How much do you spend on Yellow Pages advertising each year? More importantly, are you getting a return to justify that cost? If you are not reviewing your Yellow Pages ad results, you may be shovelling hard-earned dollars down the drain. News Flash: My Yellow Pages go straight into the recycling bin. I don’t even let them in the house. My 9 year old will never ever know what they are.

Here are some flaws:

1. Expensive. Depending on its size and location, an ad can cost around $7,000 per year. Add in extra for designing a customised ad per letter or bold font. It takes a lot of clients just to break even at those costs. I know a business who spent well over $20k a year.

2. Clutter. Where does your ad live? Depending on the size of your market, right next to dozens, perhaps even hundreds of your competitors. I said your competitors!

3. Lack of Engagement. In today’s world, it takes a variety of messages to reach your audience and motivate them to contact you. There is nothing personable about an ad in the Yellow Pages.

4. Difficult to measure. Yellow Pages ads don’t allow you to test different marketing approaches. Once you place an ad, you have to wait a year to test a new headline or message. And unless a client says they found you through the phone directory, you have no way of knowing the effectiveness of your ad.

5. Reach the wrong market. Find out who actually reads the Yellow Pages. Are they actually the people who would buy your product or service?

Did I say never use Yellow Pages ads? No – a well designed Yellow Pages ads certainly have a place in ‘some’ marketing programs. However – If you went through the global financial crisis and the only thing you left in your marketing plan was your Yellow Pages ad – you have a problem. Advertising and marketing are not the same. You would be totally surprised as to what half of that Yellow Pages budget could achieve elsewhere!

I am going through a marketing research exercise with one of my clients at the moment. I thought it might be useful to drop down some notes. In this particular instance, I am getting feedback on a niche computer development firm. But it does apply across the board. I truly believe that this type of exercise done right, could be the basis for your next big innovation.
Here are some questions to assist you to appreciate what you can do better to service your clients. People rarely buy for the reasons you think they do or should. You must keep in mind that humans are conflict adverse. Basically they would prefer to lie to you then upset you. So dig deep and you may need to ask a similar question a number of times to get to the valuable information you need.

1) Why did you engage us in the first place or what was it about our message, sales representative, brochure, website that attracted you?
2) What do we do well or what keeps you coming back for more?
3) What could we do better?
4) Where did your last provider let you down?
5) If you were in our industry- What would you do or what would you change? Seeing your industry from an outsider’s point of view is priceless.
I have also used a website called Survey Monkey that shoots out easy to build surveys on your behalf for free. Be prepared though, the answers come back anonymous and can be quite brutal. Keep in mind – it just might save your business.

Just created a new website? Do a survey monkey blast to your favourite clients. Give them an incentive like a voucher to their favourite store. Give them a call beforehand so it doesn’t get lost in the spam rinse.
Most importantly, you will learn everything you need to know for your next strategy session and you clients will feel the love.

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Whether you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur – every minute of your day counts – Time is money. Small starts ups often don’t have a budget for a full time marketing manager either. Think about outsourcing these 14 tasks:

Website Design: Every business needs a website these days. There are brilliant free options out there now, but learning every trick in the book is very time consuming. Bringing in a web designer to handle set up and marketing services for maintenance can free up time. Google also loves fresh content for its website rankings.

Blogging: While I believe you should be in control of your social media avenues, engaging a  freelance writer to broaden your ideas/thoughts and broadcast them is better than never getting the words out at all. Choose somebody with experience within your industry.  

Media Contacts & Press Releases: A marketing specialist can research and compile a list of specific media contacts, write a press release and email out releases along with follow up phones calls.

Social Networking: Providing regular, valuable content to your followers is key to making the most out of your social network sites.   A marketing service can keep all your profiles up to date and respond to comments on your blog for maximum traction.

Assessing Advertising: Can’t get around to placing that ad or now what suits your niche? Marketing services can compare price, calculate reach and return on investment in a nice little report.

Marketing Research: All business projects should entail some degree of market research to maximise its success – though firms will often skip over it and wander why things don’t work out how they planned. Marketing services can interview members of your target market and source industry research you otherwise don’t have access too. New product innovations or often born in this space.

SEO: Outsourcing your search engine optimisation to a SEO specialist is a must and can ensure that your website ranks well for your niche. The cost is often less then you think.

Database Management: If you rely on a database of existing and past customers — or you’ve built a database of individuals you think could become future clients — you may want to have it updated. A Marketing service can update all the contact information and get the name of the correct personal.

Event Organisation: When it comes to planning an event, it’s worth bringing in a professional event organiser. Invitations, registrations and meal planning are just a couple of the related tasks and all are incredible time suckers. There is nothing glamorous about it. Even if you only do one event a year, an event organiser can handle all of the details.

Newsletter Management: Newsletters are a great way to stay front if mind and in touch with your existing clients, but companies struggle to find the time to create them. All parts of a newsletter can be outsourced. You may even consider outsourcing your internal newsletter.

Article Writing: Distributing articles about your company’s niche, linking to your site, and citing you as an expert, can help market your company online. You can engage a writer to create just a few such articles or a large batch, just as you might hire a freelance writer for another project.

Marketing Audit: Many marketing firms offer services that assess your marketing efforts. They are designed to highlight gaps in your current marketing and deliver a roadmap. You may be spending unnecessary time and money on things that are just never going to make an impact.

Customer Feedback: Conducting surveys or interviewing with your clients and compiling results are best outsourced, otherwise you are in danger of setting up and proving your own hypothesis and missing what you really need to hear.  Consider doing this after every major implementation or project or all at least once on a larger scale.  

Marketing Materials: Business cards, brochure ware, and other marketing materials are a necessity for most businesses, but contacting a graphic designer is only the start. A marketing specialist can also assess its purpose, relevance of images, copy and distribution to maximise the impact and save it from being placed in the bin.