What makes a good yellow pages ad?

[Pompal 09.]

I am thinking of advertising in the yellow pages and want to know what a good yp ad for a massage therapists should have in the ad.

Credentials? Benefits? Website?? Other?

 

[??Sophie??]

Statistics show that fewer people are going to the yellow pages for finding someone. The higher rate is people searching online in their area. I don't even know where my phone book is! lol

Personally, I wouldn't waste money with the yellow pages but invest it more into your website, doing SEO/SEM.

 

[cowboydoc]

Absolute ditto to Amy's response. Take the free listing and spend your money and time elsewhere. The sales pitch that the Yellow Page folks do, that they will get you on Yellowpage.com, can be easily achieved via good search engine placement for free. It takes work on your part to optimize your rankings, but I've never found that paying big dollars for yellow page listings pays off, and I've tried it many times over the years.

 

[Annuh]

Yellow page ads can be extremely expensive, depending on where you are at.

If you are going to end up paying $3,000+ for the ad/year, I'd also suggest looking at a good SEO (search engine optimization) group.

I'd definitely ad you website to the add, and keep lots of blank space, so that the add does not look like a jumble of words within the words/addresses and phone numbers in the book.

I don't think credentials like National Board or your extra work, are all that important. I know some people do, but when I look for an MT, I don't get all in a twirl over their credentials. I think being credentialed does more for the therapists "impression" of themselves than for the clients impression. Stick to LMT or whatever your certification may be. {My opinion... take it w/a grain of salt if you are into that sort of thing.}

I would highlight a nice sentence about what you hope to achieve for the client.

Hope that helps.


Here are some cross links regarding the Yellowpages, yellowpages.com and marketing in a small town (I can't recall, but I think you said you were somewhere small in a past thread):

• Yellow Pages and creeps
• Do Yellow Page ads work?
• Yellow pages advertisement...
• Yellow pages
• Yellow Pages (part 1)
• Yellow Pages questions and UPDATE... (part 2)
• Yellowpages.com
• yellowpages.com.... if you are an AT&T (SBC) are you lis
• So...how do I let people know I exist?
• Marketing in a Small Town

 

[czarina]

I think a good yellow pages add is a nonexistant one

heehee
sorry, I'm a bit bitter. I threw hundereds of dollars out the window a few years ago, literally I can count the number of phone calls I received - 1. ONE. That was one helluva expensive phone call - and it didn't even turn into a sale. Don't let my bitterness sway you tho!

I agree with Pueppi about credentials and impressions, also agree about focusing on one nice and clear sentence about what you can do for them.

 

[Good gone girl]

yellowpage mistakes

The yellowpages are becoming more and more unpopular as the internet becomes more ingrained. When we did ours we always tried to be different. So many ads look all the same. Same images, same list of services, same, same, same.

We started with a headline to get their attention instead of our logo (no one knows who we are if they're browsing the yellowpages).

We then used testimonials, LOTS of them.

Then we offered a free trial, like a $20 gift certificate to those who called.

Lastly, we put our phone number and name.

Hope this helped a little.

 

[Hello Hello]

I think a good yellow pages add is a nonexistant one

hahaha. funny and i agree with this statement and everyone else's thoughts posted here.

 

[Glenn T]

I paid extra for a business listing in our local phonebook. They listed the wrong number. Of course I didn't pay for the ad, but the number they listed (and I have no idea how they even got that number) is for my internet hookup which I don't even have a phone hooked to because it is here in my office and I don't want a ringing phone, or the buzzing sound it makes even when it's on silent, to interfere while I'm in session.

Odd thing is....the right number was listed last year. Why they didn't just copy that ad, I don't know...

~Sandra

 

[I hate Peugeot]

I heard that they won't even be passing out phone books in the future unless requested. Not sure if this is true or not, so you may want to check it out.

I have an add in the User Friendly Phone Book and it's worked for me. I have had to be cautious of male callers however. If they found me in the phonebook and are travelling from afar, I've definately had a few no call/no shows and some pervs. The easiest way to prevent this problem I have found is to require a credit card payment for the session over the phone to book the appointment. Anyone who is really serious hasn't had a problem with this. The rest have hung up...lol. You'll be able to tell by talking to the individual booking...always trust your gut instinct!!!!

If you are going to do an add in the phone book, I recommend making your add stand out a little by having it printed in red and black ink. Red has been shown to be the one color to stand out to the eye above all others. It may cost you a little more but overall I think it's worth it.

 

[Princesa Z]

shameless plug - I do tons of freelance SEO web content for hire.

Having said that - there are still LOTS of areas - such as rural Oklahoma - where people heavily rely on the phone book. My ad cost me $10 per month.

What makes an ad successful? Well this goes for ALL advertising -
Don't talk about YOU! Talk about THEM! What is that client going to get for their sixty bucks? Why should they come and visit you? How will they benefit?

Once you answer those questions, you'll be halfway to having your ad finished.

Angela

 

[Nomadic Exile]

In our area, I love seeing competitors pour money into the yellow pages. It's a huge waste of cash. In our experience, the size and color of the ad do little to enhance effectiveness in our market. A simple business listing does as well for us as the old 1/4-page 4-color ads did. Therefore we no longer put much into phone book ads.

There are many more cost-effective ways to advertise. I keep good tabs on what works vs what doesn't, and we don't repeat failed efforts. If you're just buying ads without tracking effectiveness, it's impossible to determine return on investment. "It seems to be working" means you really don't know, and that means you're just guessing.

Right now I'm locked into a contract for a promising advertisement that hasn't panned out. I'm looking forward to the end of the agreement so we can put those monthly payments towards more productive marketing. If I wasn't tracking returns, I'd be mistakenly assuming that the thing is working... and be at risk of extending the agreement. Instead, I know for certain that it is a bust, will probably always be a bust, and there is certainly no reason to repeat this experiment.

 

[Pompal 09.]

Jason - that is very important.

Track where your clients come from!

Fully half of my new clients come straight out of the phone book. FOR ME and in MY AREA it is worth it.

Were I in a larger city where more people were online, it might not be. I should say that I don't do a large ad - I don't need to. I'm the only one in my county (yes - the entire county) who has an ad in the phone book so a small square blip is more than sufficient.

Angela

 

[SwimIsAwesome =]]

We *may* take out a YP ad in the *little local* phone book NEXT year. We've just opened our store front, and at this point, we're the only "just massage"place in this small area. There are a couple of "spa" type places that also offer massage, but nobody who advertises as MASSAGE PEOPLE.

We get a free listing with our telephone service- that's great. We'll see how many people actually USE that listing to find us. Since we're pretty unique in our area, it may do more for us than if we were still in the larger city a few miles away- like AngEngland. But I'm not going to pay for a larger ad until I see what the freebie does for us. And even then it would be a small ad. We've been down that expensive road twice before- got a total of ONE call from BOTH ads together over the years, and that was different businesses, different areas. NOT worth a large expenditure, IMO. At all.