How To Double Response of Yellow Pages Ad

How To (At Least) DOUBLE

The Response Of Your Yellow Page Ad

By Richard & Leigh Beaty
www.AMarketingVision.com

What is the secret to a G-R-E-A-T Yellow Page Ad?

Is it the way you show the front of your store in the picture (if you have a retail business)?
Is it the shape, size or colors of your logo?
Is it how attractive, balanced, and artistically aesthetic your ad is?
Is size all that matters?
Is it the right catch phrase or slogan?
Is it the shape, color, and thickness of the border?

No, your Yellow Page rep doesn’t really have a clue about what is important. What do they know about your business? Nothing. What do they know about marketing? Almost nothing. What do they know about selling Yellow Page advertising?

Two things:

Trick you into believing you need to pay for a bigger ad and…
Trick you into believing you MUST pay for color.

Their dirty, little secret is this: Your Yellow Page rep’s goal is to sell you as much as they can… it isn’t in their best interest if your ad really works. You see, they are best served if they can keep you from having a superior ad. Because if they can con everyone into having the same, lousy, ineffective ad, they can make more money, because the only way you think you can attract more clients through the Yellow Pages is to pay extra for color or a larger ad.

Stop throwing your money away. There are endless strategies to use to improve your Yellow Page ad without giving the Big YP another dime. You can compete with big ads on a tight budget.

What You Need For A Great Ad

When you buy a Yellow Page ad you are locked in for a whole year. If it doesn’t pull well, it could be very costly to your business.

A Yellow Page ad only has to do 3 things:

Attract attention
Tell the prospect why they should choose YOU instead of your competitors
Tell them how to respond (call or visit your store)

Now, here’s a real reality check: You are paying as much as $2.00 per letter (this size) in your ad, so you don’t want to waste a single space.

You do NOT need to tell the reader that you sell the particular product in your category, because they know the category they are looking under. You do NOT need to waste your money with a picture of your store, because if you are a retail business, they will assume you have a store. You do NOT need a big logo. And you do NOT have to tell them “why” they need the product or service you are selling because they would not be looking up your category if they didn’t think they needed it.

I have seen hundreds of Yellow Pages ads. Most of the ads I see waste the vast majority of their expensive space on things that really aren’t essential and which they don’t need at all.

Here is an in depth discussion of the 3 things you DO need. You will see that your ad will become very focused, as well as overwhelmed with good information.

1. Attract Attention

You need to make sure your ad stands out and grabs the eye. When the prospect turns to your page, you want your ad to be the first thing they see.

Draw attention with:

Headlines
Pictures
Other illustrations
Graphics (boxes and bullets)
Color

These all pull the eye to your ad, but rarely, if ever, sell the prospect to respond. Do NOT mistake a pretty or glitzy ad with one that sells your product or service. No one will buy from you because you have a color ad, a cool picture of your product, etc. It is the body copy that convinces them. So use graphics as tools to grab the eye and draw it into the body, where you will convince them to call you or visit your store.

Path of Readership

You want to draw attention to the right point in your ad. People start reading at the top left corner, so that is where you want all the attention pulled to … where the headline starts. Then you want your ad to flow naturally from the headline into the body copy.

When we read a page, we follow a “Z” pattern, so that is how you want to pull the eye. The headline is the top of the Z pattern.

Path of Logic

The eye follows a physical path, but the brain follows a mental path of logic. The brain of the prospect will reject or put on hold information that does not fall in the order that it is ready to accept.

For example, putting your phone number as the headline would be silly. No one wants to see your phone number until AFTER they decide that they want to do business with you. Placing your name at the top of the ad is as silly as it would be to put your phone number there. They both belong in the bottom right corner of the ad.

Now, I know that some people will think, “But I should put my name at the top of the ad so my repeat clients can find me.” The last thing you want is for your repeat clients to go to the Yellow Pages to find you. Studies have shown that there is a 27% chance that they will stray and call someone else. Don’t risk it. Try to keep your clients out of the Yellow Pages by keeping in touch with them in other ways, such as direct mail, e-mail, Voice Broadcast, and telemarketing. Do not make the terrible mistake of relying on the Yellow Pages to route your current clients to you. Besides, your clients who somehow do wind up looking in the Yellow Pages will recognize your ad better by what is in it than by your name. Studies have shown that 70% of clients forget the name of the store they shopped within 10 minutes after they have left, regardless of how wonderful you are. Similar statistics apply to clients who have used your professional service, if you are a service provider. I know it is hard to accept claims like this, because you feel that all your clients love you, your merchandise or your service. And they do, they just can’t remember your business’ name.

