How to Improve Your Yellow Pages™

How to create a successful Yellow Pages ™ Ad

5 Biggest mistakes people make

There are some common mistakes that most businesses make when advertising in the Yellow Pages ™. The reason why these mistakes happen is because they have often been fed wrong information by well-meaning but misinformed people.

So check out these mistakes so you know what to avoid:

1. They craft their ad based on the advertising sales representative’s advice

Sales representatives (as well meaning as they may be) are paid to sell advertising space. They are experts at selling that space but they aren’t experts at creating ads that sell. Invariably, they will tell you to put your business name or logo in the headline, splash around a lot of colour and feature a large image.

In fact, they’ll tell every one of their customers the same thing. These initiatives DON’T work so PLEASE don’t use them.

2. Being a copy-cat

As advertising deadlines roll around and ad reps start applying the pressure to submit your artwork, many people start to panic. They then flick through the directory and look at what their competitors are doing.

They see that this year their major competitor now mentions X or Y feature in their ad. They see that they have started using a picture of a woman in their ad. Or a drawing of a big crane. So what do they do? They copy it. And what’s the result? And ad that isn’t very effective but looks exactly like their competitor’s ad. Copying initiatives that work is a great marketing

strategy but copying ads that don’t work, or ads that are mediocre, doesn’t make great business sense, does it?

3. Spend too much money on colour and too little money on size

The best investment you can make in Yellow Pages ™ advertising (assuming there are a number of competing ads in your classification) is to run a large ad. It’s far better to invest your money running a large ad than it is to run an ad with spot or full colour.

Thorough research shows that colour doesn’t significantly increase your responses yet size most definitely will.

Here’s another thing to consider …

If every ad is full colour and uses colour abundantly, which ad will stand out? The ad that DOESN’T feature colour or perhaps just features two colours instead of the whole range.

Having said that, if going colour gives you a position advantage in your classification (if they bump you up closer to the front if you go colour) THEN it’s worth considering.