Is Yodle right for your business?
Yodle, I got this advertising company on my radar a few month now and I just decided the other day to review them in detail the product and service they offering and how it may help business get exposed to customer who looking for their product or services.
Yodle advertising is like Oodle classified network and Google Adword mixed up all together to create a perfect advertising dish. Going through the description of what they do I couldn’t avoid noticing some wording that just didn’t add up. If you look at the statement below you will notice that they claiming over one billion local searches take place every month online and the number is growing over 50% yearly.
Let’s do the math, estimated 300 million people in the US. Assuming everyone are adult and owns a computer, all 300 million people would have to make three local searches for the month to justify one billion local searches per month.
Please correct me if I’m reading this wrong but in any case most company will push the numbers so their company looks good.
“Today, your potential customers are using the Yellow Pages less – and searching the Internet more to find your services. In fact, over one billion local searches take place every month online – and this number is growing over 50% every year!”
Yodle offers a one stop advertising shopping for companies who are looking for online exposure for their business, Yodle service in my opinion would be best suitable for people who don’t have the know how or time to run an online advertising campaign or managing 4 or even 6 advertising going on on different advertising network.
With A Yodle advertising, they will advertised your business on all major search engine network like Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com. Rrunning advertising campaign on these network can be very time consuming and tiring jumping from network to networking running and monitoring your advertising and their performance, why not outsource this job.
One other service Yodle provides which they call Persuade Your Prospects, it is basically a landing page which your potential customer will visit first. It is an introduction website that basically introduces your company info, about us, product and service, contact us and other information that will introduce your company to the internet.
At a glance my first objection was why do I need a website if I already have one and why would anyone want to spend money they don’t have to if such service will not help or do you much good. I’m an open minded person and I like to look at things in detail before I cast judgment or discarded any info, so I click on some example of “Persuade Your Prospects” website they got to see whats its all about.
Looking on the examples and I notice that the information is very simple and straight to the point, its like ABC and 123 to the point. I like this introductory approach of Persuade Your Prospects because it’s not overwhelming with information that making what you are looking for hard to find.
On a final note I think Yodle is a good choice when promoting your business, especially if you don’t have the experience and time or just need a kick start to help driving traffic to your business.
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The problem with Yodle is that their customers are only RENTING their internet marketing presence.
Any local business that wants to be serious about their internet marketing needs to own their domain name, accounts, and the data contained within.
If a business is unhappy with Yodle (I know many that are) they lose EVERYTHING if they choose to discontinue service.
If they owned the accounts, etc… they could easily shop and try out other agencies.
From my 10+ years of experience and the disturbing personal experiences I’ve had with them, I don’t think Yodle is right for anyone.
Very useful info you provided and thanks for it. Some information that can be useful when making a decisions to used a company product or service can’t be determine until product or service is used which you have shine some light on.
One thing I have notice and didn’t see the need for is the “Persuade Your Prospects web page” I would guess that your advertising money will be used to advertised this Persuade your Customer web page which yodle logo and information will be all over, why not just advertised your own website instead of a landing page for your website.
The people at yodle are smart, doing this will create many back link and free advertising they don’t have to pay for. Why I didn’t think of this?
David,
As a matter of fact when you leave yodle (for whatever reason) you certainly get to keep your site and all it’s contents if you so choose. Yodle can even continue to only host your sight for a nominal fee each month or you could switch your domain to network solutions or godaddy or something.
I can respect a company needing to stand on it’s own two legs especially as a small business grows to become a larger one. Let’s not forget you’re mostly paying for the service not the products and you certainly can’t deny that for a doctor, lawyer or dentist who doesn’t have the time or interest in studying marketing or internet technology these services are great to help build and hone a successful internet marketing strategy. What’s more, they teach you along the way.
In short, Yodle will help your small business grow and remain successful until you are ready to create your own internal internet marketing capacities.
