Yellow Pages Tips - Does Ad Size Matter?

It's an age-old question: Does size matter in Yellow Pages advertising?


The simple answer? A resounding "YES!"

(Sorry. I know you'd rather hear me say that a small Yellow Pages ad can bring you wildly successful results. But that's simply not the case.)

It's really just common sense. In fact, it's a rule of all advertising. Unfortunately, I consult with a lot of Yellow Pages advertisers who insist on placing small ads into competitive headings in their local directory, trying to compete against competitors who have bigger, more effective ads. Somehow they actually expect (or maybe they just hope?) to get good results. Unfortunately, that's like entering your own everyday car into the Indy 500, failing miserably, and then concluding that auto racing in general just doesn't work.

Let me ask you this: Which magazine ad do you think would bring better results?

A) A tiny 1/16th-page ad way in the back; or

B) A full-page, full-color well-designed ad right up front?

And which TV ad do you think would get better results?

A) A 30-second spot run one time on an obscure cable channel at 3 o'clock in the morning; or

B) A series of 10 60-second ads running on prime-time network television for a week?

Right - these are no-brainers! And why would the Yellow Pages be any different?

I'm amazed how often I hear smaller Yellow Pages advertisers rationalize with nonsense like "Well, I personally like to start at the back of the heading" (FACT: 84% of Yellow Pages users start at the beginning of the heading) or "People think companies with larger ads have to charge more to make them pay for those ads, so they don't call them" (FACT: Larger ads convey a more solid, dependable, quality image and thus consistently attract more calls and more profitable customers - resulting in a Return On Investment many times greater than that of smaller ads). Or even the trusty "My small (or otherwise poorly-designed) ad doesn't get a lot of calls, so it must be because no one uses the Yellow Pages anymore."

And the excuses dreamed up by unsuccessful Yellow Pages advertisers go on and on...

Bottom-line: All things being equal, larger Yellow Pages ads get better results than smaller ones (this has been consistently proven in "metered ad" studies where unique tracking phone numbers are placed into ads).

*But pay close attention to the words "all things being equal"! The biggest problem with most Yellow Pages ads is not that they're not big enough but that they are ignoring the proven rules of Yellow Pages advertising success.

Here's the two-part process:

1. First, learn the rules of Yellow Pages ad success and design yourself a killer ad (or save yourself the time and trouble and risk and let an expert design your ad for you).

2. Then, once you know you have a super ad, make it as big as necessary to get at or near the front of your heading(s) and put it into as many Yellow Pages directories as you can!

Follow these two simple steps and you'll never again question the fact that larger Yellow Pages ads are more easily and more often found, noticed and chosen than small ads.

Besides -- a $3,000/month ad that brings in $50,000/month is MUCH smarter to run than a $500/month ad that brings in only $1,000/month, right?

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