The face of marketing and advertising for the SMB’s (small and medium business) of the world is changing rapidly. There is no way to deny that. What was once considered sound practice for small business marketing is no longer the “same old story”. In fact, the story is being rewritten as fast as we get familiar the “latest and greatest” techniques.

As a result one of the stalwarts of the local business marketing arsenal, the yellow pages, has been teetering on, at best, diminished relevance and, at worst, certain obsolescence. RH Donnelly, one of the biggest yellow pages publishers emerged from bankruptcy in the past year. Others are struggling while others still have tried to distance themselves from the idea of yellow pages for fear of being perceived as behind the times (i.e. DexKnows).

Search Engine Land covers this subject in some detail but we would like to look at two quotes from the CEO of YellowBook that seem to tell the tale of the Yellow Pages the best

And Joe Walsh, YellowBook’s CEO, was asked in this recent Fox Business News interview if there would still be a physical YP book in five years, and he answered: “Yes, not in every market, though. I think that some of coastal markets may be migrating away from print in that period of time.”

Those “coastal markets” he was referring to happen to be the largest population centers of the United States. His second quote was even more telling when he responded to an industry “call to arms’ to defend the print medium.

Joe Walsh opined that it was likely too late for such a campaign, and “…the sense of print Yellow Pages as a passé medium has been fully baked into the public consciousness…” and “…we may not be able to reverse it.”

So there you have it. So now what if you are an SMB? What do you do if you have been putting money into what is possibly a quickly fading advertising medium? Do you stop advertising? Do you hope that somehow people will just make their way to your store? Or do you evolve and grow with the times?

We hope you choose to evolve. So where do you go to? The Internet, of course. Search marketing, e-mail marketing, social media and more are where you need to be. What’s that you say? You don’t understand that stuff? That’s where Dealer Ignition comes in. With paid search marketing and e-mail marketing campaigns that are easy enough for the novice to understand and robust enough for the seasoned Internet marketer to take advantage of, Dealer Ignition can help you succeed online.

Is it time to get with the program? Is it time to succeed? Dealer Ignition provides the tools to get you from yesterday’s wasted marketing dollars to today’s store traffic and new business. Call us and we’ll help you get to where you want to be.

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