Month: May 2011

Are the Yellow Pages still relevant?

phone-book-pile

I came across this image a while ago, and it made me chuckle. I took a similar picture (albeit without the clever sign) a few years ago at my old office. The new phone books were delivered, and everyone was sort of nonplussed about the whole event. These giant books don’t mean much anymore, but no one is quite sure what to do with them. The volumes sat in a pile outside of every office for a few days before people started bringing them in because they looked bad just sitting in the hallway.

I recently spoke to a client about her ad in the phone book. She pays about $600/month, which is pretty small for the Yellow Pages but still got her the largest ad in her section. I challenged her to measure how many new clients she gets from this listing, so she tracked the numbers for three months. She found that she received, on average, about 3 new clients a month from the Yellow Pages. Each client brought in about $80. Therefore, she was spending $600 a month to get $240 of business. What was her number one source of new clients? People seeing her building or pylon signage.

Dropping Yellow Pages ads may not be for every business, but it’s certainly worth looking into.

The Exorcist

A really clever little spot for XXXX (company name removed so as not to spoil the twist). This is the kind of fun work that inspires people to get into the industry. The kind of work that makes people in the industry shake their head at and say “I wish my clients would let me do work like that.”

Networking using guilt

costco

Today I bumped into an old business associate while shopping at Costco with my family. I haven’t seen or heard from him in over three years, though I still receive his weekly emails that I can’t seem to unsubscribe from.

Our conversation centered on three main points:

  1. He’s not busy.
  2. He wants to know if I have any work I could send his way.
  3. Maybe if I send him some work, he’ll reciprocate.

This would not build a strong business relationship! While relationships should be quid pro quo, it’s imperative that they’re genuine. Do you want work (or anything else) from me? Then take an interest in me. Put me in your debt. Be a nice person, genuinely. Make me like you.

Do not imply that if things don’t turn around for you soon, you’ll have to sell your house.

We don’t want to be associated with tragedy

Last night I ran into a colleague in the ad industry, and she told me this story.

On May 16, 2011, a wildfire tore through the town of Slave Lake, Alberta. One-third of the city was destroyed. Fortunately, no one was reported hurt.

My friend thought that one of her clients, a home builder who does a lot of business in the Slave Lake area, should do something simple to help the people of Slave Lake. She came up with a great plan to have the client set up donation boxes at show homes across the province. It seemed like a real win-win-win for all: It would be easy to set up, wouldn’t cost much, would get the client some additional traffic into the show homes, and would help people affected by the tragedy.

The client scoffed, however. “We don’t want to be associated with tragedy,” my friend was told.