There is only one winner in this arms race, and it is not you! Too many advertisers waste their money on Yellow Pages advertising without first considering their marketing strategy. Here are seven ways you can waste your money.

1. Attempting to outspend your competitor
As soon as Yellow Pages has convinced you to increase the prominence of your ad, they get your competitors to match or outbid you. This becomes an annual auction, with some categories containing pages of half and full page ads. A buyer can be overwhelmed with choice and may make their decision before they even get to your ad. Priority in listing is given to those who have advertised the longest in a category for a given ad size. You can only get closer to the front by upsizing your ad or if someone else closer to the front ceases advertising.

2. Putting all your eggs in the Yellow Pages basket
An advertising decision is something you should only make after you have developed a marketing strategy. Many businesses rush into advertising in the Yellow Pages, just because that’s what everyone else does. You don’t become a leader by following the herd. You need to consider your payback for your investment in this marketing channel. Ask your Yellow Pages consultant how many leads a particular size ad generates in your category. Then ask yourself how many of these leads will you convert into sales, and then decide whether this is a good investment.

3. Engaging in destructive Head to Head Competition
When you advertise in the Yellow Pages, not only can potential customers see your ad and your offer, so can your competitors. This can result in price competition that can turn your product or service into a commodity. Yellow Pages make comparison shopping easy for buyers and market research easy for competitors.

4. Spending too much on prominence
When spending on a Yellow Pages ad, you can invest in size and colour. Size is important, but what you put in the ad, your copy, is far more important. It is better to go down a size and spend the money you save on a copywriter. Good copy can generate up to 20 times the response as poor copy. Colour is also important, but not as important as size, so go up a size rather than go to colour, which is expensive for its return. If your category is cluttered with large ads, investing in your copy is essential.

5. Relying on Yellow Pages free design service
Ad design is important. Yellow Pages do offer a free design service, but its worth what you pay. The typical design is done in 15 minutes. As they are designing tens of thousands of ads you can’t really expect any special attention- especially as there is no charge for the service! When they design your ad, they will appeal to your vanity rather than to your customers. So they will put “Joe’s Plumbing” in the headline. But buyers don’t care who Joe is, and are far more interested in why they should use Joe. This requires some marketing analysis of your points of difference and ultimate service benefits, which won’t happen in 15 minutes!

6. Putting your ad in the wrong category
If you are a plumber, the decision of where to place your ad is easy. But if your business is in a fairly specialised market such as oil refinery plumbing, there probably isn’t a good category for you. In fact, for many B2B businesses Yellow Pages is a poor marketing tool. Ask yourself the question, where would a buyer look to find out about your business- it might not even be in the Yellow Pages.

7. Depending on old technology advertising
Every year internet advertising increases, with less being spent on print advertising. Yellow Pages is now available online and for certain businesses this is a better option, particularly with a link to their website. When being sold paper Yellow Pages ads, you may be offered complimentary online advertising. However, unless your ad is near the front, you will be invisible to buyers who rarely will browse further than three pages. It is also worth paying for a link to your website.

The Yellow Pages consultants are on commission to sell you advertising. They are only interested in getting you to spend as much as possible, not on providing the best marketing solution for your business. Advertising is not the same as marketing! Good marketing advice on whether and how you should advertise is money well spent. Not only can this increase sales, but it can save you thousands of dollars in advertising.

Before making a decision on Yellow Pages advertising, you should consider all your marketing channels, and make decisions on how much you invest in each dependent on their ability to attract leads. Having determined how much you will invest in Yellow Pages, do some market analysis and invest in your ad copy. This is particularly important for larger ad sizes. Yellow Pages advertising can be rewarding, but should only be considered as just one part of your overall marketing strategy.

The four essential ingredients of an awesome ad are:

ATTENTION – INTEREST – DESIRE – ACTION

If your ad is missing any of these, it is not an AWESOME Ad!

ATTENTION: You must first get the readers attention. Picture him scanning the page in which your ad is printed. For him or her it is much like which ride at the amusement park to take next. Something about your ad must grab their attention, to directs their focus toward your product.

