HOW TO PROVE THAT MORE YELLOW PAGES ADVERTISING PAYS

You probably will never do everything in Yellow Pages that could be profitable for your business or professional practice. Practically no one does. But there are some practical, simple, and inexpensive ways to prove to yourself that size pays. Then, the more profitable you find your Yellow Pages advertising, the more you should consider investing additional YP dollars in the future.

Dominate Somewhere You must buy a reasonably dominant ad to test the selling power of Yellow Pages advertising. Most advertisers do not have ads large enough to grab the users’ atten tion. They don’t try very hard to be selected. If that is true of competitors in your major heading, so much the better for you. If others already dominate and you can’t get yourself to go head-to-head with them, try these other options. A Major Directory Strategy Buy a big enough ad to be one of the largest under a smaller heading that applies to you in your major directory. A Smaller Directory Strategy Buy an ad under your major heading in a smaller directory that covers part of your market. It will cost you less to be relatively dominant under the heading. Once you find that domination pays, consider competing aggressively under you main heading in your major directory.

LAYOUT AND DESIGN In-Column Advertising

Most headings in a directory are made up of listings and do not contain display ads. These headings are much easier to dominate in terms of the amount of dollars you will have to spend to attain that dominance. But don’t try a small in-column ad. To find out what works, make it big enough to really dominate! Get your local directory and look at the ads that appear alphabetically under the headings. This will give you a good idea of the kinds and sizes of ads and listings for you to consider. It will also help you see how some advertisers dominate in this way while most under the same heading do not. You dominate in-column through ad size and potentially through the use of color. For the most part, there is not a great deal of freedom in the use of art in incolumn representation. But you can make your ad stand out by making it bigger, by using larger and bolder type, and by using color.

Display Advertising Large display ads usually are the most difficult to convince yourself to buy. They cost more than in-column advertising, and, as stated earlier, most advertisers make buying decisions primarily by ad cost rather than the income they want the ad to produce. Let’s make these decisions a little easier for you.

• The majority of headings do not contain display ads. That means you should not consider buying a small display ad under those that relate to your field. Rather, dominate by a relatively large in-column ad under those headings. There probably is a good reason why they do not contain display ads. But that also gives you the chance to dominate.

• When you see several or even many display ads under a heading you are considering, there is a reason for that also. The more and the larger the ads, the more you need to consider advertising under such a heading. To get maximum or near maximum results, make the ad large enough to get the attention of a high percent age of the users looking on its page. We cannot stress it enough, other factors being equal, the size of the ad is the most important factor of your Yellow Pages buying decisions.

Ad Copy Although ad size is important, what you say in the ad will eventually determine how often you are selected. Too many Yellow Pages advertisers are concerned that they are saying too much. They believe Yellow Pages users will not take the time to read a lot of copy. As a result, most of their ads are weak sales tools. The sale a Yellow Pages ad must make is to cause users to select and contact the advertiser. Most YP advertisers would fire a sales representatives who, on a sales call, said only what the advertisers say in their Yellow Pages ads.

How to Write a Great Yellow Pages Ad The key is to writing great ads is to identify and differentiate among what you could say, what you don’t want to say, and what you definitely do want to say. Do this by a Yellow Pages copy study.

The Yellow Pages Copy Study

• In your local Yellow Pages directory, look at all of the ads under your heading.

• In smaller communities, go to the library to get access to some major city directories to learn other things being said by advertisers under your heading. • Make a list of every copy point.

• Highlight the points used in your current ad.

• Cross out all of the points you can’t say or don’t want to say.

• Now, from the copy points that are left, identify the most important that you have not used. These, along with any already used, are the ones around which you will build your ad content. Headlines as Bait Use what you consider the most important point as the headline in your ad. Though in-column ads are placed alphabetically and require your name to be at the top, use a strong headline immediately below.

TRACKING YOUR YELLOW PAGES ROI

The more money you spend, the more important it is to know how many calls you are getting from your advertising. Yet most advertisers cannot track accurately the number of calls their Yellow Pages dollars produce. Some use rather elaborate reports from their employees trying to track the source of all of their customers or clients. These are never truly accurate for a combination of reasons. Some employees are more conscientious than others. Often an employee has another call to answer or another customer waiting and doesn’t take the time to get the information. Sometimes the wrong question is asked in the first place. For example, “How did you hear about us?” frequently will get a different answer than “Where did you get our telephone number?”

How to Track Calls To track calls accurately, use what are called remote call forwarded telephone numbers. Most phone companies offer them, although they may call them something else, such as a “market extension line.” Whatever they are called, they are special phone numbers that you put into your ad to track the calls that come directly from that ad. If you use several ads, you can get a trackable number for each one. When someone uses that number, it is forwarded to your main number. In the process the

phone company tracks the calls that are placed through the tracking number and, in most cases, can give you a monthly report on the number and duration of calls. If you have done the Yellow Pages ROI computation suggested on page 160, you can compare the profit objective you set in the computation. A Toll-Free Tracking Option Should your local phone company not provide call information on their bill, you can still get one of these tracking lines and forward it to a toll-free number. Although this is somewhat more expensive, it will give you even more detailed information. It will detail each call, tell you the time and day it was placed, and the number of minutes it lasted. Usually a toll-free number will cost about $10 per month plus a per-minute charge for each call. However, the information is so valuable that if you are considering spending a considerable amount of money for the ad, the additional cost of toll-free tracking is negligible. Once you have sufficient data that proves the ad is profitable (or not), you can always contact the phone company to have them stop forwarding the calls through the toll-free number and forward them to your main phone number.

