How would you like to guarantee the absolute highest profits possible from your Yellow Page ad? Think about that for second. What if, before you commit to a one year long, unbreakable contract with your phone company, that you have an ad that will flood you with new business?
Would you be quivering with the excitement of anticipation? Would you be making consolation phone calls to your competitors? Apologizing in advance for the customers you will be stealing from them. I can't really blame you. Because in your hands you will have a proven, tested ad, to publish in your Yellow Pages.
And that leads us to a very big question?
Just How do you test a Yellow Page ad, when your are stuck with it for a year?
Simple. Print your ad on yellow post cards, and distribute them. Any mailing service, flyer distribution service or newspaper will distribute them for you. The great thing about doing this is that you find out before you commit thousands of dollars to an advertising contract, if you have a winner or not.
Here is your step by step Yellow Page ad testing campaign.
Pick your sample market: Your market may be very small (a few hundred people) to very large (hundreds of thousands). But try to make your sample size at least 2000 people up to 20 000 people. The purpose is to get an accurate reflection of your market place. This can be done using list brokers for targeted mailing lists, or just selecting the neighborhood your ideal client would live in.
Arrange your distribution: How will your get your test ad post card out to your target market. Will you use a mailing service like this one, bulk ad mail with your postal service, flyer distribution service or as a newspaper insert? In order for this test to be successful, your need to get your test ad post cards in your target markets hands.
Print your ad on post cards and split test: Print out your ad on post cards using yellow card stock. Why yellow stock? You want a test that will resemble your inserted ad as closely as possible. So use yellow stock.
Split testing is testing one ad against another. So half of your post card printing order should be Test Ad A, and the other half should be Test Ad B.
Get the ads out: Regardless of the distribution method you choose, arrange delivery as soon as your post cards get printed. Here is a time saving tip. Arrange with your post card printer to deliver your post cards to your distributor directly.
Track your results: Now that your post cards are out in your test market, you should start getting response. Determine which of the two test ads pulls the most response. Discard the poor performer, and make the better one your new control ad.
Tweak the control ad: Now that you have an ad that works (it does work right? Other wise it is back to the drawing board), make a single change to tweak this ad. Hopefully to improve response. Test the headline, the call to action, the offer, the layout and design. But test one factor at a time.
Repeat all of the above steps: Get your next split test run of post cards printed and delivered to your target market. Track your results, pick your winner, and repeat. This time use the winner as a control and change another part of the post card ad.
The beauty of this system is that you will generate business, during your testing campaign. Who doesn't love additional revenues? You may even generate a profit. That means you get paid to test an ad that will increase your bottom line next year. You really can not lose with this simple strategy unless you fail to implement it.
Here is the most important part of this whole process. Start now. Most Yellow Page books have submission deadlines running from November 30th to January 31st, give or take a week. That means you are running short of time to test next year's winning Yellow Page ad. So I urge you to start testing now.
About the Author Paul Douglas is a Direct Response Marketer, committed to providing his clients massive results to their marketing campaigns. Paul is the owner and webmaster of http://www.canada-printing.com and for his daily marketing articles, you can visit his blog at http://www.printmarketingmaniacs.com.
Paul lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with his wife Debbie, and their three dogs
