Yellow page ads need to be benefits-driven, with your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) stated clearly and boldly (remember, this is the one place where your prospects will see your ad alongside all of your competitors).  You want your ad to stand out from the clutter, so use a direct response type of ad,  and again,  offering free gifts or premiums will work well here.

For more information about writing effective yellow page ads, be sure to check out www.ypcommando.com and also www.yellowpagesprofit.com – Alan Saltz’s excellent course on Yellow Pages advertising.  I own it along with several other books about YP advertising and it’s the best resource I’ve come across.

If you’re going to do a space ad it will generally get better results if you use the same layout as the editorials so it looks less like an ad and more like a news item.  Use the same font styles and sizes for the headline, body, etc.  If the newspaper uses 2 columns per article on the page your ad will appear, use 2 columns in your ad. If they use 3 columns, you use 3.  The “advertorial” approach almost always does better than traditional space ads that scream “advertisement”.

Learn to experiment in many creative ways to find out what works best for you and always test different components of your ads to see what brings you the most results.

I know one local paper that has both classified ads and space ads and I noticed that one company has their space ad featured upside-down in every weekly issue.  At first I thought it was a mistake, but after seeing it upside-down week after week, I suspected they found that their upside-down ad stands out from the clutter.  People think it’s a mistake and read it. Y es, it’s a gimmick, but you need to test different approaches and see what works best for you.

If you own a lawn care business for example, distributing your flyers directly to homeowners with lawns is smart, sticking them on windshields at the local Walmart – not the best, because you don’t know if those people live in homes or apartments, or even if they live in your service area.

The easy thing with flyers is producing them, as you probably already have all you need to design them on your computer, and they can be printed by just about any local printer or copy shop for a few cents each. If you need help designing a flyer of your own, take a look at www.stocklayouts.com – or check out a program like Microsoft Publisher that can help you design your own flyers on your computer.

Once printed though they’ll need to be distributed, and here is where you’ll need to do the work yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Many cities have flyer distribution services so do a search online and see what you can find in your area, but you can always hire a few local high school students to help you out after school or on weekends, or post an ad on Craigslist and hire someone looking to make a few extra dollars.

How’d you like to have your flyers produced and distributed for free? That’s easy – just do the following…

• Find one or two other business owners who want to advertise to the same prospects you do.
• Have them design their flyer and deliver it to you.
• You have the flyers reproduced and charge the other businesses enough to cover your production and distribution costs too!
• If you want, you could even charge enough to make a few extra dollars for yourself while still keeping it affordable for the other business owners you’re working with!