Steven asks…
As a newly established small business selling business to business professional services where are the best places to advertise? I have a limited budget, I have a website, I have a yellow pages ad which goes live in 2007. Any good suggestions?
Read some marketing tips on this site
Robert asks…
I manage a small flight school and have been trying to get more people to come fly with us….my target market has been identified as already licensed pilots looking for a new adventure and further training…I want to market specifically my tailwheel program….Do you have any suggestions as to what would work best for doing this…such as flyers, or tri-folds, or TV adds, etc….We have around a $1000 budget so whatever we do will have to be cost effective.
Thanks!
You may want to consider having a website to get the most bang for your buck. The website below offers a comparison between a yellow pages ad & having a website. So you can most likely reach your goals for a lot less than $1000.
Richard asks…
I’m working on starting a business while in college. Basically, I want to go up to small businesses and offer my services: flyering, canvassing, posters, printing up promotional coupons, press releases, promotional events (like a sponsored party or something), tv ads, newspaper ads, etc. It would pretty much be guerrilla marketing by myself and maybe two other people (very small chance unless we get bigger than 2 or 3 clients). This is primarily to bump up my resume, but I can’t lose money. Making it is not really important, as long as I break even. Any tips? I don’t know where to start. I mean, I’m confident I could find a client, but as far as rates go, I don’t know what to charge, how to minimize expenditures in this field, how to get on the tv, etc. Also, what do you small business owners want from a marketing firm? I want to save you guys time by doing your marketing. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
A resource you may want to offer is that of producing a newspaper specific to the client and his business. I’ve done this and no others who have done this with good success. An actual newspaper gives the client significantly more space to deliver a message. You can offset prices by selling ads in it. The newspaper will need to be a ‘niche’.
I use an outfit in Tuscon called, MakeMyNewspaper.com (http://makemynewspaper.com). Their prices are fantastic and cheaper even than producing a flyer. Newspapers are easier to distribute–especially if they have interesting articles and content–people actually take them. Place them in waiting rooms and restaurants and people will read them.
It is a great marketing tool and perhaps one you may want to add to your portfolio.
Donald asks…
And what are some of your challenges as a small business owner?
Biggest challenge of any owner is getting out of that mentality of “I work for someone else so someone else will get it done”.
Too many owners forget they are the grunt, secretary, research and development, ceo, coo, accountant, advertising, marketing, etc. Gotta think outside the box and really start watching the market, trends of people, time of year, etc.
You spend money all over the place in marketing. But when it comes down to it…there are 2 main things your customers will touch, hands on, that can leave a lasting impression that will gain more business.
1. Web site
2. Business cards
years ago I went all out and did some super nice, very thick and hard card stock, at least 5 times thicker than average business card. I then had a graphic artist do all the layout and artwork and had it digitized at a very high dpi resolution and then the cards covered in like a clearcoat.
Each card ended up costing me $0.68 cents a piece….way above the normal but I wasn’t giving these out in the 1000′s. Most were one on one handing out and every single person commented on the card. It held their attention past that “glace and toss the card aside” and that is key.
The web site…again I went all out but I didn’t hire anyone. Since I already knew how to do sites I sat down and really thought out what should be on the site. I put down indepth info, prices, why’s and how’s of my industry, etc. Really beefed it up with info, facts and a ton of pictures to prove my points.
Again I had a high level of comments on the site for ease of use and the amount of info available, many said the site had answered so many of their questions. Doing this showed my customers I knew what I was doing and talking about. And when someone is happy about something….they spread the word.
Each item here, if done right, focused on your market and really thought out on a personal level…can easily increase sales by up to 15% alone.
Mary asks…
I now have a web site that under developement, and I have flyers to ditribute.
It pretty much depends on the type of business that you are in. If you are in retail (or a service industry) you may want to place some ads (classified for service) in your local papers, just to get your name out there. Try to find any local shows (like a farm show, homemaker show, etc) that you can have a booth at – make sure that the show caters to your clientel though. You should also make sure that you have a website up, and then get registered with all the search engines. Join your local chamber of commerece and BBB and they will do some advertising with your membership. Try to find a leads group – where you get together with a group of people and pass around leads – these are nice, as a lot of times they will limit it to just the one person in each line of business. We sell RV’s so we are on a lot of the industry specific websites (alot of which you have to join/pay a membership for, but well worth it), we also use Ebay and Craiglist. Also, any time we work a show, we do a drawing so that we can gather customers info and we put that in our database so that we can do direct mailings later on.
Good luck! Be creative, don’t do what everyone else does – it will make you stick out more.
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