Fortunately, it's a mystery that's solved pretty easily once an advertiser knows where to turn for advice. There are fundamental truths about Yellow Pages advertising that so many businesses fail to recognize… but once they do, they find themselves "on top of" a medium with an incredible amount of business generating power.

It's a medium, that handled correctly, will generate new business month after month like clockwork.

That said... let's try to understand it a bit better, shall we?

1. Common Yellow Pages advertising mistakes are simple to fix.

Very simple.

You don't have to be a graphic designer or marketing expert to drastically improve your ad either - you just need to know your customers.

You see, most Yellow Page ads make very same mistakes... year after year... directory after directory... category after category.

Some of ads I see from professional design firms are riddled with same mistakes too... ad only looks nicer.

That won't cut it in Yellow Pages.

While a professionally designed ad can certainly help grab attention, there is no substitute for ad content (read: words) if your goal is to generate a phone call. When it comes to Yellow Pages advertising, that's all that really matters. (The Yellow Pages should have nothing to do with building your “image”.)

By learning what makes a good headline, good body copy, and how to develop a strong offer, your Yellow Pages ad will run circles around an ad that just "looks great," but makes same mistakes most others are making.

An example? Using your name and logo as headline. It's disastrous and yet more advertisers do it than not. No one cares what you call yourself until they've decided to pick up phone and actually call you.

Think about it…

Someone turns to Yellow Pages because they don’t have an optometrist in mind. They don’t know who to call. Rather, they’re looking to see what options are available, and what one company offers over another.

Your company name will never be a factor.

So if your name and logo is at top of your ad... it it's big and bold and takes up space... if it takes place of an attention grabbing, hard-hitting headline... you're wasting your ad’s most valuable “real estate.” Of course, like most common mistakes, it's a pretty easy to fix.

You just need to know what makes a good headline. A good headline is something that’s impossible to miss, and engaging enough to draw reader into rest of ad.