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does advertising in yellow pages work?
Does this work for anyone ??
Thinking of 3 big ads in 3 different yellow pages (£3300), so in 2 minds.
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24 Replies
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There are 100’s of discussions on this so do a search.
for me it is a waste of money, I have now tried online and the book and neither work. spent £1000 this year on a colour ad and nothing so far after about 4 months.
the worse thing about advertising is you never know if it works until you try it.
Don’t listen to the Yell salesman, start with a small ad and grow it slightly if you get a response.
cheers
Warren
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Could I ask what size ad you have (Full colour or not) also What means of advertising do you find best.
Can we make some type of poll on here.
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quote Shaun Cleary:Could I ask what size ad you have (Full colour or not) also What means of advertising do you find best.Can we make some type of poll on here.
Word of mouth rules.
best advertisement by farPeter
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not so much a form of advertising but recommendation is the best form of advertisment and best of all its free, I would say 4 out of 5 of my customers is a recommendation i get at least 2 calls a day this way
do things right, provide a good service and you wont need things like yell etc -
For a new business to get the first customers what would you use, I know once the ball is rolling it should be straight forward but as a start.
Has no one had any yellow pages success ??
I see a lot of business in the yellow pages, has anyone had a decent size full colour ad.
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My ad is 65mm x 65mm as I couldn’t afford anything larger but feel it would have just more money wasted so glad I didn’t go larger. I also did Yell.com for the 2nd year as they offerend me a good deal with 3 extra areas for free so thought it would be worth a try but still a waste.
door to door is how I started and still have some of my best customers from the first few weeks of me starting up and meeting them face to face while walking through town introducing myself.
get out there and get yourself known.
Try find local things you can donate to or sponsor and tell the local newspaper and you could get a mention or even a little write up, people will see your name and know you are a nice helpful chap. (but expect the phone to ring for more people wanting donations etc) Get together with local businesses to raise money or something and sponsor the banners etc, you get the idea, it costs a little now but goes a long way.
good luck
cheers
Warren
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I get enough from the yellow pages to more than make it worthwhile. As Peter says, word of mouth is best but my experience of YP is OK. I spent about 700 quids on my ad last year. Big full colour 1/4 page ads are a waste of money I reckon. The content is more important than colour and size.
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Do you guys find that your websites bring in much business.
What forms of advertising work for you ??
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I think a website is a good idea, but only if you can get it on the first page on the search engines. If nothing else, it can serve as a good portfolio for you to direct potential customers to.
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I advertise in yellow pages in my area and the two areas either side of ours.
We have a colour quarter page in our local area and black and yellow eighth in surrounding areas.We find content is important and telephone number is important – people using yellow pages want you to be very local.
Yell.com is a waste of space in our opinion and we only have minimal presence
Having said all that the ads pay for themselves and it has helped a couple of times with verifying that we are legit company etc etc
But has been said before our the bulk of our work comes from recommendation and just getting out there and talking to people
Colin
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Shaun, you would probably be better off giving yellow pages a miss this year and concentrate on learning more about installation and fitting. Keep up all the supply only work you are doing and when you have a bit of spare time go out and introduce yourself to local businesses, don’t try the hard sell because that puts most people off, introduce yourself tell them what you do briefly and leave them some contact info. That can quite often lead to you picking up smaller jobs which is an ideal way for you to learn plus if you do a good job then they will call you back for any other work and pass your name on to others.
Build it up slowly at a pace you can control rather than be swamped with inquiries and let people down, it’s very difficult to build a good reputation in any business and very easy to get a bad name for yourself. Do the latter and you will find it very hard to get rid of.
As for yellow pages well you will find it varies all over the country, some will say it works well others will tell you they get little from it. I know that in areas of high unemployment such as Fife where I live if you stick a big ad in a directory like yellow pages you tend not to get very much work from it because people assume you are going to be expensive. The big adds you see up here tend to be for companies that deal directly with the public which I doubt you will do so don’t listen to much to what the reps say.
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Anyone, thought more people would have websites on here.
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quote Shaun Cleary:thought more people would have websites on here.Why?
Promotion of any sort should be directed to the type of customer you want to attract.
Yellow Pages is "shotgun" advertising. And although I wouldn’t rule out ever having one as an online catalogue type thing, a website is the same.
However, we prefer our main effort to be a lot more tightly focused than either of those methods.
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What’s the best form of bringing people in, do you think spending money upgrading the website is a better choice the a yellow pages ad.
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Shaun, you appear quite focused in the area of printing banners….and from what I’ve read, a new one at that.
Saying that…you also don’t have any previous advertising in place – either YP or internet…or market statistics regarding proposed turnover or profits etc.
