Why Yellow Page ads? Because they’re so darn EFFECTIVE!
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A couple decades ago, back in the tumultuous 80’s, I owned a high-end hotsy-totsy corporate communications production firm, and sneered at the fools who advertised in the Yellow Pages.
Every year, I turned away my long-suffering Yellow Pages representative with a curt “If they look in your directory for help…then I don’t want them as a client.”
Guess how long I stayed in that business?
And guess who my favorite ad representative is today?
Right on both counts. I was pretty ignorant, but we live and learn, and today I thank the gods above for the Yellow Pages; they were a tremendously effective method of advertising and promoting my retail video production businesses, and –at the bottom line, where it really counts –they made us money. Lots of it.
In fact, when we started our video services business back in 1989, our ad budget was nonexistent. Yet in order to compete in our market area (Grand Rapids, Michigan), we knew we had to make a significant investment in promoting ourselves. It was a pretty easy decision to put the bulk of our promotional budget into Yellow Pages. Our first ad appeared about three months after we opened for business, and we began tracking our results immediately.
In the first year, that ad provided a 650 percent return on our investment –and even though I’m long gone from the business, Great Lakes Video is still alive and prospering –and still averaging a 500 percent monthly return from their yellow pages ad. It consistently generates about 70 percent of all Great Lakes’ new business.
Want to know just how it’s done? Keep reading.
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