Have you read George Demmer’s 6 secrets of successful Yellow Pages advertising?
To summarize:
- Choose the right size, based upon your budget and what your competition does. Toss the notion that a large ad translates into more leads. Everyone else’s ad matters more.
- Choose the right color, based upon the page your ad will appear. If other ads will be color, use black & white. If other ads use b&w, use color. Opt for a large size before color.
- Choose the right look. Use heavy lines, transparent images, little white space, etc. Ensure your ad looks modern and classy so people view it that way.
- Choose the right message. If your sales prospects were in a conference room with you, what would you say to them? Serious buyers use the Yellow Pages. Have a strong headline and lots of copy.
- Choose the right way. Hire a pro to design your ad; don’t fall for the in-house Yellow Pages people. A pro can design an ad that will generate more prospects–and sales–than the default designer.
- Choose the right followup. Begin tracking results on the first day the Yellow Pages is delivered. Ask your callers where they got your number. Survey your walk-in customers. Start planning for next year’s ad.
If you clicked that link, you already know these steps were published in the Ad-Network in March 1995.
Are you sure you want to follow this advice? Do you even look at the Yellow Pages anymore?
Some of it remains timely and parts can be transferable into online marketing. Right?
I have an assortment of Yellow Pages. I keep them in a drawer. I received them within months of moving into my apartment last year. I’ve never opened them until now, when I perused through a 360-page regional book, published by Verizon.
A few pages before the back of the book was this full-page Verizon ad:
You can click the image to zoom in. It talks about color ads being more effective than black and white ads, citing a 1997 study. The directory is dated March 2007. Need I say more?
Surprisingly, nearly half of 3,500 consumers ages 13 and up who participated in an Knowledge Networks online consumer panel earlier this year said they continue to research companies in the Yellow Pages:
- 77 percent turn to the print Yellow Pages for information, compared to 49 percent to search engines, 36 percent to online Yellow Pages, and 30 percent dial 411.
- Comparing ages, for every 157 people under age 35 who use a search engine, there are 113 people over age 35 who use the Yellow Pages.
- Teens are 52 percent as likely to use a search engine to look up a phone number than 48 percent using the Yellow Pages.
Go figure.
Perhaps low-budget advertising, from Yellow Pages to radio to newspapers, still works. None of the above would sway my purchase decisions, but maybe I’m the minority.
What do you think?
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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77% turn to Yellow Pages?! I find that hard to believe. The ads in phone books contain little useful information, and offer less entertainment value than billboards. I can’t even recall the last time I used a phone book. In fact, it irks me when new ones show up at my front door.
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It still has to be relatively expensive to advertise in the Yellow pages books, probably better for more local businesses. But the company themselves barely promote the books anymore. All commercials guide users to their website. I have to believe the online advertising would be cheaper, and that more companies, local and national should just advertise through them online and forget about the books. The company themselves should maybe think of reducing the number of books they send out cause its a huge waste of money and paper. Maybe develop and opt in system for the books to be delivered.
I bet the Yellow Pages folks thought their business would last forever. They had a monopoly for so long and were the main advertising tool for most local companies. That’s why they were able to charge such excessive rates. Hard to feel sorry for them.
The Yellow Pages story would make an interesting marketing case study, one that will soon likely feature these words for their business: THE END.
Ari, thanks for sharing. I would also be curious to see how these results would break out by business type or industry. While searching for pizza, a plumber, or any general home repair may still drive eyes to the Yellowpages, it blows me away how much money attorneys, doctors, florists, dentists, auto repair, and insurance throw away in there.
I know it is expensive to advertise in these books, and as someone said in another comment, the ads contain very little useful information. With many of these businesses you have to believe a person has already heard the name of the business somewhere, or by word-of-mouth has been directed to check them out. I would find it hard to believe with as much information available online, TV, or just by word-of-mouth people just flip open the ol’ YellowBook and start perusing.
I’m sure there are exceptions, but with what we are seeing online and the evolution of word-of-mouth called social media, marketers need to do a much better job of tracking their leads. It’s not good enough anymore to just think that something has always worked for you. These ads are not getting any cheaper, and the audience for them continues to shrink. Unfortunately, the marketers or people that need to read your post most likely will never know it even exists. They are still marketing in 1995, and have no clue how much free advice exists online to help their business. Amazing.
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Hard to believe the ATT Yel Pages people want to INCREASE my rate for my small little small-business AD for next year. Same AD not changing it at all. What kind of arrogant mentality do they have at that place to RAISE rates in this kind of economy.
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