Fax Numbers, Fax Marketing & Other Advertising Methods.

Question: How much is it to put an ad in the yellow pages?

(Posted by: Andy T on 2009-11-18 11:16:16)

A small ad, anybody know?

Posted by: Landlord on 2009-11-18, 15:23:06

I live in a medium market, it is 300 a month for a small ad, about 2x3.

Posted by: Common Sense on 2009-11-18, 11:19:17

It varies by market size. Costs vary from a few hundred to tens of thousands.

Posted by: rtfm on 2009-11-18, 11:21:48

Depends on which particular Yellow Pages. An ad in the New York City edition will cost considerably more than one for Podunk, Iowa.

Posted by: Doran P on 2009-11-18, 16:19:45

You don't want to put an ad in the Yellow Pages. It is a complete waste of money. If someone sees your ad in there..they also see all your competition...so if they didn't know what their choices were...they do now. Besides that...those books have a microscopic audience and you'll be paying alot of money to sit around and wait for a handfull of people to go looking for you. The YP is the last place you want people to go looking for you. You need to be getting in their faces before hand...direct mail is superior to everything for doing just that. You go straight to your mailbox every day first thing, when you get home...and so does everyone else. You could pay $250 a month for a small ad...and get less than 25 people in a years time or you can spend $250 a month sending 500-700 post cards DIRECTLY to people who would need your service....and even at a 2% response thats like 120 to 170 new customers. If your mailings are professional looking and you have exceptionally good offers, then your responses will be even bigger. Yellow Pages are closed 99% of the time ( that is a real statistic) and there are really only a few professions that benefit from those books...namely plumbers. Everyone else is just throwing away money.

Posted by: Rosemary P on 2009-11-18, 23:24:18

It varies from a few hundred pounds to several thousand. Think about whether you'll really reach your target market that way. As someone else has said, most people just Google for the services they want. These days, Yellow Pages seems to attract more telesales people trying to sell you things than it does customers looking to buy. If they get anything wrong with your ad, you're stuck with that for at least a year. We've given up all our Yellow Pages advertising and just pulled the plug on yell.com as its effectiveness had decreased in recent years. One business we had was never listed in either and attracted business through good search engine rankings that we achieved without paying anyone else.

Posted by: OF www.howtolearnbusiness.co.uk on 2009-11-19, 06:03:41

It varies on the market. That's the simple answer! But be smart with your advertising...I'm not saying the YP isn't an effective resource, it is but for the same amount of money, you can be more effective with your budget. The YP is not targetted marketing, so your conversion is likely to be a lot less. Smart advertising is not about hitting the masses, it's about targeting the right people that will be interested in what you have to sell. It's the same on the internet. On-line conversion rates of people visiting your webpage can be around 1-2%. But if you can reach a targeted audience with an email then your conversion rate will be much much higher. How do you do that? There are several software packages out there but the software package I use is called Lead Evolution...it's much more powerful & not that expensive either when considering other advertising mediums. It's also a lot quicker & you get a more immediate response too. I have a link to it on my website as it has proven a valuable resource to me & I believe in it. Check out howtolearnbusiness.co.uk for a link to their site. With that I can search for who is looking for my product, in the region I want to sell in (local or global) & then send a personal email to all the targets with the click of a button, with a link to my website. Easy & quick & it helps build relationships which is what marketing is all about. The other important way is clever direct marketing as the conversion of smart direct marketing is as high as 60%. Get people to people offline to bring them on line to your webpage. I have plenty of other tips too...but to be fair it is only recently acquired knowledge. I am no expert on the field but have been lucky enough to go on the right courses & with a little investment in the right areas it can have a big impact on your sales. Check out the World Internet Summit link on my website too as those guys taught me so much, from copy writing to internet marketing. Best of luck...also put your website at the bottom of your question so that people will go check it out!!!