MULTIPLE DIRECTORIES IN A MARKET Telephone Company Directories

Most areas have more than one directory. Some local phone companies distribute a directory covering a large metropolitan market and also have smaller directories to geographical segments of the larger area. Frequently, other publishers also enter a market to compete with the local phone company directory. There is no single answer to making your decisions in these situations. Smaller directories offer you the opportunity to pay for less coverage and get a larger ad for your money. Sometimes this is your best buy. This also can be the best way for you to test the ability of a Yellow Pages ad to produce profitable income. Once you have learned that from a smaller directory, it will be easier to spend even more to have the same ad in the larger directory.

Independent Directories The use of independent publishers in your market needs special business consideration. • Just because someone decides to publish a directory does not mean they will do so profitably and therefore continue to be in a given market. • Additional directories do not produce additional Yellow Pages users, they just divide up the usage. Usually an independent publisher is not able to get to the same level of usage as the local phone directories with which they compete. Consider these independent directories very carefully and look at them over time before you decide to put money into them. Check how much advertiser support they have compared to their phone company counterparts. Is this support growing, staying the same, or declining? Have they been in existence for at least two years? The Power of Independents In some markets, it is difficult to dismiss independent publishers. Only they can deliver their users to you. Some independent publishers have gained a substantial share of the Yellow Pages usage, to the point of getting 20 to 30 percent of their markets. So consider advertising in them and tracking the ROI results, just like with the phone company directories. In most markets, the local phone directory can deliver the most income to you, but many independents can also produce profitable results for their advertisers. Test!

BUYING AT A DISCOUNT

Most Yellow Pages publishers offer incentives for you to buy an ad for the first time or increase what you are spending with them. Surprisingly, many advertisers are suspicious of such offers, concerned that the ad may cost them more when they renew it the following year. Although that is usually the case, the incentives not only are a smart way to save but give you a discount year to check on Yellow Pages ROI. Full-price or not, make your decisions one year at a time and buy at a discount as often as you can.

NOTES ON YELLOW PAGES ADVERTISING CHECKLIST

These notes are a supplement to the material presented in this article. They are not a selfcontained substitute for that material.

1. Quotations. Total of all quoted and/or estimated costs on proposed project.

2. Budget approval. If lower than the amount in item 1, determine how the project is to be modified to fit the dollar allocation.

3. Project approval. Once it is determined that the project can be done for the amount in item 2, decide on whether it’s worth the cost.

4. Target audience. When more than one Yellow Pages heading relates to your audience, check each for its amount of display advertising. Often you are better off dominating in a less advertised group than as an alsoran where everyone is competing.

5. Message. After completing copy study, select as many important points as room permits. Yellow Pages is not for white (blank) space design.

6. Benefits. Not general or vague, but keyed to the heading under which your ad appears. This is absolutely necessary for your ad to succeed!

7. Headline. Use the key copy point from #6 as your headline. Be sure it relates to the #4 target audience. Stay focused throughout the ad.

8. Location. This is often the first thing looked for by your audience. If your location is not obvious to practically everyone, relate it to someplace they know (Two blocks north of Main and Evans). If you are a service company, consider using multiple phone numbers (local area codes) targeting areas that you serve to increase calls from your ad.

9. Phone number. The second thing everyone looks for. Make it prominent, right by your address. Again, consider using multiple numbers for ads. Where necessary, especially for business-to-business, add e-mail and Web site in less prominent type.

10. Offer. Remember, your Yellow Pages ad runs for a long time. Don’t promise offers you might not want to keep for months to come. Individual publishers have different restrictions as to what kinds of “offers” you can make. Check before you begin writing.

11. Design. Much Yellow Pages advertising is designed by the Yellow Pages company at no extra cost. But don’t just let them do it. Go to our examples, or look through various Yellow Pages publications, and have them follow an ad you think particularly effective.

12. Colors. Check your advertising competition. Colors cost extra. Printing on white paper rather than yellow (dropping the yellow background), costs even more. If your competitors on the page all use color, spend the money to increase the ad size. Above all, you want to dominate your listing.

13. Typesetting. Typesetting is handled by the Yellow Pages company at no extra cost.

14. Art/Photography. Nothing too fancy. Yellow Pages printing is limited to basics.

15. Production. There is no industry-wide standard for Yellow Pages production, so Yellow Pages companies prefer to do it themselves, even when designed by an outside agency. There is no extra charge for this, so let them.

16. Directory selection. When more than a single Yellow Pages exists for your target audience, media selection depends on what you sell. Be realistic about how far your audience will go to shop. Sometimes smaller local directories will be your best buy. The larger your geographical market, the better buy larger directories become. 17. Dates. Differentiate among the key dates: A. Closing date. When ad space must be ordered and copy submitted. B. Proof date. When ad must be submitted to get a proof before publication. C. Delivery date. The date on which the Yellow Pages will be distributed and calling will start.

18. Ad size. A critical decision. The larger the size of your display ad, the closer to the front of the heading and the more space to get across your message. In Yellow Pages, nothing else succeeds like ad-size domination.

19. Space cost. Look for ways to buy at a discount whenever possible. Have your Yellow Pages representative explain pricing options to you. Prices may not be negotiable, but they can be remarkably flexible.

20. Yellow Pages notification. Get a written copy of your order with rates.

21. Logo. Make your name clearly legible. Save fancy logos for fancy media. Some logos become difficult to read when reduced in smaller adds.

22. Address. Assume everyone is a first-time visitor and needs directions. (See #8 above.)

23. Phone. Your number, of course. If you have a different number for evening or Sunday calls, identify them as such to become a 24/7 concern.

24. Mechanical checks. Someone has to be responsible for checking items 21–23 in all your other ads. Do it for here, too. Your Yellow Pages advertising lives much longer than most others.

25. “As run” copy. Some one person must be responsible for maintaining a file of all ads “as run”; that is, as they actually appeared in each publication.