Yellow pages are dead, or so they say. They are the gurus. Off the top of my mind I can think of Ryan Deiss. Sure, he had something to sell that’s why he was making that claim.

Don’t get me wrong, he is a great guy and I am subscribed to his Digital Marketer e-newsletter (it is packed with great content, so get a subscription, it is less than $60 for a year.

On the other side one of his mentors – Dan Kennedy says that the death of Yellow Pages is exaggerated. So the question is -who do you trust?

My answer is both. See, the 20 something kids probably don’t know what YP  is. They have all the information in  the world in their pocket – I am talking about their internet enabled smart-phones.

On the other side – the other day I got the Chicago edition of Yellow Pages and get that – it has 740 pages. But that’s not all. On the front cover one of the featured advertisers is mySimon.com.

That’s right – a website advertises in Yellow pages (and they are not alone in their attempt to market offline, Google itself has done direct mail to promote their Google AdWords program).

YP still has its audience – people over certain age prefer it to search engines when looking for plumbers, carpet cleaners or Chicago cosmetic surgeons.

For that reason every smart marketer needs to take advantage of both – to promote their business online with seo and search engine marketing and generate leads offline with ads in Yellow Pages.

These days it is so easy to track what works and what doesn’t (with Google Analytics you can track offline campaigns – imagine that!!!).

However, there are certain principles of online and direct marketing that every business owner should be aware of before start spending money.

My recommendation is to start at www.DanKennedy.com (that’s what I did a few years ago and I can confidently say that’s one of the best decisions I have ever made to become a better marketer – both online and offline).