Wow! It looks like Yellow Page advertising has opened up alot of interest! Here’s a little more for those of you interested in digging into it.
Display ads vs. In-column ads
You will see large display ads and smaller alphabetical ads. The display ads have logos, photos, additional colors of ink, and lots of information. The smaller alphabetical or in-column ads are placed in alphabetical order rather than by size. Eighty percent of all people who use the yellow pages look at the display ads first, while twenty percent of users look in the in-column ads for a business. You may think if 80% of users look in the display ads first, that is where your ad should be. Not necessarily. Display ads are much more expensive than in-column ads. If your market has 500,000 users, the 20% who look at the in column ads is still a huge number of potential customers. If you look at the alphabetical listing, you will often see a business has added an A, double A, or triple A before the business name. They do this to move their alphabetical ad to the front of the listings. For example, a business named Wallace Plumbing will be at the end of the alphabetical listings. Putting an ‘A’ in front of the businesses’ name moves his ad to the top of the alphabetical listings. Choose your business name carefully.
Display ads are much more expensive than in-column ads, but they deliver more users. The display ads are placed at the beginning of a heading such as Attorneys. The largest ads are first in the heading, followed by the next largest size, and then the third largest and so on. Seniority matters. In most cases, a businesses’ yellow page ad that has been advertising with that size ad for the longest period gets the first position in the heading. If the heading you want to advertise in has many full page ads, your full page ad will be behind all the other full page ads. The same applies for the second and third size ad and so on.
Creating an Effective Yellow Page Ad That Gets Results
Some categories or headings are more competitive and have more ads than other headings. Headings which are usually very competitive are plumbers, air conditioning and heating, Attorneys, Insurance, and in the last few years, plastic surgery. There are also headings that have very few ads such as doctors, consultants, and gasoline wholesalers. If your business is in a competitive heading, you need a good attention
How to Make Your In-column Ad Stand Out
Like display ads, your in column ad must jump out of the page and grab the user’s attention. True these ads are smaller than display; however you can still create attention getting ads. In column ad size range from a half inch high, to about a four inch high ad. You can also use colored ink, and you can include a business logo. Use red ink for your logo, or your list of services.
Remember just like anything else, you get what you pay for. Cheap ads in other directories probably will not get the result you desire.
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