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new yellow page ad

Roof Clean USA Georgia 229-227-0000 · guest

miked wrote:

Give me the Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Thanks in advance

-- Edited by miked on Friday 1st of May 2009 12:36:02 PM

This pic my be stretching the forum. I reduced it in size so it doesn't.
As far as the layout.

Here is the Good. First of all, The effort is good but the ad itself, it gets lost in translation.

Here are my simple suggestions. Take them with an open mind and not defensively.

You ASKED for advice FREELY so I am giving you just that.

Here are the suggestions you asked for-

1. A brighter, whiter background will contrast your color scheme better.

2. Pics should be cropped more uniformly and separated by a small border and light or bright colored edge banding.

3. Consider using a different font that DOES not have "serifs" such as Arial .

4. Although the background seems to look "cool" the web address is not effective when hard to read. Simple is always better.

5. The Shield symbol makes no sense as it relates to nothing else?

Consider what BIG advertisers do? They use SIMPLE fonts and easy to translate LOGOS and slogans that take VERY LITTLE EFFORT to understand.

Take Coke "It's the REAL thing". General Mills, Apple, Microsoft,DELL or many others. Simple, effective easy to read logos andf ad messages are what sells a product.

Slick marketing messages look cool or sexy but if you can't easily translate the message and the LOGO and the words are shadowed or in hard to see fonts then the message gets lost and the end result is that noone will take the time to READ your ad and call you because you hgave made the PROCESS to complicated.

K>I>S>S

Guest

Thanks dave for your input. I will make adjustments and repost. sorry about the size of pic.
The shield is the superguarantee from yellow pages. My yellow page guy is going to kill me."lmao"

Guest

Ok this is another draft that i have sent in and yellow pages is going to create the border around it. it will be on yellow back ground paper.

Great White Technologies · Roof Cleaning Institute Of America Certified Roof Cleaner

I like the second one better. On the first ones the letters of the wording seem to blend together in some places. Maybe it looks better in print than on the monitor. It does that to me some times.

You might also want to consider acquiring other web domain addresses that can be forwarded to your domain.

For example my web page is www.greatwhitetechnologies.com and I just purchased www.washmyroof.com and I am in the process of forwarding that to the one I already have.

I think I have to change my signs now to this instead of the company name.

RCIA Founder

miked wrote:

Ok this is another draft that i have sent in and yellow pages is going to create the border around it. it will be on yellow back ground paper.

Looks pretty good to me ?
I like Red and white better ......

Guest

thanks chris,dave and pat for your input. i appriciate the words of advice.

Cardinal Roof Cleaning Jackson TN · Guest

The second one looks better to me. Just curious......why does the house in the deck pictures look green in the first pic and blue in the second?

Guest

Picture was taken at dusk. Other than that i have no idea. It is the same house though.

Baltimore MD Roof Cleaning 410-482-4367 · guest

I never had a call from the yellow page adds I have ran in the past. May be the size of my add or my area IDK, just wanted to say that though. Maybe my add just sucked, lol. If you have a lower number of internet users in your area it might be great for yellow pages?? I have heard this from other contractors as well. Print media is a dying breed..ie. newspapers, magazines, etc..

-- Edited by Baltimore MD Roof Cleaning 410-482-4367 on Saturday 9th of May 2009 01:18:32 PM

Great White Technologies · Roof Cleaning Institute Of America Certified Roof Cleaner

Yea you really have to measure your return on this one. They wanted to charge me $90 a month for a simple plain jane add. I think I would rather put that to radio ads.

Ohiovalleyroofcleaning.com · Guest

I have done around $100,000. a year for 20 + years in advertising with my home improvement co. The media that works best for me is TV. With cable you can Zone in on one area and it is cheep.Cheep, that is, for the number of people you reach. Newes Paper only workes for me if I put prices in the add. A general add just stating what you do, location, phone no. etc... doesen,t cut it. I don't run big yellow page adds their too expensive. I have tried radio years ago and it just did' get any results at all. I dont know how it is today , but, with cd in most cars and pay radio I believe it is a thing of the past. People pay for radio that they don't have to listen to the adds. Not a good thing for advertisers. All I can go by is my past experence in the area that iI am in. The thing that gets me is that I know that one half of the money I spend on advertising is waisted. I just don't know what half. Hope this helps.