May I be so bold as to ask what prompted you to get into the banner printing market and why you think spending £3300 (nearly £10 a day) of your FUTURE profits would be a good idea…bearing in mind that although banners are VERY profitable you are still going to have to sell a LOT of them VIA YELLOW PAGES ALONE* just to ‘lose’ the loss in earnings (*so other sources of income for the business are not subsidising the advertising).
OK, I know what I do in banners and it amounts to maybe 5% of my turnover…some might be £35 or I might get a set that retails well in excess of a grand.
Can you imaging how many £35 orders you’d have to make just to break even!!
Website advertising….never paid for it…never will…yet ‘somehow’ I come top of the (unpaid) listings under "signs" & the "city" in google, yahoo, ask, altavista….
Do I care much about YP or internet adverts…no, not really, but even a small presence (beyond the free single line entry) is worthwhile or in the top 5 on an internet page.
I have quite a large full colour ad in this year courtesy of my company owners – probably cost in the region of £1500. Why was this done…mainly because we’ve moved premises and a larger than normal impact had to be made….will it pay for itself in NEW business…hmmm, maybe. Will it give continuity and confidence to existing buyers…yes.
At least 75% of my business in repeat & recommendation. The market IS tougher and even my ‘faithful’ customers are shopping round for quotes…and getting cheaper ones. I’m not that fussed…doing jobs for nearly nothing or substituting crap materials is pointless.
Typically a website, however well ‘developed’ it is takes from 3 to 6 months to start making an impact on the search engines (if it’s brand new) and getting good rankings across the board. There are faster ways to do it in about a month….but that takes either your money…or your time.
However – muscling in on the national ‘cheapo’ banner suppliers and making enough to pay your way…given the £15 sq/m FINISHED pricetag won’t leave much room for profit for the smaller business.Anyway, I’m rambling
Dave
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I do a lot of banner and label printing, I also do at lot of car graphics but supply only.
I do a lot of trade at the minute, I would like to branch out to the public and trying to find what form of advertising may be best.
What’s the best form of advertising do you think or a new business.
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quote Shaun Cleary:….What’s the best form of advertising do you think or a new business.
1. Reputation: Doing a damn good job and having it spread by word of mouth.
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What about
Leaflets
Internet site
YP ad
Telephone calls
Door to Door (Business)To get the first few jobs in, does your website bring in a few customers and is it worth more than a YP ad.
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How do you advertise at the moment? You say you are doing a lot of banner and label printing so how do you get that work? Surely you could apply the same to any work you do with joe public.
Wouldn’t you be better off just growing the supply side of the business, you obviously already know what your doing and don’t need to learn any new skills or buy a lot of extra equipment which you will need if you start to do installations.
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Might be handy if you can quantify ‘a lot’.
‘A lot’ to one person could be 3 or 4 banners a week….3 or 4 an hour to somebody else.
And stickers…again…a couple of sets a day or 20,000 profile cut stickers a week and three printers running constantly…
Dave
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Hi mostly through direct contact with business owners (Partners business).
I would like to expand into public selling, I will not be doing any installs till I learn what I am doing.
I would just like to offer banners, signs, labels and dabble in car graphics, just like to know what you think is the best form of advertising to get the first few public customer.
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Shaun,
how long have you been trading?
How much experience do you have?
did you quit a job to get into this game?
Do you expect a wage in your first three years?about 5 times you have been told how you get work in this game.
WOM is the only way. there are no quick ways, without experience, contacts, contacts and more contacts. it will take a lot of time. -
(1) I have been trading for 1 year.
(2) 1 year + 2 in design
(3) No I run a good business with my partner and I am in a nice area with the trade selling (Time to build the business)
(4) No what ever I make goes straight back in.So have you ever had a YP ad or Internet site as you may have a general idea if either of these work.
Also have you tried leaflets and face to face, does this work.
What did you mean by WOM.
Just to answer David I sell around 35 banners a week and about 20 meters of cut stickers.
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Hi Shaun,
If your selling 35 banners per week + your sticker run you must be doing something right to bring in this work.YP to me is a complete waste of time – but horses for courses. I’m a screen printer and no matter how much I’ve paid YP in the past, enquiries haven’t changed.
Leaflet/flyers do work – but are a bit hitty miss. Sometimes you get loads of work – sometimes little or non.
Networking – some people love it but I couldn’t get away with breakfast meetings and selling other peoples services.
Websites are a must and if your happy printing banners all day then that’s the way I’d market it. Buy a good domain name and get a good website designed.
Just my opinion and others will have different views – its trial and error, the hard work has to be done by you and you’ll learn what works best.
BTW – I’m busy doing all of the above at the mo to get work in – it never stops.
Cheers John
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