# Marketing pains



## Bowsherb (Apr 18, 2008)

The people from yellowpages call me at least once every two weeks selling me on how great there book is. If someone out there is using this book, let me know how it is working. I understand geographics plays a roll but if I could get some feed back it would be appreciated. Or just a flavor of what has been effective for some of you.:blink:

thanks, 

B.Bowsher


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## kevjob (Aug 14, 2006)

remodeling no, service calls maybe don't waste your money on them.


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## heartoftexas (Jul 11, 2008)

we spent 6,000 ....what a waste . Word of mouth is our best source and it's free!


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## Bowsherb (Apr 18, 2008)

Thanks for the reply it was extremely helpfull


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## Cole (Aug 27, 2004)

I agree, run dont walk away from yellow pages.


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## curapa (Oct 8, 2007)

I would say it depends on the field of work your in. I have had alot of luck with them for my fence business. My buddy has a remodeling company and the book didn't work for him.


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## mark the coach (Aug 11, 2008)

*yellow pages; they don't work anymore for remodeling*

Years ago, yellow pages worked pretty well for our company. But after 2004, the return on investment was pitiful for remodeling. We ran a remodeling and a roofing company with separate adds. The yellow page adds worked only for roofing.
Fast forward to today and the majority of contractors in remodeling are not buying yellow page adds. They are only keeping the line listing. Homeowners are not going to the yellow pages for remodeling. Their first choice is referral through word of mouth. This can be from people they know, neighbors, or signs on jobs in their neighborhood.
If they can't find someone from the referral networks then they go on-line. If you don't have a website that is on the first page after a search they won't find you.
Many contractors are tapping their existing customer base with letters and newsletters minimum 4 times a year.
Radius mailings around ongoing jobs seem to work for many. Mail one at start of job, one at middle and one at end.
Many contractors are using strategic alliances among the vendors and sub trades.
Another major generator of leads are home shows. Find the right show, plan it well and follow up on your leads right away.


If I think of anything else I'll let you know.

mark the coach

www.thecontractorcoachingpartnership.com


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## threaderman (Nov 15, 2007)

Their ads work for me doing repair type of work,but AT&T themselves are cheats .
They won't guarantee you'll always be in the same spot,or even close,so there is no way of knowing what kind of exposure your ad will get.
I tripled my ad with them to 10,000 this year,last year I was on page 1,this year I wound up on page 6 ,not because of other business listings but because AT&T took a half page for their own advertising and quite a few of us were relocated.I never would have spent so much with them had I known my placement would change.They really put a screw in things for me ,I deplore them and their sales people.

Screw at&t,screw at&t,screw at&t ,screw at&t,screw at&t,screw at&t


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## SethHoldren (Feb 13, 2008)

How big is your market? That matters.

Also, in construction, as a _very_ general rule of thumb, the smaller the projects you generally do, the better the results. So, big remodeling companies don't usually get much from the YP.

Also, I don't believe in large ads for most businesses. Get the small one if you must go YP. It's _really _difficult to justify those astronomical rates for the big ads.

Here's an interesting tidbit though. Did you know YP ads get much higher response rates if you create some sort of offer like a free report?

For example, we have a local foundation company here in town and they offer a free report entitled "12 Early Warning Signs of Foundation Failure."

You want to do something like that, so you stand out. Don't listen to the YP rep about ad design. They will tell you to look at the other ads and make yours like them. Total rubbish. They don't care whether you get results or not. They just want you to buy a huge ad. 

Read "Tested Advertising Methods." It's been proven time and again that an offer and a call to action out-pulls the normal Name/Tagline/Number crap. I mean we're talking like 30x the response, in some cases more.

Oh yeah, and you'll never know unless you track results. Which simply means ask when they call, and write it down.


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## BuilderOne (Oct 13, 2008)

SethHoldren said:


> How big is your market? That matters.
> 
> Also, in construction, as a _very_ general rule of thumb, the smaller the projects you generally do, the better the results. So, big remodeling companies don't usually get much from the YP.
> 
> ...


