Are You In the Right Category(ies) for the Yellow Pages?Sometimes the default category is NOT the right one for your business--make sure you get listed correctly. (Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, December, 1998) Sometimes the most obvious heading isn't the one that makes the most sense. Recently, the topic of Yellow Pages categories came up on two different discussion groups I participate on. In both cases, a writer complained that the Yellow Pages brought in inappropriate or unsuitable inquiries. And in both cases, the business had accepted the phone company's free listing without much thought to category. One was an accountant with a lot of expertise in the Internet. She turned down most of the people who called from the YP, preferring to get new business through referrals because too many of the random callers wanted her to help them cheat on their taxes. I suggested that she switch her free listing to Internet Consultants. The other was a publisher, inundated with low-quality submissions she didn't want to waste her time on. I asked her why she didn't list as a publishing consultant, who could freely take money for helping these clients walk through the publishing process—or else in one of the subjects about which she publishes, rather than just plain publishing. I get a significant amount of business from the various Yellow Pages I advertise in—in fact, the YP consumes almost all my outlay for paid advertising—about U.S. $1500 per year to list in four different directories, two categories each. And those ads typically bring in something like $30,000 per year—a return of 20:1. But even though I'm a writer and publisher, I wouldn't dream of listing in either of those. I list under marketing consultants and under resume services. My ad in that second category, a one-inch in-column classified, has been running almost unchanged for over a decade. It works well for me. Incidentally, I spend an entire chapter on Yellow Pages and another one on classified advertising in general, in my book, Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring. Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.
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