For example, look at the number of pages of advertising for the category Chiropractor in the AT&T yellow page directory for Lancaster and Palmdale.   In the July 2007 directory AT&T sold 6 pages of advertising and 4 specialty items.   In the July 2008 directory they sold 3 pages of advertising and 2 specialty items.  This represents a 50 percent drop in sold space.

The move away from yellow page advertising is premature.  Compare the results from a full page ad in  July 2007 and July 2008:

Results provided by resultstracking.com.

As you will note, the 2008 AT&T directory is generating a 20% increase in results.

Consider this:  Less pages of advertising creates a stronger opportunity for your advertising to be seen.  More importantly, it is a powerful opportunity for you to design an ad that will stand out against a smaller field of competitors. As a result, well designed advertising will generate a much higher return than in previous years.

Yellow pages are still heavily used by the older population. This market is the heaviest user of healthcare services. They are also the best insured (thanks to Medicare). This market also has large numbers of Empty Nesters with large disposable income.

Perhaps most interesting is the negotiation opportunity that exists with the yellow pages. As demand for yellow page advertising wanes, the negotiation opportunity increases!  While some will think that negotiation means fighting for a better price, I’ll suggest that the cost of printing and distribution has gone up.  A better negotiation strategy is to dominate the medium with both large and small ads in the same section (more about the power of this in an upcoming article).

As more advertisers use emotions to guide their advertising choices, they will mistakenly continue to abandon yellow pages. The tactical marketer will use this window of opportunity to capture a larger share of the local leads generated by the yellow pages.