When my friend Margaret Fox looks for addresses and phone numbers on the WEB and does not even know where her phone book is, it is time for the small businessperson to reconsider how much they are spending on their Yellow Pages ads. Margaret is a well-known cookbook author, former restaurateur and a successful businessperson but she is not an early adopter for computer technology. Yet she goes to her computer for this information. Her computer habits reflect the mainstream of the non-technical public. So for a small businessperson, there are several lessons.

1. Make sure that you take advantage of every free listing on the internet. Try a Google search for your business’s general category and your geographic area. See what comes up. If you are not on every free listing site, get there.

2. If your WEB site is not on the first page of the search results, see a WEB professional for help to get it there. If you do not yet have a WEB site, at least get help to create a single page site with your address and phone number so the public can find you.

3. Finally reconsider how much you are spending on those expensive phone book ads. The phone book might not be dead, but it is mostly lost and getting dusty.