The Borrell Associates report, “Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages,”  projected a $5 billion decline in print directory advertising in the next 5 years. Our latest survey of retail and restaurant owners certainly doesn’t do anything to dissuade that opinion. When asked, “What has the biggest impact on your businesses ability to attract new customers?”, only 1% of the retail and restaurant owners and managers we surveyed said it was the YP.

Although word of mouth is far and away the most important factor across all businesses, digging a little deeper into the data,  it is even more important among small businesses with 90% saying it most impacts customer acquisition.  Interestingly, the results seem to indicate that larger businesses have a greater reliance on discounts and coupons while medium size companies rely more on traditional advertising - but across all segments, one thing is clear, businesses recognize positive word of mouth is critical to attracting new customers.