Many of our clients use the Yellow Pages® Directory and the Yellow Pages® Online to generate leads for their businesses.
Over the last year we’ve had a chance to to try out the Yellow Pages® Online Platinum Ad concept with our clients. As illustrated below, the Platinum Ad is a group of 3 small ad tiles that sit above the search results.
If one of the 3 spots is available you can take up pole position in the search results for a selected keyword in your geographical area. The ad tiles link straight through to your website. Sounds good right?
Well, you’d think that having such a high position in the search results would mean guaranteed success. However, we’ve found a number of businesses who have been disappointed with the results of Platinum Ads. So we decided to examine the ads to find out why.
We reviewed 44 ads in the Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads system and we asked the following questions.
- Are the ads customer focused or self interested?
- Will the ads be affected by banner blindness? i.e. Do the ads look like ads?
- How effective is the website behind the ad?
The results show that there is plenty of room for improvement.
Are the ads customer focused or self interested?
Good ad design, like good copywriting is focused on the client. That means, it targets their needs, pains, problems or wants and offers a solution.
Looking for references to the customer in the 44 ads, we found the following ratio:
Self interested : Customer focused
40 : 4
We found that many of the ads we reviewed were accompanied by claims like:
- Largest range
- Best quality
- Lowest prices
- Best value
- Number 1
But what do these claims really mean? They might mean something to the advertiser, but what do the mean to the customer? Since the claims lack any specifics they are easily dismissed.
“Need help selecting…?” was the only customer focused question that we found in any of the ads.
A large number of the ads appeared to be solely focused on brand, offering little reason to click through. Others ads seemed to be designed in the hope that just saying “click here” would do the job.
Will the ads be affected by banner blindness? i.e. Do the ads look like ads?
One of the big problems that we found with Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads is that they typically look like ads. It’s well established that website visitors are becoming increasingly blind to online advertising, particularly banner ads. The phenomenon demonstrated by Jakob Nielsen is know as banner blindness.
Now I know what you’re thinking… Aren’t all Yellow Pages® Online listings ads?
Of course the answer is yes. All Yellow Pages® Online are paid ads. But most of them don’t look like ads, they look like search results. So we reviewed the ads in the study to determine if they were likely to be subject to banner blindness.
Look Like Ads : Don’t Look Like Ads
42 : 2
In reviewing the 44 ads, we found that 42 of them looked like banner ads. With only 138 x 95 pixels to play with, you don’t have a lot of room. However, the more heavily formatted the ad is the less likely it is grab attention.
How effective is the website behind the ad?
When we looked at the websites behind the 44 Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads we found an even bigger problem. Most of the websites were poorly designed for lead generation.
We reviewed each site to see how easy it was to find the company’s contact details, and how easy it was to make contact with them. We rated it this way:
Poor: Contact details only available on contact page, if at all.
Average: Contact phone number on each page with a contact form on the contact us page.
Good: Contact phone number on each page with contact forms used well or a call to action used throughout the content.
What we found was:
Poor : Average : Good
19 : 20 : 5
So even if the ads were getting clicks, the websites would be converting visits into enquiries poorly.
How to make your Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads effective:
Make your ads customer focused
- Write your ad text with customer in mind
- Address their common needs and problems
- Use a question if possible
- Make claims that are specific and that show how you can help
Avoid banner blindness
- Design your ad to look like content, not an ad
- Don’t dominate the ad with your logo
- Use pictures sparingly and carefully
- Test different ad designs.
Make sure your website is converting effectively
- Make sure your contact details are easily available
- Ensure the contacting you is easy through the website
- Use contact forms effectively
- Test and measure your website and Yellow Pages® Online platinum ad results weekly
- Most importantly, measure your conversion rates!
From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.
We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.
And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too ;-)!
Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website.
Yellow Pages®is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.
