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Internet Yellow Pages and your Catering Business
The Power of Local Advertising for Caterers
SuperPages
CitySearch
Yelp
YahooLocal
InsiderPages
YellowPages.com
BizJournals
AreaConnect
MagicYellow
SwitchBoard
Preserving the Momentum as a Super Duper Caterer
About Catering Supplies Depot


To be known as a good caterer and to make your presence felt in your community is a task which demands great patience and hard work. However, the mission is by no means Herculean. We strive for quality and cost effectiveness. Therefore, if you help to make a birthday party or a wedding memorable, if you provide quality service for a reasonable price, customers will be grateful. They won’t hesitate to recommend you to others. This way, your services are being advertised based on the quality of service you deliver. Remember that quality always tends to speak for itself.

There are many other ways through which you can make your catering company’s presence felt in your community. These include the traditional media outlets, print advertising and event sponsorships. This white paper takes you beyond traditional media advertising and attempts to provide you with some insights into this important aspect of your catering business with particular focus on advertising locally. This has become the trend of the times as more and more companies turn to their respective communities for long-term sustenance.

Internet Yellow Pages and your Catering Business
The cost of traditional print and broadcast media advertising has dropped a notch or two in the recent past owing to reduced demand. However, it still continues to remain beyond the reach of many small businesses and start-ups. Internet Yellow Pages can prove to be a winner in this regard because advertising on IYPs, as they are also called, means that you are reaching a global and local audience simultaneously through the Internet. While you may not think you need to reach beyond your local community, consider the increase in business available from out of town customers. Any business setting up an off site meeting will need catering and what better place to start than using the IYPs. Perhaps a family reunion or vacation encompassing extended family is in the offing and catering services are required. With a listing on the IYPs, your catering company will have an opportunity to capture this business, extending your customer base significantly. What makes this advertising avenue even more interesting and bottom-line friendly is the fact that much, if not most of it, is free at least for now. Therefore, it may not be a bad idea to register on as many free IYP websites as possible, serve up the advertising for your local catering business, and hope that you are grandfathered in when these services go live in a paid reincarnation. We introduce you to ten paid and free IYP websites in this white paper to get you started on your “Total Local Mission!”

The Power of Local Advertising for Caterers
You can advertise both globally and locally by creating two distinct identities on the Internet. However, let’s analyze the possibility of local advertising since it is the beginning of the expansion of every business. Local advertising helps you to expand your business locally. It gives you a superb foundation from where you can build your business and expand it beyond your community. After all, we all have to start from somewhere and Rome most certainly wasn’t built in a day. Customers, especially when it comes to catering services, prefer to receive service from their own communities rather than from out-of-town service providers. If your advertisement doesn’t appear on a local search results page of a search engine which an average person surfs, you are at a distinct disadvantage. This white paper brings to you an information-packed and annotated list of ten paid and free Internet Yellow Pages websites which will definitely boost your revenue model in record time by helping you ramp up to the Internet Yellow Pages revolution currently sweeping the nation’s small business segment. It will also put you on the local results pages of Google and Yahoo because it is these websites the major search engines use to build and index local listings. In part two of this white paper, we will introduce you to ten more IYP websites so that you can further enhance your local presence and have all your bases covered.

SuperPages
URL: http://www.superpages.com
Status: Free and Paid

The website claims that most of its visitors visit the website not to browse, but to purchase the services and products. This is a website which allows free business listings. With the help of some estimates of past achievements, this website claims to give you quality leads. It provides pay per click advertisements also with some advanced features. Pay per click is an advertising model in which you pay only if a website visitor chooses to click on your online advertisement. It allows you to control your budget also by changing the price of a click as you wish. This is one of the most popular and heavily trafficked IYP websites on the Internet. Like all the IYP websites this white paper lists, this website too requires you to register.

