Yellow Pages Advertising Advice – How To Get A Free Yellow Pages Ad
Steve Sipress asked:
Sports fans can argue all day about certain statistics from seasons past. But as soon as they look up the facts in a record book, the argument is over.
Scrabble players can argue about the correct spelling of a word. But as soon as they look up the facts in a dictionary, there can be no more difference of opinion.
These days, thanks to the rise of the internet, it’s all-too-common for small business owners to believe that “No one uses the Yellow Pages anymore.”
But the facts show that print phone books are still used millions of times every day, resulting in millions of calls and billions of dollars going to local businesses of all types.
How do we know? Well, first of all there’s a ton of research done by various organizations through surveys and focus groups. But even more powerful are reports from advertisers who actually track every single phone call from their Yellow Pages ads. They do this by using a unique phone number that appears only in their Yellow Pages ad and nowhere else, or by paying a tracking service to put a unique number in their ad and provide them with monthly reports. Sophisticated advertisers even use a different phone number to track each one of their individual ads!
If you’re going to be serious about your marketing, of course you know that you have to track everything. After all, how can you improve what you don’t track? How can you know what to do more or less of if you don’t have accurate statistics? How can you know which of your ads are doing great and which need to be improved?
But what if you don’t want to go through the time, trouble and expense of tracking your ads? Here’s the good news:
Yellow Pages publishers will often pay the tracking service’s fee AND give you an additional ad for free if you’ll simply agree to let them publish your ad’s results.
Then they can use your tracking report as proof to other potential advertisers that Yellow Pages advertising can produce boatloads of calls and cash. In return, you’ll have gotten a free ad that brings you extra calls and profits for zero cost. Everybody wins (except your competitors)!
But there’s a catch, of course: The publisher MUST KNOW that your main ad will work well (why would they want to pay to track a poorly-designed ad?). That means you’ll have to place an ad that follows enough of the rules of Yellow Pages advertising (size, content, etc.) so that it’s clear your ad will perform well. Don’t even think of placing a small ad with your company name at the top and nothing that differentiates you from your competition and expecting the publisher to want to pay to track the few calls you’ll get.
So make sure to create a great ad, and then ask your local rep if the publisher will offer you a free ad. Even if they won’t, they may at the very least offer to foot the bill for the tracking number and reporting service. Either way, you win!
Website content
Sports fans can argue all day about certain statistics from seasons past. But as soon as they look up the facts in a record book, the argument is over.
Scrabble players can argue about the correct spelling of a word. But as soon as they look up the facts in a dictionary, there can be no more difference of opinion.
These days, thanks to the rise of the internet, it’s all-too-common for small business owners to believe that “No one uses the Yellow Pages anymore.”
But the facts show that print phone books are still used millions of times every day, resulting in millions of calls and billions of dollars going to local businesses of all types.
How do we know? Well, first of all there’s a ton of research done by various organizations through surveys and focus groups. But even more powerful are reports from advertisers who actually track every single phone call from their Yellow Pages ads. They do this by using a unique phone number that appears only in their Yellow Pages ad and nowhere else, or by paying a tracking service to put a unique number in their ad and provide them with monthly reports. Sophisticated advertisers even use a different phone number to track each one of their individual ads!
If you’re going to be serious about your marketing, of course you know that you have to track everything. After all, how can you improve what you don’t track? How can you know what to do more or less of if you don’t have accurate statistics? How can you know which of your ads are doing great and which need to be improved?
But what if you don’t want to go through the time, trouble and expense of tracking your ads? Here’s the good news:
Yellow Pages publishers will often pay the tracking service’s fee AND give you an additional ad for free if you’ll simply agree to let them publish your ad’s results.
Then they can use your tracking report as proof to other potential advertisers that Yellow Pages advertising can produce boatloads of calls and cash. In return, you’ll have gotten a free ad that brings you extra calls and profits for zero cost. Everybody wins (except your competitors)!
But there’s a catch, of course: The publisher MUST KNOW that your main ad will work well (why would they want to pay to track a poorly-designed ad?). That means you’ll have to place an ad that follows enough of the rules of Yellow Pages advertising (size, content, etc.) so that it’s clear your ad will perform well. Don’t even think of placing a small ad with your company name at the top and nothing that differentiates you from your competition and expecting the publisher to want to pay to track the few calls you’ll get.
So make sure to create a great ad, and then ask your local rep if the publisher will offer you a free ad. Even if they won’t, they may at the very least offer to foot the bill for the tracking number and reporting service. Either way, you win!
Website content
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