Here are ten ways that people are using the yellow pages these days:

10. To stand on to change a light bulb

9. To discipline children

8. To use as a coaster

7. To use as toilet paper on a camping trip

6. To start a fire

5. To use as guinea pig bedding

4. As a booster seat for your child while eating at the dinner table

3. To gather dust in the closet

2. To use as a door stop

1. To blow their marketing budget and in return get a bunch of phone calls from companies with ten people that want coffee and vending services.

I chat with a lot of owners of vending companies around the country on a daily basis and I hear the same thing day in and day out. “We are spending a lot of money with the yellow pages each month. Even though we are getting no phone calls we want to be there just in case. “  Talk about throwing your money into the wind.

The yellow pages were a great way to get people to call you several years ago. Nowadays when people want to find a local vending or office coffee company the majority of people go online and search.

If you are currently spending money on the yellow pages I seriously encourage you to sit down one day and pour your self a cup of coffee and start thinking about how much money you are spending and think about the results you are getting. Do you think you are getting your monies worth. If not, you might want to consider putting that money into either pay per click or pay a web designer that much money to add content to your website each month with an emphasis on SEO.

In summary you need to be spending money on marketing and the key is to measure your results. If you are putting money into the yellow pages and you feel you are getting a return then keep spending. If not take that money and do something else with it. In my opinion yellow page marketing money should be replaced with a full court press to court customers online. That full court press should be a well designed website with monthly updates. When I say monthly updates I mean updates to build out your site to add more pages that when properly coded will come up on the search engines and help hook a customer in.

Having a professionally designed website is going to help you in many ways. Not only will it be found by prospective companies searching for vending companies but you will also be able to direct people to it by the way of direct postcard mailings, leaving your business card and asking the customers to check out your site when they get a chance and also after a appointment your potential customer can check out your website to reconfirm some of the things you went over in the meeting with them.

For more information on tips and tricks to help you win more vending and coffee accounts please visit my website at  www.vendcentral.com