Newsletter Archive - Sales / Marketing
It Really Is Easier with the Print Yellow Pages
06/04/2009 - Why do those “life events” that we talk about so much in the marketing of Yellow Pages advertising always seem to happen over a three day holiday weekend?
The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend my garage door opener decided to stop working. Ok, it is some 14 years old, but a noisy humming motor with no movement on the door was not a good signal especially with our two cars stuck inside. What’s a consumer to do now, as I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a garage door expert??? Panic is normal and hope alone is not a solution. If you believe everything you read and hear - the Internet is the only solution for all life’s challenges - so great, let’s go find the answer to my problem.
After firing up the PC (no, I don’t leave it on all the time, especially over a three day weekend --- that would be wasting electricity and I wouldn’t want our new Commander-in-Chief to be upset with me for not being “green”), I do the normal Google search thing. Neatly 8,000 possible hits later, I have a bunch of potential options that I still need to keep drilling down into, and frankly, they all look alike.
I even tried some of the IYP services, DexShouldKnow.com, SuperDuperPages.com, but I still wasn’t able to sort through who was the better choice. In total, I spent some 15 minutes of clicking around and I was still no closer to a solution then when I started. And then the epiphany - why not just look in the print Yellow Pages?
And lo and behold, the first full page ad at the garage door heading held promise.
I found that this company has:
- 24 hour/7 day week coverage (especially good for those with issues like me over a long holiday weekend)
- Doesn’t charge extra for weekends (you are kidding right?)
- Services my exact model opener (LiftMaster)
- Has several certifications including BBB
- Is locally based and not some 800 number to be answered by a rep in some being answer by a rep in a third world country
- And it has a coupon right in the ad for $15 off any service call
One call, 5 minutes later, an appointment was scheduled for the next day. The technician took all of about an hour to fix things and we were back in business.
I showed him the Yellow Page ad to get the service call discount and asked him how often he has people use the ad to get the discount. He smiled and replied simply “all the time. I don’t know about you, but it’s so much easier to find what you need in the print Yellow Pages”. Now this is a technician we are talking about, not a salesman. He gets it.
I’m sure I’m going to get my normal flood of email messages from plugged in readers, but at the end of the day, all I wanted was a solution. I didn’t really care what media the solution came from, I just wanted an answer to my problem. What really made the print ad the winner media was very simple - it had all of the pieces I was looking for, it was simple to use and operate, and if these folks can afford a full page ad, they must be doing something right.
So why didn’t I go there first???