Land of Opportunity

February 21, 2005

SBC Yellow Pages Advertising Secrets

SBC Yellow Pages just delivered their massive SBC Yellow Pages book, advertising nearly every small business in central Arkansas. Advertising in the SBC Yellow Pages is not cheap. Many small businesses have taken loans against houses and business assets to pay for large ads in the Yellow Pages directory. Did they get their money’s worth? Experienced Yellow Pages advertisers think so, inexperienced first-time advertisers sometimes don’t get the results they were expecting.

As fate sometimes does, while my SBC Yellow Pages were being delivered, Ankesh Kothari at Marketing eYe blog was posting an article on Yellow Pages advertising. I only discovered it this morning when an article of his was chosen for the Washington’s Birthday edition of the Carnival of the Capitalists mega-post.

While Ankesh’s article is an anniversary tribute to the telephone directory, Ankesh links to the Yellow Pages Commando. The Yellow Pages Commando is in reality, Dick Larkin, a professional Yellow Pages advertising consultant. In addition to one of the sharpest website designs I’ve ever seen, Dick has quality articles that provide real life examples of proven principles for advertising in the Yellow Pages.

Dick provides a list of 17 Yellow Pages Tips and Tools. Clicking on Newsletters at the bottom of Dicks pages take you to an archive of three-years of Yellow Pages advertising articles. Dick also offers a Yellow Pages advertising blog with updates several times each week with Yellow Pages related news and readers’ tips.

Ankesh also provides a link to an inexpensive, but high-quality Yellow Pages Success Course by Wharton graduate Alan Saltz. The $47 course costs less than most small businesses pay to attend a mediocre marketing seminar. Considering the cost of and the return on a successful Yellow Pages ad, the Yellow Pages Success Course will likely pay for itself the first month your ad runs.