If you are reading this article, chances are you could use a little extra money. With the advent of the internet and the migration of advertising dollars from print to electronic (and this time, it's the real thing, I swear! Not one of those 1999 tech busts!...Seriously!) If you own a small Business today, you look at many advertising mediums. The majority of these mediums lump themselves into 2 categories, creative or direct.
Creative has always been the crapshoot for the small business owner. A sales rep walks into your Business, espousing the greater good of television or radio advertising, quickly moves past the ratings, viewers etc and into the sexiness of hearing your name at 6:57am Monday, Thursday and Saturday if you are watching station X or listening to station Y. If this product didn't work, a Super Bowl commercial price tag wouldn't make headlines every December (for how much Geico paid) or late February (to hear which is most memorable). The key with creative is frequency. If you have realistic budget for frequency, you can make the phone ring with a creative campaign. If you have that budget you probably aren't reading this article. Realistically speaking, you don't have a ton of money to risk on creative advertising effectiveness, haven't backed it up with a call to action, and you need, pound for pound, the least amount of advertising money possible, with the most phone calls?
Enter direct advertising. Classified sections in newspapers, they make your phone ring, if you're selling something people want. (For the record, advertising in the sports section of your local paper is creative advertising (people don't go to page 5 of the sports to regularly check out the latest prices on used cars.) Classified advertising is in the process of going from the newspaper industry's cash cow to taking it on the chin from EBay (ever heard of it?) and even more attractive small town slugger, Craigslist (you go Craig!). If you're Business pumps out used cars by the pound, chances are you, or your salesmen are using these two websites to start realizing savings from Rupert Murdoch and his yacht-owning cronies. Even the best of ebay or Craigslist, however, doesn't put much of a dent in your P&L statement if you are service based like a contractor, or general retail, like a bookstore.
Enter the yellow pages?Pound for pound, no other medium makes the phone ring at your Business like the good old fashioned yellow pages. Throw down your money, and answer the phone. You already know that. So do all the TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers in the country. The best protected advertising budget in any small Business is the yellow page budget. Yellow pages are the scourge of the other guys. How many radio sales reps will walk into your store after you started your advertising campaign and say, "Tom, your $1,000 invested with my station this week got you 48 phone calls?" (If you find a station like that please send me the phone number, and I retract everything I said earlier) When someone wants a plumber, a pool boy, a new pool, or a divorce attorney for getting the
收藏至：