Not everyone has success at Yodle but they do have a 90% retention rate, 1/3rd of their clients come from referrals and a 700% year over year growth rate… all things considered: they’re doing somethings right… and everything else theyre doing better.
…
Taffe3000,
The adversites and custom sites yodle builds are designed to separate traffic from your site and the yodle site- the idea is to track separately the success of the investment. For exampe, the phone numbers will be different on the two sites.
Best regards fellas,
The Yodler
Unlike Dave above, I think Yodle does a good job.
They’re approach is better than their competitors. They put more energy in converting web site visitors into calls and web leads (exactly what a small biz wants).
Yodle like any service is not for everyone but it does make sense for a lot of SMBs out there. To say it’s not right for anyone is a little short sighted.
As you stated, managing campaigns across multiple networks is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time and Yodle, like Dave and myself helps companies that cant afford to waste the time doing it.
Re: the landing pages…
Most SMB’s websites are poorly designed to convert site visitors to phone calls or web leads. Most search engine traffic to SMB sites bounce, or leave without taking any action.
So what yodle does (which is the same thing i do and i think dave does something similar as well) is build these landing pages which are built in such a way that they are more likely to convert. So the advertiser sees a greater return on their search marketing budget. The landing page thing makes sense is is nothing about back links (from what I can tell).
Thanks guys for the additional information on Yodle, you really painted a clear and positive picture about Yodle, I can now see a service that can be very useful for a company that looking to expand into the online world or a already established business looking to outsource some of its online marketing.
At first, I did have a little negative view on the landing page but from the additional explanation, I can see a productive benefit the landing page can have to a business and the main website that can be linked to the landing page.
Thanks for the feedback on Yodle and I hope the best for the company, I will keep checking on Yodle progress.
Anthony,
Anthony, thank you for the writeup on Yodle. I am a member of the Yodle team and have recently become aware of negative comments about Yodle on this web site. The internet is great way for consumers to get unbiased information about products and services and it is a policy of Yodle to never intervene except for cases when significant factual errors are made that may confuse our customers. The error in question is the post claiming Yodle does not allow clients to keep their websites and domain names if they choose to stop advertising. This is not the case, as our policy is that Yodle transfers all files and website ownership upon suspension of advertising. We also enable customers to keep their web site and directory listings through Yodle for a nominal monthly fee.
I strongly support the need to have unbiased information available to consumers, but I also support the need for full disclosure of the source of the information. Please note that that the posts made in this article are from a small competitor of Yodle and while we welcome competition in all shapes and sizes, we want to make sure only the facts are used when comparing us to any company.
Coming off a year with 700% growth, we continue to grow month over month in these tough economic times. The reason is simple – we deliver transparent results to our clients that translate into dollars in their pocket. Thanks again for writing and starting the discussion.
Mike DeLuca
@Mike DeLuca,
Well, because of the slow down of the economy and sales on my other website, I decided to start this blog for business people alike to discuss marketplace and other business opportunities.
Yodle is on my list of a few 100 website to review and discuss and to see how product and service can be beneficial for upcoming business, I didnt have any intention of negative posting towards Yodle or anything unbiased so I did welcome the comment of someone who claim they have used the service to share their experience.
I was really turned off from Yodle when the first post stated content could not be taken or transferred to other service, so it’s a good thing you guys catch the post to clarify those misconception.
I’m doing search engine advertising on MSN, Google, Yahoo, Bidvertiser and Adbrite just to name a few. If your price is right and within my budget, your service could save me time and money which would also reduce the amount of time I spent looking at the computer screen damaging my eyes.
I will check Yodle over the weekend to see how it can help my business expand and increase online exposure.
Anthony,
Anthony, I wish you the best of luck with this new venture and hope we can all get out of this downturn sooner than later. I am more than happy to help you out or at least explain to you what exactly we do so that you can make the best decision for your business. Feel free to ask for me directly and I will insure you have the proper person to work with.
Mike
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