Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Considering Yellow Pages, Directories, and Their Digital Alternatives

If your customers are the kind that lug the phone books that hit their driveways or doorsteps through the front door (and not straight to the recycling bin), then traditional Yellow Pages listings are important to your business. If your customers have moved their directory searches online, you should, too. The decision is really that easy. When it comes to Yellow Pages and other directory ads, go where your customers go.

But one way or another, be darned sure your business shows up in whatever directories your customers use. Otherwise, they won’t find you at the very time they’re most ready to buy.

QR codes: Let customers point and shoot to reach your business online

Known as two-dimensional bar codes because they can be scanned side-to-side or top-to-bottom, QR codes (for Quick Response) are read by smartphone apps to decode and interpret a website address and use the phone’s network to reach the corresponding page. Using QR codes is free for all involved. To get a QR code, just enter your site address into a QR code generator like http://qrcode.kaywa.com or http://www.qrstuff.com . To read QR codes, download one of the many QR scanning apps. To see how QR codes work, scan the code in this box with your smartphone and you’ll go straight to my author page on Amazon. When using QR codes in your advertising, be sure that you send people to a mobile-friendly version of your site (see Chapter 10 for advice).