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First, lets come to grips with Yellow Page Reality: While successful Yellow Pages advertising is all about differentiating your business from the numerous competitors appearing right next to you, you must do it in a powerful and meaningful way because just being different will NOT make your phones ring! While most of the secrets of the recent crop of self-styled Yellow Page ad gurus can be used to differentiate your business, none of them will persuade customers to call you. Why? Because prospects dont search the Yellow Pages for ads that stand out; they search them for solutions. Prospects only search the Yellow Pages because they dont yet know who to call for a particular need or problem. So while almost any company within any business category has an ad offering their services as a solution, the prospect is still forced to do business with a company they wont know. For most people, this situation produces a little anxiety. Not fear of public speaking anxiety, but the anxiety is there, and its why most prospects choose to call those specialists with ads that reduce their felt anxiety. Ads that make them feel... This guy is speaking exactly to my needs, he knows where Im coming from and he sincerely cares about solving my problem. So how can you make your ad convey this kind of message to a prospect? You have to do two things:
Easy strategies to understand, but hard to implement, because to specialize means targeting your ad to only one specialty. If your ad lists 5 or more of your specialties, then youre not a specialist in the eyes of the prospect! This means you have to consciously direct your message (both content and graphics) to what will feel like a small subsection of your business category. Advertising yourself as a specialist and speaking to your target audiences motivating concerns will cause your prospects to continue the conversation by giving YOU their business. Anything else tends to fall on deaf ears no matter how eye-catching the ad is. Heres an example: Youre concerned about your water heater; it isnt working well and has started leaking water into your basement. You take out the Yellow Pages to find a plumber. Who will you call, the general all-around plumber, or the water heater specialist who has extensive repair experience and, if replacement is needed, can have your new heater installed that very day? Lets say this water-heater specialist even includes an incentive for you to call: if you mentioned his ad, and it turned out you needed a new heater, his initial inspection fee would go toward the cost of a brand new heater. Now contrast this with the jack-of-all-trades plumber who lists septic tanks, toilets, water heaters, and ten other specialties that he services. Which plumber best speaks to your motivating concern and reduces your anxiety? Which plumber would you be most likely to call? Ive personally designed ads every bit as narrowly focused as that, and all of them garnered massive response better than the client ever expected. In fact, the plumber specializing in water heaters hes done so well that he can now afford to place another highly targeted Yellow Page ad: one focusing on drain cleaning! Granted, its scary to focus so intently on such a small group of your prospects. Having the courage to do so is much harder than paying some guru for a cartoon-style ad or a quick, off-the-shelf template Yellow Page ad. But a genuine expert will tell you the truth. While casting the widest net possible may feel more comfortable and safe, safe ads wont make your phones ring the way you want them to. So by all means, develop a unique, benefit-laden headline that speaks to your targeted prospects. Use the best eye-popping graphics you can find to help support your headline. And certainly, invest the time and money to come up with the most compelling copy possible. But dont do these things just to catch the eye or to make your ad stand out; use each component to speak to your unique, narrowly-defined prospect in a way that will make your phone ring with their business. |
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