Since ads may or may not have graphics, it then comes down to something about the words you use, or about the way you use them. Some advertisers seem to think that if you use lots of !!! (exclamation marks)or *** (asterisks) or maybe MAKE IT ALL CAPS that this will draw their attention. The problem here is that:

Everyone knows it’s glitter and meant to get your attention. This may often interfere with the reader’s ability to take your words seriously. Subconsciously he may even expect your ad to be some kind of gimmick. Right or wrong, stereotype or not, my advice is let your words speak for themselves and steer clear of such tactics. We will discuss guidelines for choosing the right words later.

INTEREST: The ad must have appeal. This is a good place to state the benefits or some attractive features of your product. Knowing the demographics of your readers or the category section your ad is placed in, helps in understanding their interests. What benefits of your product or service is most likely to appeal to this group? Develop a mental picture of some of the customers who would come from this demographic group, and will buy your product. What kinds of jobs do they have, cars do they drive… are they young, old, single, married…

Having a mental picture of your audience is important when you want to understand their interests and know what benefits of your product you should spotlight.

DESIRE: But appealing to their interest is not enough. The ad must then “further stimulate your reader.” While interest can generally be obtained by the practical properties of your product, desire needs to be sparked by a more emotional reaction.

Is there something about your product that will make them feel good, excited, confident, secure, hoperul or powerful? Think about what other emotions your product can ignite.

Does your product appeal to a particular sense. Can the reader taste, hear, smell, see or hear your product? Realise that most actions which we take are sparked by desire and most desire is stimulated by feelings.

We don’t really desire money. We desire the feelings that we think money will bring us, whether they be happy, secure, or powerful. Yet, the word “money” may trigger the desire that triggers the feelings which we value and want to experience.

ACTION: If your reader does not take action, then you are dead in the water. How do you get your reader to act? Believe it or not this is the simplest step. Simply use a directive. Psychologists tell us that when given a directive (unless obviously harmful) our first instinct is to comply.

Turn to the person in the seat next to you, and in a slightly commanding voice say, “give me your pen for a minute”… chances are they will, and usually, without question, for no other reason than “you told them to.”

Don’t say… “will you give me your pen for a minute” because now they have to think, and if they have to think they may refuse. In your ad simply say: “call this number now”, “email me for details”, “go to our website” etc.

If the first three ingredients (attention, interest, and desire) have been well done, and the reader is a qualified customer…. they will most likely take the action you direct them to take.

Here’s how to avoid looking for the wrong work in the wrong places:

1. Don’t expect to just sign-up for a job. You can’t just sign up for a job in the traditional job world, even at McDonalds. And, you can’t just sign up for a job in the telecommuting world. Any job ad you come across that gives you the impression that you can just sign up and be employed should be seriously questioned.
2. Don’t expect to get paid licking envelopes, gluing earrings, reading emails, surfing the net, or “placing ads”. This is where most people get in trouble. They search for work in areas that are almost always scams.
3. Don’t expect to sign-up and type, or do data entry. This is another area people get into trouble. There are legitimate clerical jobs BUT they almost always require passing typing tests for speed, accuracy, and grammar and punctuation.
4. Don’t expect a $25 (or any amount) processing fee will get you a job. Any company charging a fee to hire you is not offering a job. These “jobs” will tell you the fee is to process your application, support the cost of the website hosting, or to add you to payroll. DON’T FALL FOR IT. You wouldn’t buy it in the traditional work world so you shouldn’t fall for it in the telecommuting world.
5. Don’t fall for ‘no experience necessary’. Employers are looking to hire people who can do a specific job. While there are some jobs don’t require experience, they do require skills such as a pleasant speaking voice, writing talent, or some other skill that can be measured to insure you have what it takes to do the job. In the traditional work world, you need to show you have what it takes to do the job. You will need to provide the same proof in the telecommuting world.
6. Don’t expect to find jobs through search engines. If you are looking for a legitimate job, you need to look where jobs are posted. Employers post jobs on their websites and on employment websites. There are many free and fee-based job sites that offer legitimate work-at-home jobs. It is okay to pay to access a job database as long as it offers real jobs (see number 2). Scammers are known to post their schemes on job sites but if you follow the rules above, you won’t get caught up in them.

Don’t fall for it. To avoid a work-at-home job scam, you need to know what jobs you are qualified to do and conduct your job search in the same professional manner you would a traditional job search.

By searching for ‘real’ jobs in the places that employers post jobs, you will not only have better success at finding legitimate work, but also you will decrease the number of scams you are exposed to.