Advertising Scams to Avoid!

Advertising is tricky business. You don't always know what is or is not going to work.   Most forms of advertising are too costly to be doing much experimenting with them.  You need to have a reasonable expectation of a good return on your advertising expenditures. 

There are plenty legitimate forms of advertising that work well for other businesses but do not work well for home inspectors.  Then there are the forms of advertising that do not work well for anyone.  They are outright illegal scams or sometimes they are just inside the law. 
 

Telephone Book Covers and Restaurant Placemats

A popular scam that preys on new businesses with inexperienced owners is telephone book cover advertising.  There are also variations on the same theme to watch out for.  They include restaurant placemats and maps.  Here's how the scam works.  You get a phone call from someone who tells you that a local real estate company putting together a telephone book cover that will be distributed to real estate agents, mortgage brokers, banks, insurance companies and of course, households.  You have been selected to be the only home inspector who will be on the cover.  Lucky you!

Naturally, you don't want to decline this generous offer; especially when it is a real estate agency that you want to have referring clients to you.  All you have to do is to pay a small fee, usually a few hundred dollars and you will be in the front of the cover.  "Oh, you are on a tight advertising budget this year?"  "That's OK."  "For a smaller fee than can put you on the back of the cover".  You will still have plenty of exposure and you will be in the good graces of the real estate agency that is doing the telephone book cover.  What, you still cannot afford it?  "Well, we aren't supposed to do this but we only have a few spots left and we need to get this to the printer so I am going to give you the spot for half price". Of course, you will also want 100 or 200 of these covers to distribute to your customers, banks, real estate agents, etc. 

You pay for the advertising and you pay again for the covers you buy.  The covers are expensive so you will probably only end up buying between 20 and fifty covers.  Let's say that you are one of 20 advertisers and the advertisers buy an average of 25 covers each.  Guess how many covers will be printed.  You probably guessed it right.  They will print 500 covers.  You and the other advertisers will be the ones distributing them to all those banks, mortgage companies and so on.

What about that real estate agency that sponsored the covers?  They may be completely unaware of the scammers using their name.  The scammers may have started the whole thing rolling by calling a real estate agency to offer them a no-strings-attached free ad on the front of the cover.  They just became a sponsor.

I have contacted the supposed sponsors of a few of these scams.  In one instance it was a company with which I had a good relationship and knew the owner well.  He had not heard of the telephone book cover project.  He assured me that he had not agreed to sponsor the covers.  The scammers were using his company's name completely without his knowledge or approval.

There are several variations on the telephone book cover scam.  Sometimes it is a calendar.  It could be a place mat for restaurants.  Sometimes it is a wall map. 

Don't fall for these scams.  They do not generate business.  Even if they do generate a few jobs, they are the least cost-effective forms of advertising you will find.  Remember, the only covers that are distributed are the ones that you and other advertisers bought.

Yellow Pages - Print or Internet

Internet Yellow Pages are not a complete scam but they are a very bad investment.  You can do much better on your own or with the help of an Internet marketing expert.  Print Yellow Pages salesmen rode the gravy train for a long time but it has run out of steam.  They are trying to charge the same outrageous rates that they were able to charge when they had a monopoly.  We have many choices today and they are all better than either Print or Internet Yellow Pages advertising.  I guess the Yellow Pages salesmen are going to have to go out and find real jobs.  Let's just hope that they don't try to become home inspectors.