Yellow Pages Power!

Posted by Steve Yankee on October 19th, 2007 in Design Tricks and Techniques, Traffic-Pulling Techniques, Yellow Pages Ad Basics

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I want to clue you in about two things that will help your hard-working ad work even harder. The first is using a second color in your ad. I know it costs you more, but adding a color improves readership by a factor of three times

Here are a couple of ads from competing companies. The single color ad on the left has a good, strong illustration, clean layout, big phone number. But look at the one on the right. Which one gets your attention faster?

(To digress for a moment, I also like that “protection…since 1850″ headline in the right-hand ad; it plays right into the “Security” part of the RASCIL factors, doesn’t it? In fact, take a moment to look at the small print and see how well they’ve followed our formula for a successful ad!

Okay. Back to color.You don’t need a LOT of colors just for the sake of adding colors; you only need enough to set you apart from everyone else. If someone’s running a black type only ad, use black and one color and you’re already ahead of the competition.

And here’s a little known fact for you: yellow pages aren’t really printed on yellow paper. It’s far more economical to print phone directories on white paper stock, and then use yellow ink to print the background color, and black ink to print the ads themselves. For years, having a yellow ad background was your only available choice but lately, most phone books have offered “white reverse” ad backgrounds, where your ad can feature a non-yellow background. This is another inexpensive trick to improving your ad readership.

The second thing that will aid readership is free: do something tricky with your border! Don’t just have the Yellow Pages ad people just run a thin line around the ad and call it done. Have the make it look like a length of rope, if you’re a marina; incorporate your artwork into it; do something that takes it out of the norm. Your ad should be as eye-catching as possible! Since the help is free, ask your sales rep for help in design and even in writing –as long as you remember the sure selling phrases that we’ve already discussed.