Some solos say advertising in the Yellow Pages is still worth it
Photo of Kyra Payne by Savero Truglia.
Kyra Payne believes that when people browse through the Chicago Yellowbook in search of a lawyer, they’ll stop when they see her smiling face at the bottom of page 671 and pick up the phone.
“I’ve had people say, ‘I like your picture. You look like someone who will take care of me,’ ” says Payne, a Chicago estate-planning attorney.
Potential clients may not be sold on a friendly photo alone, but Payne still believes the Yellow Pages are a vital marketing tool for longtime solo practitioners such as herself. “I’m kind of a dinosaur,” she says. “I don’t think people are always going to look someone up on the Internet. Sometimes people just want to go old school and pick up the Yellow Pages. That’s why I continue to use them.”
Though about 80 percent of Payne’s business comes through referrals, she says she may get 10 to 15 clients a year through her one-eighth-page advertisement, for which she pays about $500 a month.
Payne has been advertising in the Yellow Pages for more than 20 years. For the kinds of clients she has, whom she describes as “mature,” it works. But like many other lawyers out there, she also has a webpage, albeit a spare one. And that seems to be how many lawyers are going—maintain an ad in the Yellow Pages, but have a presence on the Web.
Click here to read the rest of “Going Old School” from the October issue of the ABA Journal.