Here is the simple path of logic the prospect will follow in your ad:

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

To keep it simple – first draw their attention to your ad, tell them why they should be interested in your service above all others, make them desire to call you or visit you, and tell them how.

Start the ad with an attention-grabbing headline. A fantastic, big bold claim is good. A guarantee is good. A strong statement of benefits is good… ask yourself “What is the biggest benefit my clients get by shopping my store?” or “What is the biggest benefit my clients get by using my service?” And make that your headline.

From there you list benefit after benefit of shopping your store or using your service over your competitors.

Additionally, you need to make sure they are true benefits. Most of what you see in retailers’ and service providers’ ads are features, not benefits. But the difference is profound. A feature is what you do or provide, while a benefit is what the client wants to get out of it. People are so conditioned to think in the form of features, that they will find it difficult to come up with the benefits.

Give Proof

Telling the benefits is not enough. Prospects are highly skeptical and suspicious of you, so you must back up every claim of benefits with proof. You must weigh your proofs against the space that they use up, but try to substantiate every claim of benefits with so much proof as to convince the most skeptical prospect.

Proof comes in these forms:

Guarantees:
Example: Instead of “expert alterations” say “We’ll make it fit you perfectly or the alterations are free.”
Before and after pictures:
Example: Show them, with a picture, how you can transform the way they look when they are wearing your merchandise or have had your service performed.
Testimonials:
People often believe that testimonials are made up. Give specifics about the testimony giver. Tell their name, occupation, how long they have been a client, the city they live in, etc.
Specifics:
Give facts, statistics, numbers, etc. For example: “78.3% of all our clients return to our store”. Or “92.6% of all our clients return to us each year to have their tax returns completed & filed.”
Authority:
Establish your credentials as an authority or use the authority of others and quote it. For example, “Voted Tucson’s Best Men’s Clothing Store by Tucson Lifestyle Magazine 2 years in a row.”

The path of logic and readership, as well as the use of benefits backed up with proof, are important for the body copy of the ad, but apply to the initial ad concept and design, too.

The Ideal Ad Design

Graphics are used to grab attention, and pull the eye to the ad, and then feed the eye to the headline. The headline is like a graphical body text. It grabs attention and then creates interest (through a powerful statement of benefit) to draw the reader into the body copy. This is very important. The headline must draw the eye smoothly and naturally into the body with a border around it or fancy font or different color.

Next, use body copy to state more benefits, overcome objections and prove your claims. Follow up with contact information and company name/logo at the end.

White Space (Empty Space)

Every time you work with a quasi-professional ad rep, you are likely to hear them tell you that you need more white space in your ad. The idea is that if you leave the ad mostly empty, you will draw the eye to the ad. The few words you have printed will be easily read and therefore get more response.

Actual research seems to disprove this. In fact, the more cram packed an ad is with tiny print, the more likely you are to get response. So don’t worry about being pretty. Do what makes you money.

Do not be another victim to the white space nonsense. Copy sells – not graphics, not color, not pictures, not white space – just copy. All these other tools serve to draw the eye to your ad and should never be the focus of your ad. The typical mistake of the graphic artist is to layout the graphics to draw attention to the graphics themselves, and hold it. Graphics must be used as a tool to draw attention to the copy, where you can sell the prospect.

Placement

I suspect that there is a Yellow Page conspiracy in the U.S. as well as internationally. Your placement in the Yellow Pages is determined by the ad size – biggest ads in front, and the same size ads arranged by seniority. The end result is the person who has paid the most, the longest is placed up front and therefore gets more visibility. I don’t disagree with that system. It’s just that you should know that you get far better response on the first 2 or 3 pages of listing in your category.

What is unfair is the Yellow Pages practice of forcing business advertisers to all have the same type of ad. If they can get everybody’s ad to look the same (which they usually do), then the only way you can attract more attention is to buy a larger ad or buy color . . . resulting in more money for the Yellow Pages. However, there are a few tricks around this though.

