Business Breakthrough: Yellow Pages

I’m going to talk to you about Yellow Pages.

I know what you’re thinking – “Yellow Pages is dead.”

But what if it’s not? What if it’s not dead at all? You have to look at the avatar of the person that is using the Yellow Pages.

There are going to be people that search on their phones and laptops, but there is also going to be people that may not be as savvy on a smartphone or a laptop, that are going to look for that book and grab that thing and flip it over.

Yellow Pages is my second largest lead generator still. I’m sure you’re thinking, “How is that possible? It’s impossible.”

Well I’m here to tell you it’s not impossible. The Yellow Pages used to be a big pool, but now there is less people in the book which increases your chances of being seen.

There is a strategy to Yellow Pages, and there is a new trend going on with it. A lot of companies are doing a cost per call program, but they aren’t going to do it with somebody that doesn’t respect the books or believe in it.

If you show some respect and understanding with the Yellow Pages, and sit with the managers and the reps, and you treat this as a partnership, then you might have an opportunity to take advantage of it.

I’ve coached a lot of companies and saved them money. I saved myself over $700,000 by going with this strategy.

It’s not about the savings. If you were getting endless calls, then you wouldn’t care how much it costs.

Here’s a strategy:

1. How do people flip through the books? Some flip from front to back, and roughly 50 percent flip from back to front. This means that the real estate in the back, can sometimes be as important as the real estate in the front.
2. The other thing I want to talk to you about is capping the ends. Capping the ends means that no matter where you fall in the middle section, you can normally get a small well-designed ad in the front and in the back. The human brain picks up on those little images. Frequency builds trust.
3. Frequency, the more areas that you own in the Yellow Pages, the better chances you have to win. So, a lot of times I will look for the underlining categories. In my service business, a lot of people own boilers. If you own a boiler, are you going to look in the heating section or the boiler section? You’re going to go to boilers. Chances are, customers are going to look for the term of the name of what they have.

If you’re not in it, you might want a strategy to get into it. If you’re in it, you might want to find out how to do it better.

Mike Agugliaro, Business Ninja