Page 137 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

101 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

52 Making the most of Yellow Pages advertising

Yellow Pages advertising is without doubt very effective.
Most businesses need to be featured in the Yellow Pages
but many resent having to put an advertisement in this
publication.

I know a lot of companies that only advertise in the
Yellow Pages—it’s their entire marketing budget. If this is
the case you need to be certain that it is going to work.
Most advertisements in the Yellow Pages are hastily put
together, often difficult to read and sometimes confusing.

First, if you are going to go to the effort and expense
of putting an advertisement into the Yellow Pages, pay the
extra money and get a graphic artist to design the adver-
tisement. Make it easy to read and have a good heading.
If possible include a photograph of a person (research shows
that advertisements with people have a much higher success
rate than those without).

Your telephone number doesn’t need to be enormous—it
is after all a telephone book so the customer knows that
your phone number will be in the advertisement somewhere.

Put a wide border around the advertisement, leave
plenty of space around your message and perhaps even
include a 100 per cent money back guarantee to further
encourage the customer to call you.

Further to this, I always encourage businesses to take
the biggest advertisement they can afford. To monitor the
success of your advertisement, why not get a phone con-
nected with a number unique to the Yellow Pages advertis-
ement so that you will know exactly how many calls you
receive each week.

The continual debate over whether to go for a colour
advertisement or not is probably up to you. If you have a
good, clean advertisement with plenty of space around the
edges you don’t need colour. I also believe that the extra cost
is better spent on upgrading the size of your advertisement.

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