[suffolkclean]

We have our Van signwritted which people are definetely noticing, in the process of getting a website sorted out, we've been advertising in a local magazine for the last year in 2 areas and feel thats now taken its course cos not getting much response for £65 in total a month. Im registered online with any free listings. Do you think you need extra advertising on top of having a website, not sure where to advertise next?? (Need to reduce my £65 per month on advertising)

[clinton]

What services do you offer?...The web site will be good and bring in work its the way foward i think..

[BDCS]

I can't praise parish magazines enough - cheap, and the readers like to think that by using you it helps the church and the local tradesmen. Ours is £50 / year and you know you won't spend much on diesel

[Richy L]

I can't praise parish magazines enough - cheap, and the readers like to think that by using you it helps the church and the local tradesmen. Ours is £50 / year and you know you won't spend much on diesel

how can you find them?
i cant seem to find any in cardiff

[suffolkclean]

We offer Carpet Cleaning, Upholstery, Windows and One off/Spring Cleans. Our parish magazine is £45 per month per area its expensive in Suffolk.

[BDCS]

Ask when your at church in the morning

[Ian Gourlay]

£65 a month is not enough.

If you want to turn over £1000 a month cleaning Carpets  You may need to spend between £150 and £250.  a month If you want £1000 a week its that amount per week.

retailers spend these figures on  Shops and sales staff to keep going.

Advertising is our shop

[pro-clean]

advertising can be really complicated, i don;t think their is a best form of advertising for instants if your a carpet cleaner (domestic) distributing 50,000 leaflets say at the beginning of january your not really going to have much of a return compared to say april where people are considering spring cleaning after an awlful winter but on the other hand this may work for commercial premises such as offices, pubs, clubs etc, this opens up a can of worms in it's self as to who your going to target your advertising at.
A few months back we decided to step up on our exterior cleaning (concentrating on the cash side of things)  and distributed over 30,000 leaflets throughout our local area and cardiff and took into account the weather forecast which was almost a forthnight of hot weather and i believe the weather conditions them selves as well as the timed leafleting distributing gave us the best return on exterior cleaning enquiries we have ever had, sounds a little technical but timeing, targeting and i believe  even the weather played a part in our case 

[dianegreenwood]

I've spent time creating my own website and have read loads of articles on optimising it for search engines and its now generating a lot of enquiries.  I also use Google Adwords to generate traffic as well as free listings on yell.com, etc.

Also, On Your Doorstep magazine has been brilliant so far and I've now got a list of local parish magazines to try out - 1 new subscription each month spreads the £20 annual cost for each into a monthly cost.

I've also done leaflet drops myself with at least 1 customer out of every 2 hour session but I'm very careful about which streets I target and my flyer is double sided A4 full colour on glossy paper so hopefully looks different to most flyers coming through the door.

I'm also in BNI which is part of my marketing budget and have made efforts to forge alliances with related businesses, i.e carpet cleaners, window cleaners, gardeners, plumbers, etc in my local area so we can recommend each other for business.

I don't have a signwritten vehicle yet but its on my list for September and of course your best advert is you!  I dress as if I work in an office and carry a leather folder with me to every quote and I try and ask a lot of questions because people like to talk about themselves.

Marketing is an investment - i.e. spend £1 to make £10:

My marketing budget (which includes my website, printing, advertising, t-shirts, biz cards, etc is £250 per month and I expect my business to turn over £86k in its first year so that means for each £1 spent on marketing I get £28 in turnover and £8 net profit. 

Thats a good return on investment to me.

Probably too much information but this forum has been invaluable in helping me set my business up the right way so just thought I'd share my learnings so far and my business experience from the boring corporate world 

Kind Regards

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

[suffolkclean]

Hi Diane, you sound as if you have a very successful business. Do you have any advice on marketing strategies for getting more e.o.t. cleans and big spring clean work. Do you visit letting agents personally as I have done the telephone call thing and sending information but nothing is happening, they say when something comes up I'll be in touch (& don't) or say we have cleaners in place but will keep your information incase its needed in the future. We do a really high standard clean and the customers we have done the work for are delighted but I'm struggling on where/what to do to get more of this kind of work.

We've been doing this for 18 months now - Any advice you could give me I'd really appeciate
Thanks
Barbara

[Colin Stokes]

The best form of COST EFFECTIVE advertising I have found bar none is B2B marketing - its better for commercial work but with regard to EOT I think it would work for you. 

there has been a lot of previous talk re response rates from leaflets etc but we get 3-5% on something which needs;

1 Designed and made up e-mail flyer (cost around £150 for 3/4 variations on a theme - each highlighting different facet or service eg special offers, new services etc.

2 Distribution list - these can be be bought but its so easy to put together your own after all you know who you want to target - just plough through google/NAEA/Arla for lists and e-mail lists

3 send - just make sure everyone that gets one is listed in the BCC section -so no-one else can see anyones elses address - and that there is an option to unsubscribe.

With 4 variations thats a quarterly mail out over a year for £150 and can be to as many as relevant/you like.  Our list is now something like 2000 long but they are all completely relevant and pretty much always get the 3-5% return rate (we look for contracts though).