First, look at the number of ads that are the size you are considering (that were in last year’s directory), and assume you will be at the back of these ads. If there are a lot of the size you are considering, don’t bother. Either go bigger or go smaller.

Second, you could buy an “in column” ad only. These ads appear in the column, have limitations on them, and are arranged alphabetically. I actually know some businesses who have renamed their company by adding an ”A” or even “AAA” in front of their name (like AAA Lock & Key). Using this strategy, you could actually get a very small ad in the front of the business directory right next to a three-quarter page ad. Or, if your name begins with an “F”, for example, you get better placement with an in-column ad than you could afford with a display ad. As “Outside The Box” as this trick might sound, it works.

Color

Color is overused and used badly. It is an expensive means to attract more attention to an ad. I like the use of color, but there are many alternatives to grab attention other than color. You run the risk of competitor’s ad negating the value of your ad’s color. For example, what if you paid extra for red, and then every ad on the page used red? You would have paid extra for nothing.

Color can be used with great effect to call attention to an ad. Use color on borders, as a highlighter, and so forth. A small ad with a background that is completely colored draws a lot of attention. Large ads with a spot color in the middle, and nowhere else, draws a lot of attention. Most often, the poor use of color that I see is from trying to stuff as much color into the ad as possible. The advertiser figures he is paying extra for it, so he wants to get his money’s worth. But a single spot color on a large ad or an all over colored very small ad will generally draw more attention.

In addition to using a single spot color, another trick you rarely see is using a gradient of color. Gradient is simply a gradual change from one color to another. It can be very eye catching, even if you do the gradient in black/gray (which will not cost you one more penny.)

Here are a few more tips when considering color:

Anything that is a “must read” should always be in black ink. This includes the headline and body copy, because words printed in color generally get lower readership.
Try to restrict color to graphics, boxes, borders, and anything else that is non-essential to the selling process.
Depending on the placement, a black & white ad may well be more visible if the other ads on your page all choose color.

Tricky Tactics To Grab Attention

Tricky Tactic #1:

Just like a picture of a face grabs attention better than other pictures, handwriting grabs attention over print. But no one uses handwriting in ads because it doesn’t give that polished professional appearance. So what? Do you want image or do you want profit? Think about using handwriting to be different (this could be a very interesting approach for a children’s store), stand out, and grab attention.

Tricky Tactic #2:

The Yellow Pages will probably insist that you have a border on your ad, but if not, be different – go without it.

Tricky Tactic #3:

Use a border that is slightly smaller than your ad space and put a graphic crossing over the border, drawing attention from the outside in.

Tricky Tactic #4:

Use quotation marks. They draw attention and get a higher readership.

Tricky Tactic #5:

se a drop cap to pull attention into the first line of the ad, as I have done here. We learn as children, to start reading where we see the drop cap.

Tricky Tactic #6:

Print your ad sideways in the phone book so that the prospect has to turn the book to look at your ad.

Tricky Tactic #7:

Cram your ad full of tiny text.

Tricky Tactic #8:

Make your ad look like a newspaper article.

Tricky Tactic #9:

Write the ad with a crayon.

Tricky Tactic #10:

Handwrite the ad on stationery as if it were from a happy client telling his or her friend about your excellent merchandise or service.

Tricky Tactic #11:

Make the ad look like it was typewritten with an old fashioned manual typewriter, where some of the letters are a bit too high or low, and some darker than others.

Tricky Tactic #12:

The use of bullets, starbursts and graphic enhancements call out for attention. These elements are widely used in other advertisement mediums but are neglected in the Yellow Pages. Take advantage of this and use them when you can.

The Challenge of Graphics

The challenge is to use graphics to make your ad the first thing that grabs the prospect’s attention when he turns to your page, but does it without distracting from the readership of the body copy, or consuming expensive ad space. It’s tough to accomplish, but hopefully this section has given you a lot of insight and tools to work with.

One Last Tip: Figure out what works by opening up your Yellow Page directory to a random page and noting the first ad to grab your attention – and then, the first ad that you naturally start to read. Chances are, due to misuse of graphics, they won’t be the same. Ask yourself, “What was it about this ad that grabbed my eye?” and, “What was it about that ad that got me to start reading it?” You will quickly master the art of balancing attention grabbing graphics with design that minimizes space usage and damage to the readability of the ad.

Why should your prospect choose YOU
instead of YOUR COMPETITOR?