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Bob Levoy is a well known consultant on practice management and has written profusely on this top. In Sep 2002 issue of Optometric Management, he wrote about "Four practice management myths that stifle profitability and practice growth". This one, in particular jumped out at me:
Quote:
MYTH:
Yellow Page advertising is a good way to attract patients who are looking for an optometrist.
Reality: The consensus of optometrists I've surveyed at seminars throughout the country is that Yellow Page advertising is of limited value in attracting new patients.
Caring For The Eyes Of America 2002, published by the American Optometric Association, reported that in 2001, the percentage of consumers finding an eye doctor through the Yellow Pages was only 5.8%. Similar statistics are found in other healthcare professions. Edwin D. Secord, D.D.S., past president of the Detroit District Dental Society, writing in the Detroit Dental Bulletin, put it this way: "Where do my best patients come from? They come from present patients, referring dentists and personal friends. Where do my worst patients come from? The Yellow Pages. There are exceptions, but this generally holds true."
Optometrists who purchase bold listings and varying sized display ads in their local telephone Yellow Pages often discover (too late) that their ads are completely overshadowed by larger, more attention-getting ads of other optometric practices and/or optical chains - greatly reducing the effectiveness of their ads.
In addition, optometrists who track the response to their Yellow Pages advertising report, in many cases, find that the low numbers of new patients simply don't warrant the cost of the ads.
As a result, many O.D.s have discontinued Yellow Page advertising with little, if any, drop in the number of new patients they're seeing.
The Park Avenue (New York City) office of Andrea Than, O.D., president of the New York State Optometric Association, has no Yellow Page listing. And no "outdoor sign" except for a small brass plaque on the exterior of the building. Yet her primary care practice continues to grow (Three O.D.s, soon to be four). How? By word of mouth.
Action step: To determine if such advertising is a good investment for your practice, include the following question on the Patient Information Form that patients fill out on their first visit: "How did you first learn about our practice?" Then give them a choice such as: an outdoor sign, directory provided by an insurance company, phone book, physician or personal recommendation.
The answer to this question is critical. Some patients say they first learned about the practice from the phone book when, in fact, it was only where they obtained your address and telephone number.
With further probing, you or a staff member may learn they first heard about your practice from a friend, co-worker, physician, pharmacist or the emergency room at the local hospital. Then they looked in the phone book.
Survey new patients for the next 90 days. Then do the math. If the return on your advertising is worth it, take a bigger ad. If not, put those dollars to work in a way that achieves a better return on investment.
I tend to agree. I have not bothered to renew my Yellow Pages add this year as the number of new patients entering the practice via this advertising was too small to justify the cost. My mind was really made up by the very pushy sales women who kept trying to tell me that it was worth spending the money, despite the fact that I keep stats which were showing the opposite. The best bit was when she tried to tell me that I needed to advertise in yellow pages so that "existing patients know how to find me".
__________________ Science is the antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition
Strangely experience is the opposite.
The Yellow Pages is a major source of new patients (I've been in practice 20 years), especially verruca patients (as my advert specifically says I treat them).
I don't find a colour advert is any more effective than a Black and White one though...
I always ask every new patient how they heard of me and got my phone number.
We have same experience as Robin. Have found yellow pages to be cost effective. We take out a black and white box advert each year. It pays for itself.
First, the whole "either/or" proposition is way off. Smart small business owners are thinking: "How many ways can I buy a new customer relationship?" They dollar-cost-average customer aquisition costs, and structure their businesses to make the economics work. Loser thinking is: "What is the cheapest way I can buy a customer?" The Yellow Pages, when used properly, are a very effective ad media for many different kinds of local businesses. Predicating a marketing strategy on being cheap is rarely effective, and should only be used as a stop-gap measure to get to a point where a real customer aquisition plan can be run.
Second, I've done more than my fair share of yellow pages ad consulting. And I can state, for the record, that less than 1% of all yellow pages advertisers actually understand how to use the media. Far less. Even worse, most ads in the yellow pages are designed with heavy input from... THE YELLOW PAGES AD SALESPERSON. Lemme put this in plain English: if the guy selling the ad understood how to make advertising pay, he'd be doing ads for a living, not selling them. Basing the effectiveness of yellow page advertising on the mass of advertisers is laughable. Fact is, most businesses advertising in the yellow pages, aside from doing it wrong, aren't tracking response so they have no idea what results are being generated.
From Chiropractic Economics: Real Proof that Your Yellow Pages Advertising Works
Seven Steps to Calculate Your Return on Investment
Quote:
Whether your practice is large or small, you probably don't have a huge advertising budget. However, in most cases you have to advertise in order to succeed and grow, you probably rely heavily on two old stand-bys: word-of-mouth and Yellow Pages advertising.
