In my direct response marketing agency, I review thousands of print and Yellow Page ad designs. These Yellow Page ad designs all suffer from the same 2 problems:
1) They use “Image and Branding” style advertising that fails to stand out from the competition.
2) They fail to attract new high income clients.
The reason these problems happen so consistently in print and Yellow Page ad design is because of 2 obstacles in the way of your small business advertising profits.
The first obstacle is most ads are designed in the “Image and Branding” style of advertising. They are designed by the sales rep, or the “design factory” at the Yellow Page publisher. The #1 print and Yellow Page ad design question your sales representative will ask you is, “Do you have a business card?” Then they say, “I’ll just design it off of this.” This is why most ads look like oversized business cards with the business name wasting valuable headline space. They use Image and Branding style advertising, but forget to tell you that it costs HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO BUILD AN IMAGE AND TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO MAINTAIN THAT IMAGE ONCE IT IS BUILT.
What small business person has an extra $10-20 million to devote to their small business advertising budget per year? That is totally unrealistic for any small businesses that gross under $100 million per year. What small business marketers need to be using is direct response marketing and advertising to be successful. Only direct response marketing strategies will get small businesses favorable ROI on getting new clients.
The second obstacle in your way is the “design factory” at the Yellow Page publisher. Their graphic artists are experts at completing tens of thousands of ads in record time. But what I found shocking was that the graphic artists are actually forbidden from designing your ad to stand out from the competition.
You see, if they make your ad stand out, other advertisers will complain that you got preferential treatment, and want compensation for their losses. So their goal is to have all the ads perform equally to avoid potential legal liability. When you have the design factory at the Yellow Page publisher complete your Yellow Page ad design, you are GUARANTEED to have an ad that will NOT stand out from the competition. You need to hire a proven outside expert to get an outstanding Yellow Page ad design.
The other factor in having the design factory formulate your marketing strategy, write your compelling, benefit-laden copy, and design your ad is the graphic artist has only about 20 minutes per ad to complete all these processes. Remember, he has to complete 20,000 ads in a short period of time to close the book and move on to the next one.
It takes more than 20 minutes to just write a dynamite headline for a small businesses Yellow Page ad design. But the graphic artist at the Yellow Page publisher quickly finds out that if he completes each ad in only 15 minutes, he gets to take a long lunch break and is a hero to his boss. This is not the environment where you want your Yellow Page ad design to be completed.
So what is the marketing strategy that causes your ad to stand out from the competition and attract new high income clients? The number 1 marketing strategy I recommend and use in my marketing agency is having a dynamite headline that stops your ideal target prospect in their tracks.
Prospects review ads just like they read a newspaper. They read the headlines, and then go back to the ads that interested them to read every word. I’ve read that the headline is responsible for 90% of the success of a print or Yellow Page ad design. So if you don’t stop your ideal target prospect with an outstanding headline, odds are they will not go back to read any of your ad so you have lost a potential sale and new client.
There are many marketing strategies and aids to use when writing headlines. You can use previously successful headlines and remodel them for your use, or use a template format. My mentor, Dan Kennedy, prefers a challenging question to a statement of benefit in the headline. This is an advanced marketing strategy, so if you are just beginning writing headlines, you might want to stick to benefit headlines.
The last Yellow Page ad design marketing strategy I am going to disclose here is that the high income prospect buys differently than middle and lower income prospects. The high income prospects #1 buying strategy is to do their “due diligence”. What that means is that they want to learn more and do more research so that they can make an informed buying decision. They look for ads and buy from ads that really inform them. So the next marketing strategy is to use up all the space in your ad with benefit laden copy, and the 12 Yellow Page Response Triggers. I do not have room to include them here, but the 12 Yellow Page Response Triggers are detailed at my website www.InstantYellowPageProfits.com
Don’t believe the old advertising line rep. that, “You need more air value in your ad” or “No one will read all that copy.” Your ideal target prospect will be stopped in their tracks by your excellent headline, and then read every word of your ad. Next they will call you PRESOLD before ever meeting or speaking to you, and they will thank you for having such informative advertising while they make a purchase from you. I’ve used these same marketing strategies in Yellow Page ad design to build and sell 3 business of my own with Yellow Page advertising alone.
For “14 Amazing Ways to Stand Out from Your Competition WITHOUT Cutting Your Prices” go to www.InstantYellowPageProfits.com and opt in to get the 2 bonuses detailed, and a whopper of a secret bonus that every business can use right now to make more money.