Pest Control Advertising – Phone Books

What works and what doesn’t work in pest control advertising?

I am constantly bombarded with phone calls and emails for advertising. Now isn’t that just a little ironic? If your a marketing company or advertiser then shouldn’t you be able to reach me through your advertising methods???

If your advertising is that effective then why are you calling me instead of advertising to me?

Just food for thought.

Our most recent call was for yet another phone book directory. Paper must be getting cheaper. What a phone book company doesn’t see is this:

GENERAL PHONE BOOK STATS-
100 calls=
5 bogus calls – Solicitors/wrong numbers.
48 Existing customers – No New money just one of our local customers looking for us and happening to find us in the phone book directory.
24 referrals calls- Looking for us, if they don’t find us in your directory then they will find us somewhere else.
23 Sales Leads- (Potential new customers, shoppers) Dex quoted me that pest control closes at 33%.

So out of 100 phone calls you might close 7.59.

Now this is just an average, and perhaps it has little real bearing on if the phone book works for you. But for me it shows you what a sales guy doesn’t. “Oh, Billy Bob’s Pest Control got 300 phone calls last month. At $3000 and closing half of those that’s only $20 a new customer!!!”

Wrong, your pest control service might get new customers but I doubt you are really bringing in even close to 50% of those calls. Run the numbers yourself. Then ask yourself should I be working to pay the phone book? That’s what happens when your phone book advertising breaks even. You do all the pest control work the phone book steals all your profits.