While you can certainly encourage your patients to pass along a good word about your practice, ensuring that they do so and quantifying the results of word-of-mouth advertising is difficult at best. On the other hand, proving the value of your Yellow Pages investment can be quite easy. It's also invaluable, especially when nearly 18 billion references are made to Yellow Pages directories every year--that's 1.7 times every week for the average American.
Return on investment (ROI) can be more simply described as a measurement of how well your advertising is working. But, how do you determine your ROI and turn your advertising dollars into customers and profits? The best way to determine your ROI is to follow this simple seven-step process, a process that will show you exactly how to measure the effectiveness of your advertising:
Step One
Begin by determining the number of calls you receive from your Yellow Pages ad each month. This is relatively easy if you ask each caller where they found your number (note that if you live in an area that has two directories, be sure to ask which one and on which page).
Step Two
What's your conversion rate? What percentage of your calls turn into sales or patient visits? You should already have a good idea of what your conversion rate actually is, but if not, take a look at your yearly gross volume, total number of active patients and patient visit average.
Step Three
Determine the number of sales (or visits) made by those patients who found your practice in the Yellow Pages by dividing the number of calls by your conversion rate.
Step Four
Plug in your average gross profit per item sold (or per patient visit).
Step Five
To determine your total gross profit produced by Yellow Pages ads, multiply the number of converted calls from Yellow Pages ads by your average gross margin.
Step Six
Plug in your monthly Yellow Pages investment.
Step Seven
Your overall net profit gain from Yellow Pages advertising is calculated by subtracting your Yellow Pages monthly investment from the total gross profit produced each month (sales minus costs).
From PowerHomeBiz: Common Yellow Page Advertising Mistakes
Quote:
For the right type of business, Yellow Pages work. The results are proven. They generate calls and produce sales. Yet there are common mistakes that many business owners make that can be costing them thousands of dollars.
Some mistakes have to do with not understanding how Yellow Pages work as a media; others have more to do with unproductive strategies and techniques.
Here are seven of the most common mistakes made by small business owners.
1. You avoid advertising in the Yellow Pages even when your type of business is a proven Yellow Page winner.
2. You advertise in only one directory, and ignore the other directories in your marketplace.
3. You believe that everybody knows you and that you do not need to advertise
4. You don t track your calls, and assume that your Yellow Page advertising program is not working for you.
5. Your advertising program is not big enough to meet the growth goals of your company.
6. You spend too much for Yellow Page advertising and fail to use simple money saving strategies.
7. You don t handle your calls from the Yellow Pages properly.
I have advertised in Yellow Pages for the last 9 years.
The returns on the ad. aren't bad & I find it pays for itself, when a new patient attends via a YP ad. they are usually the source of further referrals which is always encouraging. :) (always ask newbies where/how they found me)
IMO waste of money ads are those in the local papers. The only response I appear to receive from those is from other agencies selling me more advertising space!
Does my head in frankly
Roll on summer :)
Bah Humbug
__________________
:)
twirly
Mandy Brooks
Brooks Podiatry
S64 0DE
Suffering a fondness for odd things.
I have advertised in Yellow Pages for the last 9 years.
IMO waste of money ads are those in the local papers. The only response I appear to receive from those is from other agencies selling me more advertising space!
Each person to thier own of course, your location may effect what works best for you.
We have found between the local paper which is huge for us and our website we are reducing then droping the yellowpages as a result of cost effectiveness/sales results
In fact, the size of the text is the same one for everyone
It used to be like that in Australia and New Zealand last century when the Registration Board's were very prescriptive when and how you could advertise...its was silly
__________________
Craig Payne
Department of Podiatry
La Trobe University
Melbourne, Australia http://www.latrobe.edu.au/podiatry
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________ God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things - right now I am so far behind, I will never die.
The views expressed above are those of the author and not that of La Trobe University This is where I am, where are you?
It used to be like that in Australia and New Zealand last century when the Registration Board's were very prescriptive when and how you could advertise...its was silly
Craig, It wasn't the Boards, it was the Legislation
__________________ Stephen Tucker Eastern Health
Podiatry Manager
I find that 95% of new patients come via Yellow Pages. I take out an ad in a corporate box with other practitioners, which gives us all a discount, and it pays for itself,
regards
Dido
We have gradually reduced our spending on yellow pages (Book) over the last 3 years. Depends who you are looking for and what area you are in. Online is far more cost effective for us as we are in a commercial/office area.