WOW, that is the most inexperienced information I have ever heard. I know your heart is in the right place, but you are very far off on this

Yellow Pages are like the internet. If you are in the top three, you will generate the most business from yellow page shoppers. I have bought yellow pages for 20 years. When I am in the top three, My sales almost double. It goes with any other format, market( buy ) what you can afford.
Larger ads, color will generate a higher return per lead 75% of the time over smaller ads. You really have to be careful who you listen to! I'll take experience over GUESSING anyday. 


f_rom a large remodeler_


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## SethHoldren (Feb 13, 2008)

Yikes, do you work for the Yellow Pages? :jester:

Don't get me wrong, the research shows yellow pages can still get results. According to research I've seen, the numbers are down quite a bit, especially in the last couple of years. But they still pull results, it's very true. And there could be some good opportunities there since so many are abandoning YP for the internet. 

I don't doubt your success with YP. Like I said, _general_ rule of thumb. There are definitely single cases of huge success.

That's great that you get such good results. You are a large remodeler you said, right? Do you do very large projects, or lots of small ones?

With your ads in the past that have achieved awesome results, do you have any advice for good ad design? What have you found that works well?

Your opinion comes off strong (and personal) but lets stick to helping folks, shall we? We all have different levels of experience and expertise.


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## BuilderOne (Oct 13, 2008)

SethHoldren said:


> Don't get me wrong, the research shows yellow pages can still get results. According to research I've seen, the numbers are down quite a bit, especially in the last couple of years. But they still pull results, it's very true. And there could be some good opportunities there since so many are abandoning YP for the internet.
> 
> I don't doubt your success with YP. Like I said, _general_ rule of thumb. There are definitely single cases of huge success.
> 
> ...


all numbers are down quite a bit...right? 

We do mainly large projects, but that isn't really the point I was making. It is really about the branding as a whole and YP is part of that. There is a certain demographic that only looks at YP vs. the internet. That may be growing smaller, and so it the price of the YP, as it is negotiable....you just have to try. 

My opinion wasn't personal, sorry you took it that way. Our business uses a marketing agency and does plenty of research. I have worked with them on the business for years. Actually most of what we found works, contradicts what you have " implied" quite a bit. 
Larger ads perform better than small
color ads perform better than black and white
YP performs better in top 3 spots and price is negotiable.
Call to action is a very good idea, branding is better in long standing printed pieces with a long shelf life( YP, Magazines, Business cards )

Too mention a few........sorry, but the reason it may come across personal is I feel you may be trying to help people, but come across as inexperienced in the marketing aspect.


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## SethHoldren (Feb 13, 2008)

Thanks for sharing your experience. The digs at me are getting boring. I love you too.


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## Michael Olding (Aug 5, 2008)

You all make some valid points regarding the YP and for some markets they still dominate but the reality is that the YP market is shrinking and for the bulk of contractors without the knowledge or savvy in determining a profitable price to pay (which is probably most of us) for YP advertising it can be a daunting task and a loosing proposition.

It's one of the few areas of space purchasing where I never felt like I was getting the 'straight scoop' from the seller. Every year there were to many changes, offerings, additional books, release dates... too much confusion (intentional I think) with prices always going up, up, up.

However if your demographic is 50 - 55+ then I would definitely be there as this group will continue to use the YP, they still read the newspaper and are slow to adopt to the internet though it is coming.

Once the newspapers stop printing they will be forced to convert to the web and will probably abondon the YP quickly once they find the information that is available to them online. Just a guess though.

Bottom line... as with all marketing... assume a worst, never listen to the 'galmour' numbers the sales person gives you and then hold their feet to the fire! Make them squirm, make them dance and make them give you the absolute best rate for the advertsing space you're looking to buy.


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## SethHoldren (Feb 13, 2008)

Hey Michael. Good to have you here. I recognized you from that "other" forum. (CWB).

Your yellow page comments are dead on, especially concerning how to deal with the YP salespeople. Good post. :thumbsup:


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## rbsremodeling (Nov 12, 2007)

Yp aren't worth the paper they are printed on

Seth and Michael are did on. Especially two points your market is older and less likely to go online and for Service type industries.


