So many IYP's. How to choose

nickle and dime us to death

[JeremyL]

I am doing some local promotion for a local home builder. This is the list of IYP's I have come up with. After looking into most of them, I have to ask myself, which are actually worth using. If I used them all, we would be nickle and dimed to death. With over 25 communities / locations, the cost per IYP becomes pretty high. This is my list.

SuperPages.com – (From: Self Serve)
AOL Yellow Pages – (From Self Serve & Google Adwords)
SwitchBoard.com – (From: Self Serve & Google Adwords & iNest)
BestRedYP.com (aka Sprint) – (From: Self Serve)
CitySearch.com – (From: Self Serve & Yahoo)
YellowPages.com – (From: Self Serve)
Dexonline.com – (From: Self Serve)
RealPages.com – (From: Self Serve)
SmartPages.com – (From: Self Serve)
YellowBook.com – (From: Self Serve)
YP.com – (From: Self Serve)
WorldPages.com – (From: Self Serve)
InfoSpace.com – (From: SuperPages.com & Overture)

I listed to the right, where they get their ppc and upgraded listings from. So my question is, who do the local gurus recommend. Note I am in the Dallas / Fort Worth area.

[Chicago]

Jeremy, I have written a couple of articles on this topic in the past but can't seem to find them right now. Here is my quick list:

1. Check the SERPs (this is critical) -- is one of those IYPs (IYP Categories) showing up for your targeted keyword phrases organically on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. You can benefit from organic IYP distribution.

2. Regionalization - IYPs are used disporportionaly on the basis of geography. Who is your phonebook provider? You should direct dollars to the regional bell operating company that is dominate in your marketplace.

2. Category density - how dense is the competition within particular categories. If your ad is going to show on page 2 or 3, forget about it. Try to locate categories that might have been overlooked by competition.

In my opinion, you should forget about the following for a paid listing:

BestRedYP.com
YP.com
WorldPages.com
InfoSpace.com

And in terms of choosing between RealPages, SmartPages, DEX, and Superpages, consider my second point. I don't think for example that DEX has much users in Dallas.

AOL, Switch and YellowPages.com are national players - switch and yellow in particular represent affordable inventory and there are some deals to be had on yellow right now with Smart and Real distribution (merger). Switch for the the past couple of years has been by far the most effectively placed pure play IYP as far as organic distribution is concerned. Again study those serps.

AOL and Super YPs are excellent properties and should be considered amongst any shortlist. Super acts much less like a regional iyp and more like a national search engine these days with multiple buy types including ppc and a pure search environment.

Why did you leave out Y!YP?

There is a few more points, i will try to gather up more later.

[JeremyL]

Thanks for the input. And how I forgot to list Y!YP I have no clue. I'll probably end up running with our 2 local providers (Verizon / SBC) along with AOL and Y!. We'll see how the test run goes and go from there.

Any other info you have which you mentioned in the ending would always be apreciated too.