South Australia seems to have a huge amount of large colour ad's compared to NSW (despite a considerable population difference)
I think it's worth keeping a presence of sorts, as some people do still use it round my way. I always audit my referrals and what I have noticed this year is a significant increase in patients using google to find me. Another interesting thing is that increasing the profile of my ad by upgrading to a larger full colour ad and subscribing to yell.com made absolutely no difference to the number of referrals over the past 2 years. So next year I am dropping down to a very basic listing in the paper directory only, and using the savings to improve my practice website.
I tend to get at least 2 or 3 new referals a week from the yellow pages, which makes it gret value for money as my monthy subscription is only £12 !! The only problems i have is with the pushy sales staff who will try to confuse you with sales jargan. Stick to the basics!
guess it also really depends on your location too. my area has a lot of new retirees, which sort of cancels them out in regards to local knowledge and word of mouth, so for these patients the yellow pages works. also depends on how big an area your yellow pages cover, some area codes are smaller than others, or your clinic may be right on the border of two area codes, meaning you may have to advertise in two copies. for me, yes they work.....
When I first set up after qualifying, Yellow pages was a good source of new patients for me. A few years down the line I moved further up country to a fairly affluent area. I started up a clinic from scratch and advertised in Yellow pages and also a local glossy publication "xxx Life" . To my amazement, most of my new patients came from the glossy publication. I only had the occasional one from yellow pages.
So different areas for me, required different approach to advertising.
I've found that Yellow Pages is a reliable source of referrals, and has increased now I've changed from a black/white ad to a colour ad (I haven't become too extravagnat - only 2 colours). I've also taken up the Yell.com ad, but so far, I'm unsure of how beneficial that's going to be, and as Tim said above I've found more people finding me via a google search.
But this all still goes hand in hand with "word of mouth", which personally I don't think you can beat.
I have grown a very busy practice over the past 6 years and word of mouth has always been our major source of referral. Since the EPC was implimented though, allot of our new patient referrals come from GPs.
However I have always carried out Yellow pages advertising and from the feedback I get, it's worth while. I have to say though, after just forking out $6500 in total for adds in three Yellow pages areas this year, I think I will be scaling it down a little next year. I'm going to put more resources into a web site instead.
On our new patient forms we always ask how the patient heard of us. A bundle of new patient palliatives come from the yellow pages. Our biomechanical referrals usually all come through GP, orthopaedic surgeons, other health providers or satisified patients. I think taking the time to network with other health providers is the best advertising you can do (depending on how large the city is where you work!)
I advertised with yellow pages, a small box - they did interest free monthly payments - I only need one patient a month to pay for ad. Plus I also get free entry in yell.com. Also use local newspaper - both seem to bring in some business, then word of mouth from these folk increase numbers
Until............. The new edition of Yellow Pages arrived that is!
I changed my ad. this year to be included in the SoCPs corporate advertising box within the page heading: Chiropodists & Podiatrists. You know the one, those clinicians using the PROTECTED TITLES.
<sigh> I was surprised to find that within the pages (page 222 Barnsley, Doncaster & Rotherham ed.) titled 'Chiropodists & Podiatrists' was an advert for a gentleman advertising:
'FOOT CARE'
Gentlemans name & the following letters: GCSCh, MAFHP
A Totally Mobile Service.
**SEE ADVERT IN FOOT HEALTH SECTION**
Tel: etc.
I checked the HPC register & no the chap was not on it.
There is however a lage, bold print HPC 'Helpful info.' advert on the same page.
I rang them & they gave me the usual blarney about send them the ad. (done).
Is it me or is this really a problem?
I am interested in anyones toughts.
Many thanks,
Mandy.
__________________
:)
twirly
Mandy Brooks
Brooks Podiatry
S64 0DE
Suffering a fondness for odd things.
I don't think Yellow pages care that much beyond getting their money. Perhaps if enough of their other advertisers complained they may do something for the next issue. However it is already out there so they are not going to mulch and reprint the latest issue. That means you have a year to go with this guy advertising under false pretenses.
In our state there are many display advertisements for Podiatrists the largest costing $25,000. There does not seem to be near as much for Physiotherapists here or Podiatrists in other state Yellow pages. We do a bold listing only but also advertise online. We ask every new client where they "first" heard about us. We then also ask them about who referred them. Less than 1% say yellow pages as you would expect. However even if we had the biggest advert it would have little impact amongst all the other adverts. We have put our money and effort into our own website and our own quarterly glossy magazines.
__________________
********************************
Steve Manning
Director - Runner - Podiatrist Intraining Running Centre Intraining Running Injury Clinic
33 Park Road Milton Qld 4064 AUSTRALIA
07. 3367 3088 www.intraining.com.au
footman@intraining.com.au
Is Yellow Pages advertising any good?
The new edition of Yellow Pages arrived that is! 
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