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## SalesMGR1011 (Oct 29, 2008)

As someone who spends about $2000 a month between multiple company books and region I have found a few things. Depending on the category and how many in that category determines what you should do. If there is only a few people aunder a category there is no need to over spend. If it is a category where there are a ton of people if your buying a small add or line listing its a waste you won't be called only by people already searching you out by name, which is where a white pages listing would be just fine. I have played with our ads and found this year I changed our roofing ad to a large roofing ad full color with a metered phone number, I spent $580 a month for it but have sold over $40000 of work directly off of that metered phone line that is only in our Dex Phone book. Since Aug 1st it has generate approximately 50 calls. I would be glad to forward anyone the reporting if they would like to see it.


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## fatdanny (Nov 7, 2008)

anyone still use yellowpages? i mean, come on, when you look for something, you usually just start searching on google.


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## True North (Oct 10, 2007)

Yellow Pages were a complete waste of $1,200 to me. I got two calls in a year, one from a real estate agent looking to fix up her own rental, and another from a generic tire-kicker. I didn't get either job.


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## Bowsherb (Apr 18, 2008)

Hey guys, 

Thanks for all the good debate. I think I will not go w/ YP. and shift my marketing aproach to one that is concentrated on-line. I believe this is where we are heading. For the older folks stuck doing business like this is the 1980's again, I'll wait for them to catch up and find me on-line. 

Good posts, 

Brad B.


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## pcplumber (Oct 12, 2008)

*Annual budget*

Advertising packets from China, including magnet calendars, pens, garden hose washers, & flyers $100,000

Flyers printed in the U.S. $30,000
Flyer and packet delivery $200,000
Direct mail campaigns from our customer list $ 7,000
Advertising campaigns to inspect previous jobs $10,000
Plastic business cards $2500
Tee shirts $2,000
Yellow pages - Zero
Web site - No pay per click
Truck lettering $800
Kickbacks???(Just a joke)
Referral coupons $300
Newspaper ads $15,000
Stickers $100
Office supplies for advertising $2,000


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## pcplumber (Oct 12, 2008)

*Crazy idea!*



Bowsherb said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> Thanks for all the good debate. I think I will not go w/ YP. and shift my marketing aproach to one that is concentrated on-line. I believe this is where we are heading. For the older folks stuck doing business like this is the 1980's again, I'll wait for them to catch up and find me on-line.
> 
> ...


If you have the time, and money, and you don't care how much business you get, or when, and you are going to put the fate of your business in the internet, you are going to be waiting a very long time to get enough business to be successful.

If I were to move to a metropolis, with absolutely no money, within a few weeks, I could generate up $50,000 to $100,000 in sales, every week. You can't do this with yellow pages, radio, television, letters, nor any other advertising media. The only way is with flyers. The problem many contractors have with flyers is they don't understand how effective they can be, nor how to get them printed and delivered efficiently.

Until, someone proves me wrong, next to the yellow pages, the internet is the next worse advertising media. There is no magic pill for getting good internet business. There is a relevance for everything. The internet sounds like a cheap magical way to get business. It is not. It can be very expensive and it produces young price-shopping cheap customers who are less serious. 

This is how you can be the boss, have control, and make what you want to happen, happen today.

WHY FLYERS ARE THE BEST FORM OF ADVERTISING

You can target your demographics like the snipers in 'Enemy At The Gates'. There is no other advertising media that is this accurate. 

You can target very specific homes that require your services. You can target homes with a specific age, types of pipes, types of furnaces, etc. You eliminate delivery to the types of structures you do not provide services for.

You can specifically target homeowners and skip tenants, apartments, an commercial buildings.

You can target the income level and age of your customers. 

You eliminate almost 100% of your competition with flyers. The customers call only you and he (or she) is not calling from a list of customers, above and below your listing, in the yellow pages, newspapers, and magazines, and they are not cheapos surfing the net, looking for something for free. MOST OLDER PEOPLE WITH MONEY DO NOT HAVE COMPUTERS, and even if they do, they do not surf the internet, for contractors. I'm not waiting for the young people to get old, so I can do business with them. Most contractors, I know, don't like to do business with people who call from cell phones. or use the internet. I monitor my calls and sales, very closely, and there is a difference. Yes, we do a lot ob business with people who call from phones and people who own computers, but the best customers don't......

