The First Step Is Market Research

Finding Hungry Local Advertising Buyers

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

If you want to make the most effective use of your time and energy helping local businesses get online, start with smart market research. Instead of guessing which businesses spend big ad dollars, go to the Yellow Pages or a local business directory that has display ads.

Start at the beginning and go through the listings. When you find a niche that has full-page or very large display ads, make a note of it. Continue searching until you reach the end, or find more than enough potential niches.

In most cases, you'll find there are "rich-niche" businesses and professions that advertise like this:

●       Contractors

●       Dentists

●       Doctors

●       Insurance

●       Lawyers

●       Real Estate

These businesses and professionals make large sums of money on each new customer or client they get. Spending thousands of dollars every month to advertise is just a fraction of what they receive in profits. You can be the one that gives them great value for their advertising spending.

Most business owners complain that 50% of their advertising budget is wasted. They just don't know which 50%! You know, from experience, about adding Google Analytics, Stat Counter or any of the other third party services for these statistics. You'll be able to prove (and show) a prospect where their potential business is coming from, what they do when they view a Web page and where they leave (exit).

No Yellow Pages book can do that! Instead of guessing whether or not a given display ad is performing well, a customer of yours who has a Web page will have measurable statistics to rely upon. These statistics can also provide valuable market research for the client. No Yellow Pages book can do that either!

For you, the marketer, the results you get from your exploration of the Yellow Pages listings is just the start. You'll have to "weed out" all the retail-oriented display ads like restaurants and other businesses that are working on a small profit margin. Just because a restaurant has a full-page menu, that doesn't mean they're making a big profit. They're just up there because their competition has a menu, too!

Take the final results of your searches and organize them into categories that will simplify the next step in your market research. Put all contractors as sub-listings under the more general term "contractors". That way, when you take the next step and search for them in Google, you'll be able to just run through the list one word at a time, like this:

1.    Contractors building

2.    Contractors concrete

3.    Contractors drywall

And so on…

In case you have any questions in your mind if this is a good way to find hungry ad buyers, call your Yellow Pages advertising department and ask for the cost of all the display ads they offer. You already know from these posts that the prices are outrageous for what you get, but act shocked. Ask them if you can get a discount on the "rate card" they quote you.

After you get their numbers and see their willingness to assist in price, you'll know for sure that this is probably the most powerful source of market research for hungry advertisers in your local area!

In the next post I will get a little more detail on getting that foot in the front door.