Each year there is a Yellow Pages arms race where competitors in each category are encouraged to out spend each other. There is only one winner in this arms race, and it is not you! Too many advertisers waste their money on Yellow Pages advertising without first considering their marketing strategy. Here are seven ways you can waste your money.

1. Attempting to outspend your competitor As soon as Yellow Pages has convinced you to increase prominence of your ad, they get your competitors to match or outbid you. This becomes an annual auction, with some categories containing pages of half and full page ads. A buyer can be overwhelmed with choice and may make their decision before they even get to your ad. Priority in listing is given to those who have advertised longest in a category for a given ad size. You can only get closer to front by upsizing your ad or if someone else closer to front ceases advertising.

2. Putting all your eggs in Yellow Pages basket An advertising decision is something you should only make after you have developed a marketing strategy. Many businesses rush into advertising in Yellow Pages, just because that’s what everyone else does. You don’t become a leader by following herd. You need to consider your payback for your investment in this marketing channel. Ask your Yellow Pages consultant how many leads a particular size ad generates in your category. Then ask yourself how many of these leads will you convert into sales, and then decide whether this is a good investment.

3. Engaging in destructive Head to Head Competition When you advertise in Yellow Pages, not only can potential customers see your ad and your offer, so can your competitors. This can result in price competition that can turn your product or service into a commodity. Yellow Pages make comparison shopping easy for buyers and market research easy for competitors.

4. Spending too much on prominence When spending on a Yellow Pages ad, you can invest in size and colour. Size is important, but what you put in ad, your copy, is far more important. It is better to go down a size and spend money you save on a copywriter. Good copy can generate up to 20 times response as poor copy. Colour is also important, but not as important as size, so go up a size rather than go to colour, which is expensive for its return. If your category is cluttered with large ads, investing in your copy is essential.

Most everyone I’ve ever talked to has been to both excellent training (hopefully ours!) and training that was, well, not so good. In a perfect world we could connect best training experiences with best application back in workplace. This would make equation easy – pick great training, insuring that people would apply what they have learned, and result would be a tremendous return on investment for those funds spent on training.

As a deliverer of training and as one who has helped hundreds of people become better trainers through train trainer programs, I wish equation were that easy.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. It takes more than good training to ensure a good return on money (and time) invested.

What organizations and individual leaders need to do then is look beyond training event alone to find ways to increase return on investment. They need to take some responsibility themselves.

Here are 6 ways to increase your return on this investment:

Align training investments with business needs. Some organizations use training as a perk for good performers. This approach of “training as a reward” can motivate some people (especially if training takes place in someplace desirable) but in big picture this usually isn’t best way to invest these dollars. Have a plan that ties skills that are needed to be developed to strategic plan for group. Make sure participant knows why skills being learned matter to group and organization at large. With this context, participant has chance to be more focused and will treat training as a serious business activity and not a vacation from work.