Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Yellow Pages Advertisement-Is It Right For You???

Lets talk yellow pages advertisements.  Bottomline: Yellow Page advertisement can work, but do not invest more than 10% of your advertising budget in Yellow Pages ads.  

 

The ONLY thing Yellow Pages Ads do is validating you re in business in the community the book is delivered.  That is all, so don’t fall for it producing the volumes of business you are told it will produce.  Those days are pretty much over.

 

There are much better ways of using your advertising dollar.  Internet web-sites are now the best way to get across what it is you do and who you are, but still is not the best marketing tool.

 

Word of Mouth business networking is still the best way for any business to get to customers.  It is cheaper and produces quicker and higher quality results.

 

The other day I went to a meeting and was approached by a young man asking if I knew an electrician.  Now, an electrician come in all shapes and sizes and is one of the few connections I do not have, but I did ask to the gentleman if he looked in the Yellow Pages.  With a look of frustration he said that is where he started ‘but how do you know who to trust out of the hundreds in the book?’.

 

What a great point and an excellent example of how Yellow Pages ads work.  There is absolutely no way to build trust with someone from looking at a Yellow Pages advertisement.  Not even with a picture of the owner.  Which is a totally different blog I am writing on why Real Estate Agents feel it necessary to have their photo on everything they do…

 

No, you cannot build trust from an advertisement. 

 

I find it astonishing the number of business people I have run into who report that they put everything they had in their advertisement budget in a fancy yellow pages ad with the promise that their door will be knocked down with customers.  And now are asking if I could refer them to a bankruptcy attorney. 

 

Let me tell you, the business world is changing and one of the top five challenges business people have to deal with is Trust…the lack of it, or no having any in anything…

 

How do you build trust, make sure you are able to look every person you do business with in the eyes.  That will insure you know who you ar doing business with.  You treat them right and they will be back.  You treat them wrong and they will not, but you did not have to drop a bundle in advertisement.   

 

Getting to Know who you are doing business with is now how businesses are doing business.  Not from looking at a Yellow Pages ad and determining because the company has a fancy large ad that they can be trusted.  That is over folks…

 

Get out and meet your customers.  Find ways to keep the customers you have.  Put every employee to work telling people they know who they work for and what product and services they offer.   That is the way of tomorrows business advertising plan and those who are out there doing it now will be the ones who survive.

 

Read more on other alternatives of improving your business marketing in the widely popular eBook,  How To Play Business Golf.  The book will be the best investment you can make for your business…

 

Duke

www.innovativebusinessgolf.com

 

 

‘My Blog’ http://businessgolf.blogspot.com

 

Author of: ‘How To Play Business Golf’, From The Boardroom To The Fairways…

The best investment you can make for your business…

http://www.innovativebusinessgolf.com/business_golf/cb_order.html

 

 

1 comment:

Chief Show Officer said...

"The ONLY thing Yellow Pages Ads do is validating you're in business in the community the book is delivered. That is all, so don’t fall for it producing the volumes of business you are told it will produce. Those days are pretty much over."

Thanks for validating what I thought was the case. I have a couple of web based businesses and I have done minimal or no yellow page ads. Even though they are "virtual" businesses I tried local yellow pages. Even then most of my leads were internet search or word of mouth.

Nice to have an insider give us the real scoop.