your local newspaper. Suppose you came up with two or three (or more) Yellow Pages ads and tested them individually by running them in the local paper. By carefully tracking the ads you will immediately find out which ones are most effective and pull the best.   Put your best-pulling ad in the Yellow Pages! If you really get serious about this you may want to try more than two or three ads in your test. Test different headlines, appeals, rationales, offers, etc. Find the combinations that work the best. This information will be valuable for years to come.   How to Save up to 50% on your Yellow Pages Ads   Yellow Pages advertising is a huge investment for most small businesses. To make things worse is the proliferation of new Yellow Pages books. There are few things worse than having to advertise in not one, not two, but three or even four Yellow Pages books just so that youre not left out of the game. So Ill share with you how to buy your Yellow Pages ads for half what youd normally pay. This advice alone will be worth thousands of dollars to most small business owners.   How To Determine In Which Directories To Advertise     Perhaps one of the most common complaints from small business owners is that there are too many Yellow Pages directories that drive up their marketing costs. There are basically three types of business phone directories - the phone companys directory (i.e. AT&T or SWB), regional directories, and local neighborhood directories. The one thing to remember is that all of these directories get used!   Your customers are picking up each and every one of the books on the market. To what extent they get used will vary from market-to-market, depending on the quality of the independents book and the size of the market you live in.   Do your homework. Dont rely on the sales reps from each of these companies for non- biased information on their usage. Ask your customers, neighbors, friends, and relatives. See which book they use. Dont ask them to give you a name. Take the cover of each of the books and show them. Most consumers are not aware that a different company puts out each book. You may be surprised as to which books are being used in your area.   How to Allocate Your Yellow Pages Dollars   Once you have a general idea of how much each directory is used, then break up your Yellow Pages budget accordingly. If you have three different phone books in your area, as I do in mine, and you determine that the phone company book gets used 60%, the regional type book gets used 30%, and the neighborhood book gets used 10%, then spend your dollars in the same proportions.   Dont dump all your dollars in one book; remember your potential customers dont care who is advertising. When people go to the Yellow Pages they already know that they