Death of the Yellow Pages

Last month I wanted to buy a “memory foam” bed topper and I wanted to do some comparison shopping. So I went online. I didn’t search for “memory foam” – I searched for “memory foam Toronto”. I looked through all of the results and I could not find a store in Toronto that carried them – but one place in Quebec kept popping up. After a few more fruitless searches I visited the Quebec site and learned that they offer free shipping and could deliver in two days. So I bought it.

Surely there are plenty of stores in Toronto that carry the product, but I could not find one. Had a Toronto company had invested in search engine marketing my search would have been worth $500 to them. I would have drove there and made the purchase that day.

So it should be no surprise that a recent study by MarketingSherpa.com found that 77% of online purchases originated from a search engine.

It used to be that many businesses could get a steady stream of customers simply by advertising in their local yellow pages. For some it may still be true, but I believe those days are numbered. My Yellow Pages directory went in the blue box the day it was delivered.