Contractors Pitched to Improve their YP Ads
Always one to read just about anything that has Yellow Pages in it, I stumbled upon this article Get More Green from Your Yellow Pages Ad in contractor magazine. Written by a one Adams Hudson, a self-proclaimed marketing consultant, the article offers the contractor community a different view of Yellow Pages advertising.
Overall his suggestions seem right on. €œYou€™re paying a fortune for your Yellow Pages ad. It is supposed to produce leads, not showcase your vans, silly graphics or spout innumerable sentence fragments. So tell your prospects €œwhy€ they should call using the personal language of €œyou€ to pull them into the copy.€ Adams goes on to tell how a Chicago plumber went from a full-page color ad to a triple quarter column black and witnessed a 20 percent increase in calls. The plumber €" at the advice of Mr. Hudson (and probably fulfilled by Mr. Hudson€™s marketing services company) shifted the budget he saved to a direct mail campaign.
This anecdote is consistent with TKG€™s findings in Wave VII of the Local Commerce Monitor where there was a statistically significant increase in the number advertisers using direct mail. Interestingly the other day I received a direct mail piece from London Chimney Services, Inc. €" a company I have used for nearly 20 years. The mail piece included a brochure from Hargrove Hearth Products €" more than likely a co-sponsor of the direct mail. The point of all this? Well, increasingly the small and medium-sized business owner is looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of the ad and marketing budget. And Yellow Pages publishers, IYPs, local search providers, direct marketing companies and the like had all better be prepared to demonstrate performance with facts, figures and analysis because otherwise they€™ll all be wondering why €œthat dog don€™t hunt.€