You can change the art work, prices, and test your campaign more frequently. 

Flyers give you total for the amount of calls (work) that you want. When you want more work, deliver more flyers. When you have too much work, flyers give you the opportunity to save money, by reducing delivery, and cutting your advertising when you do not need work.

Flyers produce a higher number of calls than any other advertising media. You cannot make an informed decision by delivering only 1,000 flyers. You must deliver at least 100,000 flyers to get fair results.

At first, it appears that the calls generated from flyers are not favorable. As you deliver, more flyers, the number of calls generated increases exponentially.

Deliver only 1,000 flyers and you will need luck and your good looks to stay in business. If you are lucky, you will receive 1 call. This is not so good. 

Deliver 5,000 flyers in one week and maybe you will get two or three calls the first week. 
This is not too bad if you target the proper homes and customers and you know how to close larger sales. Even though, the number of calls is small and this is not so good.

These are the average results from delivering flyers.






Week Flyers Total Calls  Repeat Business Preivous Flyers Total Calls
1 5,000 5,000 2 2
2 5,000 10,000 2 4
3 5,000 15,000 2 1 7
4 5,000 20,000 2 1 10
5 5,000 25,000 2 1 2 15 6 5,000 30,000 2 2 19
7, 5,000 35,000 2 1 2 25
8 5,000 40,000 2 3 30
9 5,000 45,000 2 3 37
10 5,000 50,000 2 1 4 43

WHAT IS THE COST TO GET 43 SERVICE CALLS.

Cost to prints 50,000 flyers x 2.2 cents = $1,124.2
Cost to deliver 50,000 flyers x 3.5 cents = $1750 + 1124.20 + delivery = $2,874

$2874 / 43 = $66.84 cost to get every call.

This is very low when compared to yellow pages and other advertising media.

Some people will keep your flyers for many years just the same as they keep business cards. People will call you several years later and you will keep getting referrals and repeat business. Eventually, your cost for flyers will shrink to about $35 to $50 per customer. This is the best advertising media when compared to any other.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

While it may be nice to know how much every customer costs to get, when you do only very small jobs, this is the only reason we look at the cost to get each customer.

We are more interested in our return-on-investment. For every 100,000 flyers we deliver our total cost, with printing, is about $5600. Our gross sales for every 100,000 flyers is about $300,000. This means, for each flyer, we printed and delivered, we grossed about $3 in sales. If our net profit is 35% our return on investments is 300,000 X 35% = $105,000. Return on investment = $5600 / $105,000 = 1,800% (one thousand eight hundred percent). For every dollar you invest in flyers, you are going to earn an $18 profit.

There are several ways plug in and calculate your own numbers. There is no other advertising media that gives you this type of control over profit and the number of calls you want to receive.


DELIVERING FLYERS

Most people don't realize that you do not have to deliver flyers by hand. You can pay several newspapers and magazines to insert your flyers in their publications for only 3.5 cents each. Just think about this for a minute. There are hundreds of ads in a newspaper and every single person that touches that paper sees your ad because if falls out of the paper. You cannot do this with any other advertising media. You are guaranteed that every customer will see your ad. That is a lot of 'bang for your buck.'

DESIGNING YOUR FLYER

This is something that even the advertising experts can't do right. You need to think about what the customer is thinking. Go through our ads on our web site and look for a pattern. 

Use as few words as possible. Design an ad and take out every work that is useless. Try to make statements with pictures and no words at all. Don't tell the customer the story about how you got started and why you are honest. The only thing the customer needs is, 'the solution to their problem'. Don't write that you are reasonable, fair, and will beat any price. If this is true, then write your price and show the customer.

Prices always produce the best results. Use a loss-leader if you have one. Our most powerful ads say "Introductory Special". This can be for furnace cleaning, inspections, drain cleaning, copper repipes, etc.

