Yellow Page Advertising: The King of Print Ads

Yellow Page Advertising, the King of Print Ads     
 The yellow pages are the most powerful advertising medium for certain kinds of businesses. Yellow page directories can be found in every home and almost every business. The total reach (the total number of people who have a directory) is almost 100% of the population.  Unlike other media, people use the yellow pages when they are ready to buy. If a buyer needs a lawyer, insurance agent, or a medical specialist he or she will go to the yellow pages to help them decide who they will do business with.In almost every market in the United States, you will find several different yellow page directory publishers. There will always be the biggest and oldest directory often with the same name as the telephone company such as Bell South, Southwestern Bell etc. In addition to the largest and oldest stand-by directory, there will be one or more other yellow page companies competing for your dollars. So which yellow pages do you use for advertising? It depends, but in most cases the old stand-by yellow page directory will have the greatest circulation. There are some exceptions but most of the time it is the case. The competing yellow page directories usually have lower prices for advertising, but also have a smaller circulation.Which Yellow Page Directory Should You Use to Advertise Your Business?
Every yellow page sales person will tell you that his or her directory is the most used by the most people, and will bring you the most sales. How do you decide which one to use, or should you advertise in more than one? The best way to learn the most used yellow page directory is to ask 20 people which one they use. Asking customers is another excellent way to get an idea of the most used directory. It doesn’t matter how large a directory’s circulation is. What matters is which one is used the most. Next, examine which directory carries the most advertising. Other businesses don’t continue to advertise in a directory if it gives them a poor return on their advertising investment. What if you want to advertise in both the main directory and a local or regional directory? Go ahead and try it. Just be sure to ask your customers which yellow page directory they used to find your number or information.

Display ads vs. In-column ads
            Open your main directory and look at the 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 grabbing ad. Open your directory and flip through the pages quickly. What ads catch your eye in the second you see it? Generally these ads will have large blocks of color, red is the best. Green and blue ink are passive colors and don’t usually help your ad stand out. If there are several ads in your heading that use reverse format, (black background with white words), then make your ad with lots of white space to stand out from the others. Photographs, line art and logos that have lots of ink help get user’s attention. Once you get their attention, they want good information. Don’t make your ad pretty. Put lots of information about all the products and services you offer. Business owners often think everyone knows all of the products and services they provide. In reality, they don’t. People usually know only a few of the products or services a business offers. This being the case, put every product or service you offer in your ad. If you have a website, fax, or email, include them in the ad. A photograph of the business owner like you sees insurance agents do is not effective use of ad space. Most users don’t care what you look like.

Positioning Your Business
            You need to present your business as different in some way from your competitors. This applies to you yellow page ads as well. For example, if your business is a plastic surgery clinic, how can you make your business appear different from the other plastic surgery physicians? Do you offer financing? Do you have special services the competition doesn’t? Are your prices lower? Do you have much more pampering of your patents than the competition? We all identify people, products, and services in comparison to others we know about. If your business offers fast service, emphasize that in the headline of your ad. If you offer 24 hours service, make that feature large with dark ink, and so on. The concept of positioning your business will be covered in more detail in other lessons.

How to Make YourIn-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.