Advertising For 1st Time - Suggestions\Experiances?

[n-hatton]

Hi All.

Looking for advise\suggestions\experiences on advertising for the 1st time.

Last 4-5 years been doing residential multi-trade\DIY stuff; painting, decorating, door hanging, tiling small\medium kitchens etc. All via referral. Had good minimal amount of work, but gone very quiet this year!

Previously did couple of £80/quarter ads in local little trade\lifestyle mag - resulted in two “tight” customer calls - arguing over £30 for coming out to do flat packs etc!

Been referred to Check-A-Trade. Initially feel £900/year a bit steep? Looking around at others – including Yell etc. Also notice a few more so-called referral directories now starting up.

Just noticed on this forum criticism about Check-a-trade (will search some more)! Have been getting a “hard sell” from them to join since an initial phone call enquiry to them! Now wondering if customers may turn away given what I've just read and end up being expensive waste?

There’s also The Green Book (Directory of Excellence?) in my area – Reading, Berks – that supposedly also operates via referral. Any experience\comments?

Have mail shot all previous customers with new business and Xmas cards. Also flyers – for the 1st time – but only to houses around the area that have For Sale or Sold posts outside - been told general flyer-ing normally has poor results? Also starting to use all the "free entries" I can find like Yell.

Cheers,


Neil

 

[HERTS P&D]

Hi Neil, anyone trying the hardsell is only trying to get you on board, as like everyone else, they are suffering from lack of customers. What I normally say now is if their product/advert is so good, let me advertise with them for one month and if I am busy then I will pay for that month and book a complete year. Not one company will take you up on this offer as they know, they can't guarantee the phone will ring. It won't.

Yell is a waste of time, I was told by them that if I advertise with them I wouldn't be able to handle the work. I got one job, it didn't even pay for the advert. When the guy phoned me up to re-book for another month, with the boll-ocking I gave him he was just silent on the phone and said 'sorry mate'.

The best thing is word of mouth, call customers back, turn up on time, be clean and tidy and hopefully work will pick up.

You could advertise in the local paper saying: Local handyman, no job too small, OAP discount, Carpentry, Decorating, Tiling (and whatever else you can do) Phone Neil for friendly advice, 7 day service, 8am - 10pm.

You will be surprised how many people will call just to ask advice and if you are helpful then you will be the first person they will phone when they need help.
You could always have a website they could look at previous work.

Andy

 

[Mark Br]

I see that you are also in Berkshire. If you have the "Green Book" in your part try to get yourself in that. You'll need references from up to 7 customers, then if accepted it costs £150-£240 per year.

Failing that cards left in local butchers, local hardware store, etc have worked for me. Local papers seem to be a waste of time

 

[dreadnoughtheating]

As per others, forget paper based trade directories, Yell and yell.com results ONLY in them (ie other advertisment sellers/scam artistes/you name them) trying to sell their sh!te. (its as if, well, your'e mad enuff to fall for yell.com silver tongued sales patter you'll fall for anything!)

Go google adwords, a lot of offers of, say £30 pounds worth to get you started, pick your twenty 'key-words' carefully and target just one area. You can do a homemade website using MS WORD, a lot of punters say they like mine, because it looks homemade...... go figure.

And, your local parish magazines. They stay on coffee tables a whole lot longer than last-nights paper, and I am informed have some sort of 'Halo' effect. Hey it works for me anyway.

DH

 

[n-hatton]

All.


Cheers for advice - much appreciated

Probably harsh me saying Check-A-Trade doing "hard sell" - followed up a few times to get a "Yes" decision. In their defence, know 1 guy who gets good business - does electrical work in addition to what I do though. He's the only feed-back I've had - but a genuine bloke. £1,000 just seems quite an outlay and needed to compare.

Green Book's been suggested twice now - price looks much better if it gets you some business. Previous customers just mailshot with business\xmas cards and note of possible contact by one directory or the other.


Cheers guys,
Neil

 

[WoodYouLike]

Hi Neil

Had a quick look at your site and perhaps it is better to change the intro to a short page which highlights the points that now take a while to get past me.
If I was someone looking for answers or for a good decorator I would not want to be "bothered" by a flash intro but would want to know almost immediately if you can help me out.

Although a rather humoristic intro, best to have it not on your front page but somewhere else on the site

 

[Annief]

Hi Neil. Im far from a website expert but in agreement with one of the other posts, don't make your website too fussy and put as much onto the first page you can without it looking too cluttered - just the main points then some links to pics, prices etc.
I have just finished working for a small high-end cleaning company and helped with marketing and the website. We ended up getting more work from the website than yell.com, google(top of page listing) and checkatrade put together. The thing with flash is that anyone with a slow computer (most of us) gets fed up waiting or put off and just clicks off, especially some of the older generation who may still be getting used to their PC or who have had it a while and dont use it much.
Also essential is to get references actually on the page or have somewhere where customers can write a testamonial. My job involved a lot of interaction with the customers as my main job was the estimator and one of the questions I asked when visiting homes or businesses was what drew them to our website?, most would say firstly the word 'guarantee', value for money, (we werent cheap but didnt rip them off either) and the testamonials from customers My boss even got a few to do a small video which he then put on the website, all with the customers permission of course.I can send you a link if you want any ideas. Make your website suit your business, big flashy website = big flashy company or if you are a small, friendly family business equally design your website to reflect this.

