research regarding how exactly consumers search for contractors. Some data put the figure as high 61 percent for reaching for the Yellow Pages, but the source of that finding also specialized in Yellow Pages advertising for small business.

Certainly, the Internet is an increasingly popular vehicle, and our survey indicates that 86 percent of our respondents are taking part in an online version of their printed Yellow Pages directory.

We do know that we’ve written plenty about the notion of “aging-in-place,” an increasingly large and older demographic that has only recently been getting the attention of marketers. While we can’t offer any conclusive proof, it would seem to follow that the Yellow Pages is an unplugged search engine for Grandma, and with the growing number of Grandmas out there, most businesses wouldn’t want to entirely ignore directory advertising.

As PM celebrates more birthdays, however, it certainly does look like the Yellow Pages will be getting less business from plumbing contractors. Asked if they would run more, less or about the same amount of Yellow Pages ads/listings in the next five years, half of our respondents said they thought they’d be running less ads. A bit less than half (48 percent) thought they’d run the same amount, while only 2 percent thought they’d run more Yellow Pages ads/listings.

PM Survey:

Under how many headings do you run your Yellow Pages ads?

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One gripe strongly portrayed in the 1984 story was the proliferation of directory headings. One respondent spoke for many when he said the Yellow Pages push plumbers into picking a bewildering choice of headings with the fear being that they needed to pick and pay for more rather than less. Here’s another habit that has changed a bit, although contractors appear to have settled on two to five headings.

In how many Yellow Pages directories do your ads appear in, counting both ads and listings?

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Another habit that’s clearly different is how many Yellow Pages directories contractors choose to advertise in. Keep in mind, however, that the old Ma Bell was just beginning to be broken up, so there may be more directories today than in 1984.

How important is Yellow Pages advertising to your business?

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One-quarter of our respondents then and now still think Yellow Pages advertising is “absolutely essential.” We think, however, Yellow Pages advertising has lost some respect overall.