The Book of Boredom, Yawn and Drab: Are You Making These Nine Fatal Mistakes in Your Yellow Pages Ads?

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Apart from the major downside of the Yellow Pages, that it is nipplepiercingly expensive, it is still a bottomachingly brilliant vehicle to take your marketing message to your target audience. Well, some people think, the YP is on its way out, and I totally agree, but I believe it has a few more years of marching to do until it completely vanishes into thin air or even into a puff of smoke.

The good news is that people who look you up in the Yellow Pages are very serious buyers. They need what you sell right now. So, when they contact you, you are in for a very short buying cycle. And that is a great advantage. However, this advantage comes at a price tag and a pretty high level of commitment from your end. The good news is that...

Some 97% of the Yellow Pages Ads Are Duds

Just look up the YP in any category. All the ads look exactly the same. No difference. Not a sausage. You can shift the company names between ads and you see that they all do the same thing the same way. There is no differentiation. They are like teenagers: They so desperately try to be different from everyone else that they end up looking and behaving exactly the same way as everyone else. Hm.

So, where is the problem with all those YP ads?

First Let's Look at Some YP Stats

• The Yellow Pages reach 76% of the population in the average month, 57% in the average week, and 17% daily. Adults refer to the Yellow Pages almost twice per week, or approximately 19 billion times per year.

• 88% of these references result in contact with a purchase or an intent to purchase.

• Because the Yellow Pages is a reference medium, like classified ads in newspapers, providing over 50% of new clients.

• 52% of potential clients either have no service provider in mind, or have multiple names in mind when they see your Yellow Pages ad. Your ad can clarify one name for them: Yours.

• The average business gets $6 in profit for every $1 invested in Yellow Pages advertising. With a good ad you can even beat that. But be aware of average. When the average temperature in a hospital is normal, it can also mean that half of the patients suffer from high fever and the other half are dead. The YP is the same. Some people make huge profits on their ads, and some curse the name of the person who invented the Yellow Pages. The interesting thing is that the idiots volunteer to lose on their ads rather than hiring a Yellow Pages specialist.

• The average cost of ½ page Yellow Pages display ad for one full year is over $15,000, so you had better know what you are doing.

• 81% of YP readers (potential clients) start at the beginning of the heading when they don't have a business name in mind.

• 66% of readers believe that a larger display ad indicates a more established, more realizable business. 70% look at the larger ads when they are not sure where to buy.

• 20% of readers want to see more information. Can you see why you need a website?

• 81% of readers make contact with the advertising business. 34% will contact a company they had never contacted before. How good are you at handling first contacts? Is your receptionist a minimum-wage bimbo from the bottom of the unemployment scum barrel or a true professional with the necessary communications skills? Also, I sincerely hope that you have something better than a "corporate voice mail labyrinth".

• 42% of people will contact two or more businesses. Remember the receptionist syndrome. Your receptionist brings you business. I don't care how good of a lawyer, engineer or gravedigger you are. Everything hinges on your receptionist. So, start appreciating and paying her properly. Believe it or not, she carries major "bankrupting power" over your business.

• For readers with both small and large directories in their homes, 38% will use the small book, 62% will use the large book, and 8% will reference multiple books. Maybe the lower cost of the small, local book is a good deal after all. There are over 4200 active headings in the yellow pages, and YP can create your own heading for you if needed. So, let's look at...

Ten Typical Yellow Pages Mistakes and They Can Be Avoided

1. Failing to do the necessary pre-placement planning: Typically when do business owners plan their Yellow Pages ads? Actually never, until they get a call from the YP rep, and they hand over their money to the rep and say they blindly trust the Yellow Pages' ad specialists to create the ad. Keep something in mind. The Yellow Pages doesn't care whether or not you make any business from your ad. With this in mind, what is the logic for the YP company to hire expensive ad specialists? Increasing overhead costs? No.
They will create an ad that looks exactly the same as all your competitors', so but your chance of being selected when potential buyers peruse your category is not much.
So, what to include in your pre-placement planning?

Some are...

• What results do you want to achieve from your ad?

• What is your Most Wanted Action? (Action you want your prospects to take?

• What proportion of your business do you expect to come from YP?

• Who is your target market?

• What is your biggest primary and secondary benefit?

• Do you have an offer both for "Ready to Buy" prospects and for prospects who are looking for more information?

• Which directories do you put your ad in?

2. Imitating the competition: Most YP advertisers are like teenagers: In their efforts of looking unique, they look exactly the same. Again, what happens when a business' YP ad comes up for renewal? The ad must be in within ten minutes, so the job gets dumped on a people who have never done advertising in their lives. They look up YP, copy one of the competitors' ads and place them. And retarded business owners all over the world fork out their hard-earned money for some braindead "me too" type ads. Here are the typical ways businesses imitate each other:

• The headline is replaced with the company name or logo.

• Benefits are replaced with product description. Hint: If you sell drills, advertise amazing holes, not drills. If you are a realtor, advertise quality of life not houses.

