you budget yourself to $600

R

ron p

Member
you have buisness cards and a nicely lettered rig.
you wash/restore anything but hoods.
Where do you spend your $600 to get the phone to ring?
Phone book
yard sign's
newspaper ad's
trade shows
doing demos[they cost you money]
ect....
im mostly interested in getting homeowners to call right now.
Second is who here feel's it's better to specialize in just one thing?
I see some that thought this way are now cleaning multi-surfaces because they have to.
Is $600 a unreasonable amount to spend?
What do you spend a year?
 
This is my first year in the Yellow pages, I've got 3 adds in two seperate books, thats a block ad under decks in each book and 2 line ads under pressure washing and window cleaning, the cost nearly $500, they don't come out till march, so the local newspaper ad at $100 per month, at least till then.

I get my business cards through Vista print for about $10 for 250.

I'm just entering my 3rd year in business and have found repeats and refferals to be the most priceless advertizing, though I want this to be a breakout year, so I plan on spending quite a bit more on advertizing!

Gav
 
Hmm, a $600 budget,
I think that if I was going after the typical customers, I would target direct mailers. I would figure who my target audience is, and keep sending the mailer to them. Since you are in the Northeast, I would probably start my marketing blitz in February, and the first ones on my list would be the people that I did work for last year.
If I was going for new customers, for residential I would do a demgraphics search, and start targeting those people.
COmmercial, for the most part I think that I would target the property management companies, or the GM of whatever business I was targeting.
As for the specialize thing,
I do believe in specialization. The only problem is that I target market a particular type of customer, and do what they ask me to, as long as it is not illegal, or immoral, and pays well.

Scott
 
I have found that over the years the yellow pages work the best. When they go there thay have made the decision to hire someone. Have your phone forwarded to your mobile phone, if they get an answering machine chances are they will go to the next listing. I also have found that a smaller ad in the real yellow pages will generate more calls than several larger ads in the off brand book. They always go to the real yellow pages first. This works well for residential but I have done several commercial jobs because of these ads. I currently spend about $850.00 per year on the yellow pages , about half of what I was spending in the off brand book and I recieve more calls from this one.
 
ron p, All good Ideas, but this one saves you money and just cost you time.... go to the mall and talk to someone about cleaning a enterance way for some space in the middle of the mall and take all your pictures and etc. and market away for the weekend... I would think you could get enough leads by that alone, combined with the newspaper and yellow pages to keep you busy...

Hope my Idea helps,

Matt
 
RonP,

My experience tells me that around 3%-5% of your gross will be spent on marketing. If you are planning to spend $600 a month, then I believe you'll get a hefty amount of work in '03. If you mean $ 600 for the whole year, you are going to struggle. I imagine you mean $600 for your initial blitz?? I'd do like scott says and go with direct mail. Problem is, you'll spend that much on the materials.

Hire out and get some good postcards/brochures designed. No offense, but you don't strike me as the creative/artsy type, so hire a pro and let them make something really cool for ya. Get beth to do it.

I have mixed feelings on YP's. One thing i don't like: I am still paying for it right now, even though it is producing no calls. I also found that 50% of the calls recieved were blow-offs (wanted deck built, marketers) and 30% wanted a cheap price (common YP complaint, many price shoppers), next 10% were legitimate customers that i often market to, but the final 10% were good ones. They were customers calling from multi-million dollar homes hid back in the woods. Very pricey jobs, and they were people i'd have no other way to market to.
 
thanks everyone

the $600 was to kick off the season.
I am in NJ and 1/3 of the time the YP ad would be wasted[winter]
Im going to do yard signs and a newspaper ad.
Then the smallest YP ad.
The other $$$ is budgeted for the lettering of my rig.
I have 15 repete housewash customers lined-up and some are talking about deck work.
I also have my steady 15 tandems to keep up with.
My next venture is FLATWORK CONTRACTS and add to the number of trucks. Both have the longest season.
 
For our Roof Cleaning business, we allocate (or set aside) about 20% of gross sales for advertising.

A lot more than most companies - I am sure, but it works for us!
 
Hello Ron P,

We have spent about 3-1/2% of gross sales for all advertising over the past 8 years. 1-1/2% is for the Yellow Pages.

For us the YP have been the best bang for the buck!

Dave Olson
 
I spend about $2000 a year on advertising. I made about $35,000 this year so that is a little under 6% of my gross. I don't count the lettering and my yard signs because they are more of a one time thing or a once in a great while thing. I paid $60 for door magnents but they are something that will last years. Same with my yard signs. I pay about $1500 to run a yellow page ad in 2 different books. My ads are 2" x 2 1/2" in both books. My newspaper ad runs for 6 months. It costs me $325 a year. I always keep my ad short. Too long will cost big money. One thing I noticed is in the newspaper people don't care what your name is just tell them what you do. If you have a short name it is fine by mine is West Shore Pressure Washing. No need to add an adress or your personal name . That is just wasted space. I find that if you say House Washing and put that you do concrete and decks that is enough. I would also recommend not saying pressure washing and then listing what you do. That is like saying LAWNCARE and then listing right below it you mow grass. They kind of get that from the LAWNCARE. Most anyone who has placed a newspaper ad has wrote it out a million times. I am just trying to give hints to keep it short and that have worked for me. In the newspaper you are going after mostly residential customers. Your yellow page ad should be for both commercial and residential. I keep my newspaper ad to about 4 or 5 lines. I figure it is better to have a smaller ad in there for 6 months then to have a big one for the same price for 6 weeks. I print my own business cards. They aren't high quailty but hey it is cheaper then Staples. I use like 5 colors on my cards so it would be very expensive at Staples. I do few flyers. At the start of the year I write letters to companies I think may need my service. This previous year it worked out great. I plan on writing even more letters this year. I will send out about 300 letters this spring. All letters will be pretty much the same just change a few things to cater for the different business I am sending it to. The cost will be about $150. All I need to do is score on one letter and it pays for itself. I do all this in the winter (like now) when I have nothing to do. This is the way I look at the yellow pages. Most big repeat commercial work is going to come from the yellow pages. My ads broke even this year. What I mean by break even is that the job paid for all of its expenses, paid for the ad, and put some money in my pocket. So I didn't work for free and i didn't lose anything. I was close on getting 2 big deals but they fell through. One was washing 16 condos @$400 for $6400. Said they might call back in the spring. I hope they do but I never hold my breath when someone says they will call me back. I think of the yellow pages as playing the lottery but with way better odds. All you need is that one guy to call and say I need all this done every year. Then you will be happy you did it. I also ask all my customers where they heard about us. This helps you determine where your dollar is best spent. I keep track of everyone that calls and another list of those I actually work for. I then see what my sucess rate is. If your sucess rate is high you are probably doing it for too cheap. If you don't get many of the jobs you bid on then you know you might be too expensive. I try to shoot for about 2/3 rds of my bids.
 
I’m not the guy to reply to the residential deal, but here it goes.

I think that yellow page’s will be the best bang for the dollar. I myself have never had much success with yellow page ads. I do believe that the residential guys have been having success. At the round table in NJ guys had post cards and many great ideas and examples on what to say and use.

Advo: many seemed to like using advo advertisements. 400.00 For a delivery of 10,000…



I personally think that doing your own post cards on that budget might be affective. Bulletin boards in grocery stores might be a cheap way to advertise. Signs on the truck road when you’re working. Classified ads are pretty cheap and offer a huge amount of readers. Radio on the right stations can even fit that budget 600.00 for twice a day for 30 days.

Just remember Ron whatever you do repeat it over and over again and again. Sometimes things work better the second time around.
 
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