To Yellow Page or Not to Yellow Page!

A question often asked by business owners – should I spend $XXX on Yellow Pages? My response, show me the return on investment. How many leads has the YP delivered, what % closed to a sale and what average dollar value did you achieve from those sales?? Not many can answer these questions and to me this is madness. Would you go to the horse track, throw $20,000 on a horse and never check to see where it came? Of course you wouldn’t, you would follow that damn nag step by step around the track.

So why is it we are willing to do the same with advertising – not just YP, any advertising?

Why not track enquiries through a simple lead tracking sheet, ask callers how did they find you, use different 1800 or 1300 numbers, use campaign codes on coupons in local papers, there are lots of ways you cant use to value up your investment in marketing or calculate the ROI from your marketing.

On line advertising (SEM) will track a level of stats for you and the PPC (Pay per click) campaigns help you with budgeting, you are responsible for tracking the return on the investment analysis.