 

[n-hatton]

WoodYouLike & Annief.


Damn, that was my 1st real go at Flash as well

However, I take your points and critique on-board which are much appreciated Is good to get someone else's perspective on it. Your initial quick visits are going to be what other visitors will be doing - their thoughts no doubt being the same.

In the 1st instance I'll drop the movie intro. Will reconsider the text and content of the static pages as per your feed-back - assume just these static Flash pages are quick enough? May eventually do as HTML.

Annief. Yes, a link to some examples would be great.



Cheers,
Neil

 

[WoodYouLike]

another idea would be to create a simple guide for your website visitors, for instance: 7 easy steps to decide which project should be tackled first in home decorating - or How to select your decorator and which ones to avoid.

Turn it into a Ebook (PDF) and promise to email it to them for free if they fill in a webform (capturing email addresses with permission). Then you can follow up on this with more information - not with hard sales pitches straight away

We use this method on our own websites for some years now with great result. Here's an example of ours

 

[mattchip]

Hi Neil, i'm no web expert either but someone who is said you have about 6-8 seconds from someone landing on your homepage to provide the information that people are looking for. I have two sites and i'm only just happy with the way one is looking after a lot of time and research. Important points - Phone number, big fonts, clear and top of the page, Reviews, Prices and a USP paragraph. Hope this helps.

 

[n-hatton]

Cheers all.


Much appreciated feed-back and ideas - all constructive Can now see I got carried away a bit doing the site for myself, DOH!

I only know web basics - so submittable forms are a little way off - but all the basics you've suggested are no problem and make sense.


Cheers again all

 

[andywhy]

Hi Neil

I started out as a handyman in August 2009 so been going for almost a year and a half now. Sounds like you are doing similar stuff to me.

I was a bit clueless about advertising at the start, but began by spending £80 on some flyers and 2 weeks plodding the streets hand delivering these within a half to 1 mile radius of my home. Take up was VERY low and soon gave up on this - although I do still get the odd person who calls me now who still have the original flyer I delivered!

My main source of work is through a local A5 magazine that is produced monthly and although consisting mainly of adverts also contains parish news, listings of local classes, policemans report on crime etc etc. People do tend to hang on to these as a source of reference. I pay 2 lots of around £45 to get a colour eight of a page ad in 2 areas

I also try to get a small ad up in as many local shops as possible, since the cost of this is fairly minimal.

At the moment about a third of new work is from referals so as you are probably aware, doing good work and generally being polite and helpful are essential.

I have come to the conclusion that trade recommendation sites are a bit of a waste of time since there are so many of them and I don't think that they are the first port of call for most people. The only exception is the Which Local site as people do trust the magazine, althought they need to be subscribers to the magazine to access it.

Give it time, and if you're doing a good job then word will spread no problem

Andy

 

[WoodYouLike]

Cheers all.


Much appreciated feed-back and ideas - all constructive Can now see I got carried away a bit doing the site for myself, DOH!

Nothing wrong with doing the site for yourself, that's what we do and we're still learning (even after 7 years )

 

[PaulStamp]

Hi Neil, I don't want to wade in but I was reading through and just wanted to make a couple of points that I think are worth keeping in mind whichever way you want to go, if that's okay.

Yell is an authorised Goggle Adwords reseller, meaning we manage accounts for small businesses on their behalf. The business owner can choose the services to promote, in whichever location, then decide the budget each month.

We have recently introduced customer reviews on the site, and are currently working to make this functionality available for every business listed on Yell (paid advertiser or free listing). This will be live very soon.

Thanks
Paul
Yell Community Manager

 

[WoodYouLike]

Yell is an authorised Goggle Adwords reseller, meaning we manage accounts for small businesses on their behalf. The business owner can choose the services to promote, in whichever location, then decide the budget each month.

We have recently introduced customer reviews on the site, and are currently working to make this functionality available for every business listed on Yell (paid advertiser or free listing). This will be live very soon.

Too little, too late in regards of the reviews.

And in regards of Google Adwords reseller, does your fee also include educating/training in what traffic to aim for or is it just: the more traffic you get, the better it is???

Most small businesses are way better off reading these:
Get massive traffic
The #1 Biggest Secret to Effective Online Lead Generation
Adwords double whammy
Do you make these mistakes in Adwords?
Content Rich: Sell more, Rank high, right now