Marketing with Yellow Pages
When times get tough, your marketing dollars need to be spent more wisely because you’re competing for fewer customers who are tighter with their wallets. Rather than cutting marketing from your budget, a mistake many business owners make, cut the fat from your marketing budget So its leaner but more effective.
A Yellow Page ad can be a very effective marketing tool for your business. Certain kinds of businesses benefit more than others from this type of marketing. If your business is only occasionally used by the public, such as a plumber, electrician, travel agent, attorney, bail bondsman, printer, auto mechanic, contractor, dentist, etc., your yellow page ad will be more effective than a business that is frequented very often by the public. I mean how often do you call your local grocery store for something? Not very often. But when the toilet is backed up and running over, you need a plumber and you need one RIGHT NOW! And where do you go? That’s right, the yellow pages.
Not long ago, I returned home from the office and I noticed a large yellow book lying in the driveway of my neighbor. I stopped, got out of my car for a closer look. I could’nt believe my eyes! The book was a Yellow Page directory that was being distributed in our residential area.
A few thousand businesses in the area had spent hard earned profits on Yellow Page advertisements for what? To be tossed on the driveway of potential users in February. How many books do you suppose were destroyed by inclement weather before the homeowner could retrieve it from their driveway?
How much value do you think the homeowners placed on those directories if the publisher placed no more value than to have them tossed on the driveway? Probably not very much.
You know what that means? If your ad was in that Yellow Page directory, your hard earned dollars was lying on a cold, wet driveway in February. Now how effective were those marketing dollars spent? That’s right, not very well.
When choosing which Yellow Page directories to market your business in, there are five in my area, you should also consider not just the cost but also how the publisher delivers the finished directory. Do they use the postal system to deliver them to residential areas or are they tossed in the driveways and yards?
Whether times are hard or not, your marketing dollars must be spent in the most effective manner. Don’t waste your money with a marketing company that places very little value on what you spend with them.