CitySearch
URL: http://www.citysearch.com
Status: Paid

CitySearch is a group of websites which allows you to advertise with the help of video. Video ads are the trend of the day. Even though you have to pay to advertise on this site, it will never be a loss since your advertisement remains for long in the minds of customers. This will help you to gain and preserve customer loyalty.

Yelp
URL: http://www.yelp.com
Status: Free

Yelp is a local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guide. It provides comprehensive information about the important cities in the US. There is amazing information on the places to visit, celebrations and a host of other channels. It also allows you to update your internet yellow pages free of cost.

YahooLocal
URL: http://local.yahoo.com
Status: Free

Yahoo provides you with free local advertising. It allows you to add descriptive information about your company also. There is no need to use keywords to advertise here although using your niche keywords in your listing is always a great idea. You can upgrade your business free of cost to enhance your customer base. With its global base, YahooLocal can be a perfect choice especially for those caterers who cater to the needs of large international conventions and conferences.

InsiderPages
URL: http://www.insiderpages.com
Status: Free

InsiderPages is yet another platform for mostly free local advertising. This is a place where people share their views about local business. Through the recommendations of friends and neighbors, it allows customers to find what they need. The website gives you a chance to update your business listing free of cost. If you want social media and Web 2.0 to work for you with very little effort, this is the website to check out.

YellowPages.com
URL: http://www.yellowpages.com
Status: Free

YellowPages.com helps you gain a foothold in your community. Known as Creative e-world, this portal helps you stay ahead of others in the competition. With the help of the necessary expertise and e-marketing skills, this site helps you to make your online presence known and gives your traditional advertisement a fresh look. The website has a clean look and categories are arranged logically.

BizJournals
URL: http://www.bizjournals.com
Status: Paid

BizJournals helps you to make your presence felt in your local community. The website caters exclusively to US businesses. We are directing you to this informative press release first which you should read after which you can register for free extra services.

AreaConnect
URL: http://www.areaconnect.com
Status: Free

AreaConnect is an exciting group of websites, a search tool which helps customers link to a good local merchant. The motto of the site is: “Find what you need faster...” This website works with its partners to produce quality results.

MagicYellow
URL: http://www.magicyellow.com
Status: Free

To advertise on MagicYellow is simple. You simply need to complete an online form about your catering business, and a representative will contact you. It’s free of cost. This website provides the facility of a searching tool also. If your advertisement appears on the top pages of other search engines like Yahoo and Google, you will be listed here so that the customer doesn’t have to come to the site directly.

SwitchBoard
URL: http://www.switchboard.com
Status: Free and Paid

SwitchBoard connects national advertisers with both local merchants and consumers. SwitchBoard provides its services both nationwide and statewide. It is of the view that no merchant is so small that it cannot pay for services. If leveraged intelligently, the website can generate excellent results.

Preserving the Momentum as a Super Duper Caterer
Listing your catering business on these Internet Yellow Pages websites will involve both time and effort on your part. The rewards, however, could be rich especially since more and more people are turning to the Internet for answers about everything that matters. The use of mobile technologies to access the Internet has also gained immense popularity and you no longer need to own a desktop or a laptop to access the Internet. Given this set of circumstances, taking the time between catering assignments to submit and update your company listing to these websites may eventually emerge as the most productive form of advertising you have tried so far. We invite you to read part two of this white paper in which we introduce you to ten more free and paid IYP websites complete with annotated listings, descriptions and access information.

About Catering Supplies Depot
Catering Supplies Depot provides a full range of brand name commercial kitchen equipment including all types of catering supplies and catering equipment, commercial restaurant equipment and kitchen supplies. We carry all the top brands, provide courteous customer service and deliver nationwide in the US and Canada. To learn more you can call us toll free1-866-613-2632, or write to customerservice@cateringsuppliesdepot.com. Visit: http://www.cateringsuppliesdepot.com for the most exclusive range of catering equipment, catering supplies, restaurant equipment, restaurant supplies and commercial kitchen equipment on the Internet.