• Hours of business and location

• Company's slogan or mission

• "We take all credit cards"

And the normal reaction to all this rubbish is: "So what!?"

3. Failing to place ads under multiple categories: Most YP advertisers try to save money by placing their ads into one category only. The poor creatures spend a small fortune on their ads, but refuse to spend the extra few dollars to make sure they get maximum results.

4. Writing an ad that pleases you, while ignoring the buyer's self-interest: Most ads are "me" based: "Look what I want to sell you". They don't care about what buyers want to buy. Which only proves that so many companies totally don't understand their target markets and what they want. Just think of the hole and drill example. Don't get me wrong. I don't suggest extensive and expensive market research, but there are some cost-effective ways of testing the marketplace.

Just think about it. If you want to jump into the swimming pool, you just have to check it for water and temperature, and you are ready to swim at your heart's content. But you don't need to hire a team of experts to launch a full-blown research project on swimming pools, the science of concrete pouring and fluid dynamics. That's retarded but that what most companies do under the aegis of market research. Hint: How many people do you know who "research" their spouses before marrying them?

Don't waste your time and money researching the market. You will never get the true answers to your research. Instead of research, just keep testing the market. Then you find the true answer. You see Edison didn't research the light bulb. He tested his ideas over and over again, and then it worked out.

Before you place your YP, use some small ads in the local paper, or even better, use Google AdWords. Google can be your most trusted friend when it comes to testing your headlines and call for action.

5. Failing to consider the five main components of the ad.

1)  A kick-butt compelling headline: The headline is the ad for the ad. The headline alone can increase or reduce response rate by as much as 2100%. When you write your ad, you have to spend at least 80% of your time on the headline. 

6. Failing to position your company as a trusted resource: You have two options here: Either you compete with other advertisers by peddling your stuff, or position yourself as helpful resource and offer relevant information to aid your buyer's decision. Yes, most prospects who look you up in YP are "Ready to Buy" buyers, but it is still a nice and unique touch to offer some relevant information - and I am not talking about brochures or this kind of nonsense. I mean some valuable stuff, like a Special Report or Consumer's Guide. Imagine. Every ad in your section is screaming, "Give me your money". But you say, "We have valuable information for you that can save you time or money. For a free report, "Ten Deadly Mistakes Accountants Make When Handling Their Own Taxes" call us at xxx-xxx-xxxx or visit our website at www.xxxx.com." Now this is an attractive proposition.

With this approach your ad stands out like a trombonist in a heavy metal band. You make your ad different. You create a predisposition towards your company. You position yourself as the expert of the category. It makes you unique for you alone are doing it.

7. Failing to use other lead generation channels: The biggest problem is that you peg your future on one single channel of lead generation. It is like a one-legged table. While standing, it is fine, but when it collapses, then years and years of hard work can go down the toilet.

In order to get a steady stream of qualified sales leads, you need at least four channels of lead generation. One is your YP ad, but you need more, and I suggest that one channel is a properly structured website. I say properly structure because some 98% of all websites out there are total failures as lead generation channels.

All right. Some people say they have no intention to use their websites to bring in business. Then what is the point in having an expense in your business that is not producing? Would you have employees in your company who openly brag about their unwillingness to do any work? That is plain retarded.

8. Telling prospects they can find you in YP: Why would you direct your prospects to a competitive minefield that is riddled with ads (many of them are much better than yours) from your competitors who are desperate to see you out of business and starve to death, knowing that will give them more business? This may sound drastic, and it is. But this is the reality. Yes, your ad is in YP but you lose all of your advantages because all your competitors are promoting the same advantages. Your ad just blends into the competitive environment. Instead of guiding prospects to the Yellow Pages, guide them to your website. That is your home turf with no competition.

9. Failing to track responses. Over the years of writing Yellow Pages ads and organising campaigns for clients I have seen this over and over again. And do you know where this logic comes from. From large ad agencies that try to convince their clients that ads can't be traced and tracked, and that clients just have to fork out the dough and then fly blind. Originally I studied engineering, so for me everything must be traceable and trackable, and this habit has served me nicely over the years. Just figure out how to track your responses and don't believe the ad agencies. Hey, have you thought why most ad agencies use door-to-door peddlers to sell their services? Maybe because they are pretty lousy at advertising their own stuff and they have to resort to traditional prospecting grunt work. Just a thought really...

So, we have covered some ground here. Make sure you implement these nine points in your Yellow Pages ads, and you will see a big difference.

If you need some further help, then you can avail yourself to my guide on writing Yellow pages ads. From this guide you discover:

• Why some 97% of Yellow Pages ads are duds?

• Why to ignore most of the YP agent's advice?

• Five things to do before starting designing your ad

• The vital three elements of a good headline

• The relationship between size and ROI - Size does matter... at least here

• How to use pictures in your ad

• The strategic use of colours

• How to test your ad before placing them

• How to track your responses

• An a to z template for crafting your Yellow Pages advertisement