I get this question a lot in my direct-response marketing agency. The short story is that the Internet has affected most all Medias. I would be lying to you if I said that Yellow Pages advertising was unaffected by the Internet.
But I am writing to you today because the opportunities that exist in Yellow Page advertising are as good today as before, and I’ll tell you why. The reason that the opportunities are still good in the Yellow Pages is the Internet has caused a decline in Yellow Pages advertising competition.
Some small business owners are abandoning their Yellow Pages advertising in favor of the Internet. What most find is that it is easy to build a website, but hard to get enough targeted traffic to their site to replace the new clients they got every week from the Yellow Pages.
So while other struggle to get their websites to work and spend years learning the complex science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), some savvy marketers are improving their existing Yellow Page ads by having someone who has a proven track record of success in Yellow Page advertising complete a new, highly-responsive Yellow Page ad design for them.
I currently have clients reporting 900% ROI on the first sale from their Yellow Page ad design I created. I have one client that reports that they get 20 to 1 ROI on the first sale to new clients from their “Kick Ass” Yellow Page ad design I completed for them.
When you can make money every time you advertise on new client acquisition, you can build your business faster than your competition. You can also get new clients at 25-33% of what your competition has to pay when you have a Yellow Page ad design that gets 300-400% more response than the ads that surround it. This gives your business a long-term insurmountable competitive advantage.
So my recommendation is to keep advertising in the printed Yellow Pages where you can still get favorable ROI if you have a Yellow Page ad design that:
1) Stands out from the competition
2) Stops your ideal target prospect in their tracks
3) Highlights your strengths and diminishes your weaknesses
4) Gets your ideal target prospect to call you PRESOLD, regardless of price,
before they have ever met or spoken to you.
And once you have a “Kick Ass” Yellow Page ad design, you can remodel it for other Medias including newspaper and magazine ads, free standing inserts, coupon mailers, postcards and even your website to completely annihilate your competition. The printed Yellow Pages Media stands like Mark Twain with accounts of their death being published when they were still very much alive.