You Will Not Believe This!

You won't believe this . . . or I don't know . . . maybe you will.

Almost three years ago, I wrote a blog post titled "Does Yellow Page Advertising Work?" (If you google it, it is the #1 result.)

I work with small businesses, network, etc., and we talk a lot about what they are doing and what works for them . . . obviously.

It was somewhat anti yellow pages, but my main point was track and see what works for you.

There have been several comments, some promoting phone book ads, some not. One person commented with some very good points.

So anyway, I was checking my comments, and there was a new one on that post from someone that supposedly was a small business owner that had great success with Yellowbook and it was the "lifeline" of her business.

Fine, I always tell the people I work with to track and go with works for your business. If the directory services work for you . . . awesome, go with it.

EXCEPT for that while the link and the Twitter account are to what looks like an actual business, the EMAIL ADDRESS is y e l l o w b o o k . c o m !

Seriously! Did this person think I would miss that?

They are going around making bogus testimonials for their company and they DON'T EVEN USE A DIFFERENT EMAIL ADDRESS? Holy crap.

So I approved the comment and posted a reply (a little snarky . . . but come on!)

THEN today, I get not one, but TWO rebuttal emails from this person . . . completely brazen . . . not even making an excuse for the whole charade and haranguing me about my post.

I am still just floored. Are you kidding me? I guess she missed that I advise people where to spend their marketing budget. Does she think this stunt would make me want to EVER recommend Yellowbook?

Personally, I think the way the phone book/directory companies set up their online services is one of the worst options for a business. The directory registers the domain, so they own it. If you stop paying, it's gone. They may have tracking code installed, but other than that, it's a glorified Website Tonight web site.

Then they sell their packages based on the number of "visits/clicks" to their site. The last client that asked me about it was supposed to get 180 "visits" for a little over $300 a month. (I think that was AT&T though.)

The bogus commenter on my post was touting "347 clicks" in a month. Wow. Really? I get that many "clicks" on one of my sites from one blog comment I made two years ago. And I don't have to spend $300 a month for those either.

The only reason they can sell those packages is that most small business owners don't know the first thing about marketing online and phone book advertising is familiar to them.

It makes me wonder if they were behind on delivering "clicks" to their client site she linked to in the blog comment and was trying to get more visits before the end of the month by going around and making inflammatory comments.