Читать книгу Outrageous Advertising That's Outrageously Successful - Bill Glazer - Страница 21

A lot of people look at various media such as radio, newspapers, TV, and yellow pages and think that they cannot use this type of advertising as direct response.

That simply is not true. For example, let me show you how to use your local yellow pages as direct-response advertising.

Now before I show this to you, I want to make sure you understand that in most cases your local media salespeople hate it when you try to insist that you only run direct-response advertising.

Why do you think that is?

Well, the answer is simple. It’s because they don’t want you to be able to track results because they know that if you are able to accomplish that and do not get good results, you will likely stop advertising with them.

So, when you get a yearly visit from your local yellow pages sales representative, he or she will adamantly try to talk you out of running a direct-response ad and only place a brand-building ad.

How do I know this? Because if you pick up any yellow pages and look at the ads, just about all of them are brand-building ads, ads for which you can-NOT track results.

Try it yourself. Go to your local yellow pages and look at all of the ads in your particular category. What do you notice about them? Two things:

In very few cases can you track responses … AND

They all look very similar, don’t they?

Why do you think this is? It’s because the yellow pages don’t want you to know if you are actually getting a return on your investment. They don’t even want you to have the ability to know.

Yet the great thing about the yellow pages (and every other type of media for that matter) is that you can still use it to do OUTRAGEOUS direct-response advertising.

On the next page is a great example of how to place a direct-response ad in the yellow pages. It was created by Larry Conn for his own carpet-cleaning business. In fact, Larry got so good at creating direct-response yellow pages advertising that he started a whole new business of teaching entrepreneurs in every field how to make this work for their own businesses.

Now let’s take a look at Larry’s yellow pages ad. First of all, it has a compelling headline (see chapter 5) and great testimonials (see chapter 7).

But those don’t make it direct response, although they certainly make the ad more effective. What makes this direct response is the fact that there’s a money-savings coupon in the ad complete with a dashed coupon border that allows Larry to track response.

The other thing that makes this a direct-response ad is the “Allergy Relief Hotline,” which allows Larry to track how many people call it, and those people can also be transferred directly to Larry’s office.

Larry can tell exactly who calls from this ad and how much they spend with him when they get their carpets cleaned.

OUTRAGEOUS boost The “Allergy Relief Hotline” in Larry Conn’s yellow pages ad is a great example of giving customers and prospects a secondary nonthreatening way to respond to your advertisement without them having to call a live person. Giving them a free recorded message to listen to will substantially increase response. See more about nonthreatening ways to respond later in this chapter.

OUTRAGEOUS resource Larry Conn provides a FREE sixty-point evaluation of your current yellow pages ad. You can take advantage of this for your business at www.outrageous-advertising.com/yellowpages.