Yellow Pages

[Flying Boy]

Hi Guys,

I need your vast wealth of knowledge. I have been in the security industy for the last sixteen years have recently left the a large national company A*T. I have alway dreamed of owning my own business so I thought why not and started to set up a company after about 1 year of research. In the end I decided to buy a local company when the guy wanted to retire so I've been running it now for about 2 months. I'm very busy at the moment so all is well. I want to grow the company so I'm in the process of my NSI application. At the moment I get my work from word of mouth and my contacts I have built up over the years. I looking now at advertising and was wondering if Yellow pages or YELL.com work. The price is not that bad but does it work? Sorry the post is quite long winded but I thought it would add some background to the post. Please can you give some feedback of your experiences or alternative forms of advertising.

Flyingboy

[Adi]

Yellow pages no, never gonna advertise in there again.

Yell.com get a few leads off it and will stick with it. It does not cost alot but thought they were out of order this year adding quite a few more small adverts of other companies from just out of our area after we had paid a premium to be on the first page.

Adi

[kka]

I use yellow pages and during my first year, got a 700% return on a small ad, but what i did find was that the customers were a little bit more upmarket (firemen, policemen and managers etc) as for yell.com. got a two year initial deal. they told me i had 0ver 1 thousand hits on my advert. from that only 4 people telephoned and i got 3 jobs (all office workers), 1st year return about 300%. my advice would be, if you going to take the risk, monitor it carefully. Ps from the 700% return i have had a further 14 leads by word of mouth

[Flying Boy]

Thanks for the update guys I would welcome any more feedback on other forms of advertising as well as yellow pages. We have a local magazine in the town which is delivered free to about 20000 homes and businesses every month. This is not a free paper but a proper magazine approx 50 pages have any of you tried this form of advertising?

Thanks Flyingboy

[Adi]

I tried Yell.com but I wasn't impressed and like Adi I found that the sales people tell lies when they sign you up.

Tell lies, they have the longest noses in the world.

[John]

This year Yell printed our number wrong - its made sod all difference to the amount of enquiries we get - word of mouth and rep is much more important.

Like Alarm Guard said - a very large ad is needed to draw in lots of work.

In future, we will just have a small ad to keep our prescence known.

[Wooly-bobs]

I've found yell.com more profittable than the paper version. I paid for a priority ad on the web so I come up first in this area and it has been money well spent.

Yellow pages works if you spend big, very big. If you want to compete with the big boys you have to match or better their full colour adverts and that costs.

[Guest RICHL]

Hi Guys,

I need your vast wealth of knowledge. I have been in the security industy for the last sixteen years have recently left the a large national company A*T. I have alway dreamed of owning my own business so I thought why not and started to set up a company after about 1 year of research. In the end I decided to buy a local company when the guy wanted to retire so I've been running it now for about 2 months. I'm very busy at the moment so all is well. I want to grow the company so I'm in the process of my NSI application. At the moment I get my work from word of mouth and my contacts I have built up over the years. I looking now at advertising and was wondering if Yellow pages or YELL.com work. The price is not that bad but does it work? Sorry the post is quite long winded but I thought it would add some background to the post. Please can you give some feedback of your experiences or alternative forms of advertising.

Flyingboy

You should apply for trade status on this site so that we can ask more questions and help you more.

Advertising though, like the others have said yell is pants. I fall for it every year. Its probably the same all over the country ie too many in it and the only people who find you out of yell are the ones who are looking for you anyway.

Assuming the business you have bought came with a nice long list of past customers then this is your best source of work. Have a look through it and find out how many of those customers are still on maintainance, the rest need to receive a some lit from you asap, and the current ones need to know what else you do.

[Flying Boy]

Hi Zak I will apply for trade status over the next weekend but I'm really busy this week. All of the customers are on maintenance and I have written to all of them but like I said I want to grow the company so I'm looking for ways to supplement the contract base.

Flyingboy

[Rich]

Over the last 18 months the only advertising I have done is through my websites and apart from one advert and web editorial for an education magazine that is coming out next month I am yet to hear of another form of advertising that is as cost effective and brings me the type of customers I am looking for.