Use only one type of font. We use Arial 100% of the time and we always make the print as large as possible. This is because we want older people to be able to read our ads.

Advertising must always be designed with 'left-to-write' in mind. This is now people read, so don't put information all over the paper like horse poop. 

We use full color pictures and get our flyers printed in quantities of 100,000 to 500,000 on web presses. We pay less than 2.2 cents for an 8 x 10 flyers, printed on both sides, in full color.

When designing the flyer, use no more that two colors for everything other than the pictures. We use dark red and dark blue.

The headline must be on top of the flyer and this is the most critical part of the flyer. There is nothing more important than the headline. This is what you want the customer to get attracted to. If you do not have a headline that can be read from the floor, your flyer will not be effective. This headline is what stops the customer from throwing your flyer in the trash.

You company name is the least important thing in your flyer. If the customer is enticed, by the headline, and moves to your offer, he will look for your company name. So, don't waste space on your name.

Your phone number must be very large and on the bottom of the page. You don't want to aggravate your customer by making the phone number difficult to find and read. 

For the serious plumber, you cannot test flyers with less than 100,000. There is some serious money to be made. Go to our web site and look at our 'Marry A Plumber' ad and our copper piping ad. Before you print a flyer, send me a copy and I will give you some constructive criticism.


We get full color flyers, printed on glossy paper, on two sides, for about 2.2 cents each at Licher Direct Mail in Pasadena. Do you realize how cheap that is compared to a post card or a letter. We get the flyers delivered, by many different companies for 5 cents, or less. We insert them in new papers for as low as 1.5 cents each. That is a cost of only 2.9 cents to get 2 pages of information to customers.

There is no advertising media that is this powerful and no media that lets you decide how much business you want.

Post cards and other advertising campaigns are too expensive and too difficult to manage. It is very difficult, to find and manage mailing lists, and to send 10,000 or 20,000 post cards, every week. First, you pay a horrible rate, each week, for a mailing list. Then you must pay for the card, the printing, packaging, and delivery. Your cost, to deliver 50,000 post cards, is probably about 30 cents, or more per card. That would be $15,000 to deliver 30,000 cards, compared to $2782, for 50,000 flyers. For $15,000, you can print and deliver 260,000 flyers. You can corner the market. You can be the only game in town. You can make your competitors green with envy. You will have no competition and you will be able to increase your prices because you will have so much work, price will be the last thing you are worried about.

How many responses can anyone guarantee after spending $2,200 on the internet. I spent about $6,000, on Google AdWords, had AdWords design the campaign, and I did not get one call. I believe that other plumbers clicked my PPC until the money was depleted.


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## Kenny K (Feb 9, 2008)

this is very helpful. do you sue the larger metroploitan newpapers or small local ones? also can you please tell me what are these lcoal delivery services about for 5 cents. do they deliver to house? thanks


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## Kenny K (Feb 9, 2008)

hey great info. can you tell me what are the adevertising packets from china?


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## maceycon (Nov 13, 2008)

*The problem I have with online!*

I use lead services and my own website. The lead services do no qualify their leads even though they claim to. I was spending about 1000 per month. I find the leads I have received are either people trying to find out if their brother in-law is over charging them, trying to get some idea what the job entails so they can do it themselves or they are getting 15 different proposals. They only seem to care about the lowest price. You can try to sell the client on quality, but they want both. For the most part the person who sells them on quality but is the cheapest wins most bids. I think our intentions are to give them both, but when you start the job. You can not help but try to find was to save a few dollars. So homeowners do not get both after all. I also find some contractors lowball their customer and then bring the lowball price up with changes. I don't do business this way. That is why I have cut my lead service budget down 75%. I am considering cutting it to 0. If you use something like craigslist to find work that is a whole other story. The homeowners will tell you how long everything will take and what they are willing to pay, but you have to be insured and licensed. That site is a total waste of time

I do feel the internet plays a roll, but I think it is with a quality website and conventional advertising drawing people to your website. I have won many jobs because of my website. When they compare my site to other local contractors they see the quality and it has paid off.

Just my opinion.


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