How Can I Improve Our Marketing

Marketing a Phone Directory and Guide Publishers Business

The value and earning capacity of a phone directory and guide publishers business largely depends on the quality of its marketing efforts. But great marketing takes a lot more than hanging a shingle and hoping for the best.

A single characteristic divides today's best phone directory and guide publishers businesses from companies at the bottom of the food chain.

In a growth-oriented business, marketing has to be seen as a core business activity. On the upside, great marketing is a real possibility for a phone directory and guide publishers business owner who is willing to learn what it takes to promote their business.

Company Website

If you haven't done so already, the first step in marketing your phone directory and guide publishers business must be an exceptional website. Although many businesses have a website, a poorly designed and unnavigable website is worse than having no web presence at all. Your site is a representation of your business; it needs to convey the same professional appearance and functionality as you expect from any other sales and marketing asset. But you will also need to consider how you will attract visitors to your site and what you will do with them once they are there -- and that means you'll need to include SEO and conversion path considerations in the web design process.

Building A Community Around Your Brand

Does your business have a social media presence? If not, you may be falling behind the rest of the marketplace. Whether they realize it or not phone directory and guide publishers businesses are struggling to find ways to communicate directly with customers - and for businesses, that's the whole point of maintaining an active presence in social media. There are many ways to launch a social media strategy. In our experience, it's helpful to begin with a direct mail campaign. Using vendor-provided mailing lists, you can broaden your reach by informing new contacts as well as established customers about your presence on popular sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Technological Expertise

The PR and marketing community has embraced technology with open arms, transforming basic marketing concepts into sophisticated, tech-driven systems and solutions. One of the things that needs to be considered by phone directory and guide publishers businesses tends to be a search for news to leverage technology to scale up the organization's promotional firepower. Despite the initial cost associated with many technological solutions, the long-term payoff for the right technologies almost always outweighs the upfront expense.

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