Printed Directories - the start of the updating season
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-08-12 08:12:43 - Graham EllisI don't know how many business directories there are - but I do know it's the season for all the directory providers to start phoning around and sell spaces in their publications. I have spoken with two in the last two days!
So it's very fortunate that Lisa and I spent Saturday going through the 2008/09 accounts - the Sage listings of the suppliers with whom we had spent money, and saying "is this good value / what are we getting / do we need this service". We don't make huge use of paper directories these days - a list of local taxi firms (for sure), but not much else; we tend to search on line. Are we the norm? Perhaps not, but we're becoming part of a more significant section of the population, and that's the section of the population that's best targeted to our courses and hotel rooms here in Melksham. In other words, the paper directories are selling towards a different market to we're really looking at. And furthermore, we're primarily looking at hotel rooms which are booked ahead (so why would a directory circulated to local homes be right for us?), and to fill rooms between courses in a small hotel, rather than it being the main business at a much larger establishment. Hmmm - starts to look like a poor deal for us.
Let's say we spend 100 pounds on an advert in each of the five printed directories that I know about. That means we need to take (say) 20 extra room nights of bookings in the year as a direct result to break even - you can't just look at the income; you have do deduct supplies, staffing, servicing, washing, cost of sales and count the extra income only after expenses. And then we're likely to find that extra requests come in for the summer weekends that we're already full, for people who (from a short entry) don't know enough about us to make a good choice, and go away disappointed at "no bar" or another of our distinctive niche features that make us a business hotel.
So - a standard answer to people asking us to pay for an entry in their local directory: "It is not well suited marketing for us, and we have made a decision not to advertise in local directories. We appreciate truly comprehensive directories which provide a listing of all local businesses in a category, and we would like to be line-item listed - but if you are merely providing a selective list of people who will "play ball" with you, please count us us. We're too busy to play ball with everyone who wants a game - sorry!"
The pushy saleswoman who wanted an appointment for her rep and kept telling me what a bargain price they were offering missed my point. The rep from the company with whom we HAVE advertised for three years, but who told me we weren't in the current edition, managed to loose the credibility that Robin Stanbrook - our previous contact (who I greatly respect, and for whom I might have made an exception) had built up.