Do’s & Don’ts With Yellow Page Marketing

Although the usage of the internet for search marketing is growing, a significant number of leads can still be obtained by using an effective print yellow page ad.  Here are some do’s and don’ts when building your print directory ads.

Yellow Page Marketing Do’s

1.  Do use a benefit driven headline. Your headline is most likely the most important part of any print ad.  You should spend 75% of your time crafting a remarkable headline compared to the design of the rest of the ad.  Your headline will draw your prospect in and get them to read the rest of the copy.

2.  Do use bulleted lists. Be sure to list benefits rather than features.  Be careful not to use industry words and phases that some people may not understand.

3.  Do explain how you are different from your competitors. Prospects looking in a print directory are trying to make a choice.  Help them to choose your business by stating very clearly why they should do business with you.

4.  Do use images in your ad. Choosing the right images for your ad will help attract attention.  Use images that depict the benefit your prospect will receive from doing business with you.

5.  Do use professionals. If you depend on business from the yellow pages, it may be advantageous to hire professionals to write the copy for your ad and to do the layout and design.  You can use a local marketing agency or you can look for a copy writer on Elance.com.  For the design, you can submit a contest to 99designs.com or croudspring.com.  This way you get many ideas to choose from.  You only need to pay for this once.  After you have the professional copy and design, you can have your local yellow page graphic artists tweek it in the future.

Yellow Page Marketing Don’ts

1.  Don’t list more that one phone number in your ad.  More than one number just confuses people.  List one phone number and set up any other phone’s for the business to forward to that number.  If this is too difficult then set up a Google Voice number that will ring to all the numbers at the same time or you can program it to forward to certain numbers at certain times.’

2.  Decide what action you want the customer to take and make it clear in your ad. Most yellow page advertisers want phone calls.  In that case make the phone number large and noticeable.  In some cases, if the ad above yours has a phone number that is small and hidden, the ad with the large phone number below will get the calls from prospects thinking it is one large ad.  Sometimes businesses want customers to come to their business rather than get a call.  Many business owners know that they are much more likely to convert a prospect to a customer if they come into their business.  If this is the case, be sure that you invite the customer to visit and prominently list your address and a map if you can.  In other cases you may want customers to visit your website.  Your print yellow page ad in limited by space, however, you have infinite space on your website to explain your unique business attributes.  Again, make your website address prominent.  Also, you don’t necessarily need to list your main website address in your ad.  See my post on landing pages for an in depth explanation of this technique.

3.  Don’t put the name of your business at the top of the ad. In most cases prospects do not care what the name of your business is.  Yellow pages is not the place to try to build brand awareness.  Save that for other forms of media.

4.  Don’t copy what your competitors say in their ads. It is very tempting to look at the other ads in your heading and feel that you need to list the same items because you provide those things too.  The key is to stand out from your competitors.  You can’t do this if your ad says the same things and just has a different logo.

5.  Don’t forget about the white pages. They say it cost 6 times more to acquire a new customer versus getting an existing customer to do business with you.  Make it easy for your existing customers to find your information.  Business cards get misplaced or tossed in the trash all the time.  Most directories allow you to place ads in the white pages where your listing will appear.  Make sure you include answers to frequently asked questions in your white page ad.  Some of the most common questions would be business hours, location information, and of course list your website address.

I hope this helps you with your local directory advertising.  If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below.