Roof Cleaning Memphis TN · Guest

Put "No Pressure Cleaning Used ...Ever!"
Your customers will eat you up and come back for seconds..

LOGIC

Guest

I'm another one that must caution the expense of yellow pages ads. Some types of businesses thrive using the yellow pages. Some don't even pay for themselves. Another business that I am involved in does not receive enough from the yellow pages to pay for the ads, but the franchises require you to pay for a certain size ad. Don't let the yellow page rep talk you into spending a ton of money on your ad. They are trained to convince you that the yellow pages are the be all and end all of advertising. They are paid heavy comissions on new accounts and upselling larger ads. It may work out for you if you have the extra money to spend, but remember that you are locked in for 12 months of payments whether it works or not! There are a lot of direct mail programs you can take advantage of that don't lock you in for 12 months.

You are involved in more than just roof cleaning, so there is probably more necessity for you to be in the yellow pages. Someone just starting out in roof cleaning may want to hold off on the yellow pages.

Cardinal Roof Cleaning Jackson TN · Guest

theroofcleaners wrote:

I'm another one that must caution the expense of yellow pages ads. Some types of businesses thrive using the yellow pages. Some don't even pay for themselves. Another business that I am involved in does not receive enough from the yellow pages to pay for the ads, but the franchises require you to pay for a certain size ad. Don't let the yellow page rep talk you into spending a ton of money on your ad. They are trained to convince you that the yellow pages are the be all and end all of advertising. They are paid heavy comissions on new accounts and upselling larger ads. It may work out for you if you have the extra money to spend, but remember that you are locked in for 12 months of payments whether it works or not! There are a lot of direct mail programs you can take advantage of that don't lock you in for 12 months.

You are involved in more than just roof cleaning, so there is probably more necessity for you to be in the yellow pages. Someone just starting out in roof cleaning may want to hold off on the yellow pages.

That's me and I will take your advice. Now days anytime I am looking for something, I check the internet.

NJ Roof Cleaner · Guest

we all have to be carefull when contacting marketing companies!! news papers, yellowpages, superpages,radio stations,tv...super board ads...reason why, is because most of the sales representatives will tell you... we got more than 3000 request,for roof cleaning , and more than 50,000,000 people drive by this area and they will see yu and call you......they are just trying to sell!!! and if you sign a contract...hoooooh..boy.... you are introble,
because if you don't get any calls from them you are stock with a $250 up to $ 500.00 a month for 1 year. auchhh....alot of money!!
we where ad.. our Property Bussin..the same.with ye... pag.... they just made us sign a contract(.....we where so stupid...) we just sign it for $3000.00 never got business from them!!...

let's be careful..

NJ Roof Cleaner · Guest

actualy ,I'm from the same area where you are working....in NJ.
and I have to say that I really apreciete when some one espent money on adds.. like roof clening!!! I saw an add on news peper and insted of getting upset I was just happy!! because, some one else is helping me to educate people about roof cleaning... plus they are paying for that!!! DE ROSE ' .. CALL ME... AND WE CAN HAVE A BEER TOGHETER OR MAY BE A CASE!!! ( THEY HAVE TO BE CORO...) OR I AI'NT COMING..

Guest

I'll call you over the weekend

NJ Roof Cleaner · Guest

Hey!! we are brothers in this foroum!! lets help each other... even if we are competision!!!

Baltimore MD Roof Cleaning 410-482-4367 · guest

If you get a real business phone line, you will be listed in all phone book white pages in the business section for free. This allows previous customers to look you up by name or call information to find your #. The yellow book is one of like 10 books that are out there, verizon, Bell yellow pages, superbook etc... I hav'nt used a phone book in 2yrs

The Roof Cleaning Institute Of America Training & Certification Forum "Find A Certified Roof Cleaner Directory"

The Roof Cleaning Institute Of America Training & Certification Forum
"Find A Certified Roof Cleaner Directory"