We have probably convinced you that you need to have some sort of Yellow Pages ad or presence right? You bet! Now, we are going to provide you with additional information that will unveil some of the hidden obstacles with Yellow Pages ads. This section is not intended to turn you off of advertising in the Yellow Pages but make you aware of these obstacles and to help you make an informed decision when it comes time to finding the right marketing mix for your business. Lets start!

Advertisers who advertise in local or regional Yellow Pages can reach almost every potential customer in their area as each resident and business located in the directory region will most likely receive the Yellow Pages.

Although you are reaching potential customers in a specified region, your reach is limited to that area. If you want to expand your reach to neighboring cities or states, you will need to start advertising in those local or regional Yellow Pages. Your advertising budget can take a serious hit if you really want to take charge and establish a presence in other regions.

The Yellow Pages is produced in most directory regions once per year. That means that the longevity of the advertising dollars spent is “perceived” to be high!

As soon as your local Yellow Pages are sent to print, it is very likely that some listings will be out of date. Will your listing be one of them? It is estimated that 20% of Yellow Pages business listings go though some change during the year. There are many variables associated to these changes. They range from simple things like address and telephone changes, misprints, wrong category classification, to even a corporate name change or change of service. Can you tell me where the longevity of the advertising dollars is now? I can tell you … its evaporated into thin air and your starting to lose customers and money. What would give to be able to automatically change your listing information, on every Yellow Pages business ad that is circulating?

The use of spot color in Yellow Pages ads helps the ad stand out!

It sure does and if you want your ad to stand out even more you could also get a full color ad. All you have to do is open your pocket book. The medium works and I’ve given you the stats to prove it but if you are on a tight budget, this strategy is just not going to be an option for you. Your competitors with deeper advertising pockets will be able to take advantage of these options and make their ads stand out … more so than yours. Don’t be disappointed, its part of the marketing game. You need to find other marketing alternatives that will even the playing field.

Generally speaking Yellow Pages ads provide limited space to deliver comprehensive messages about your company, product or services.

This might contrary to what I mentioned before but hold on a second. When most people advertise in regional Yellow Pages the process goes something like this. We talk to our Yellow Pages representative and select an ad size that we can afford. We then try to cram as much information as possible into the ad and the Yellow Pages representative convinces you to go to a bigger ad. You start putting your ad together and realize that since you have more room, you want to put more information on the ad and again you see yourself running out of room. The cycle repeats itself until a) you bought 27 pages of ads in the leather section (this happens very seldom ) or b) you finally settle on ad size and have to go without certain information on the ad. See you still got your ad, but it would have been that much better if you could have included those few extra phrases. I’m sure some of you can relate to this.

Yellow Pages ads could be that much more engaging if they were interactive or rich in media!

If you have by chance visited a men’s restroom in a popular night club or restaurant you’ve probably seen them. Funky interactive and rich media ads right over the urinals. The days of paper ads are slowly disappearing. Some of the ads come wit cool graphics, trendy backdrop music and a message that sticks in your head and makes you want to tell your friends about it. The truth of the matter is these ads sell. Now imagine if you could open a Yellow Pages book and have interactive ads presented to you when you wanted to find more information about a product or company. Pretty neat right? Where am I going with this? Well you can achieve the same by finding marketing alternatives. The Internet is a great medium for this.

Can Online Yellow Pages help me with some of these obstacles.

YES but the online Yellow Pages competition is fierce and I am not just talking about advertisers like yourself and your competitors fighting for potential customers! What I am about to tell you might come as a surprise to some of you. Yes, you can advertise on an online version of the Yellow Pages and make some of these obstacles disappear but now you have to decide which Yellow Pages to advertise in. Confused? Well many people don’t realize that there are many versions of Yellow Pages put out by almost every huge telephone company. There also many other companies that have started their own online Yellow Pages. Now what? Don’t worry we address all these problems, LeatherPages.com has listing packages, and advertising packages, that can overcome many of these obstacles.