Where will you put your money in advertising

[John Harding]

John

I know one thing, I will badgering yellow pages for a discount for their appaling customer service (hot)

John

[Nicola McIntosh]

good question john 😛

i am stopping my yellow pages ad. i have been asking customers (new ones) why they came to me….they said ‘recommended by’ or ‘my sign’ which is on the main road) so, i no longer need to spend vast amounts, i will stick to the normal line in yp. as for my website 😕 it’s nearly there. what sort of feed back do you get john with your web space? 😀

Nik

[Aaron & Chris]

We have just set up and are about to enter into advertising, we have got yellow pages hounding us at the moment, customer service seems great, i wonder why!! Dya think it is because we haven’t handed our money over yet.??? 😀

We will be doing alot on the print side, leaflets etc and the web site should be finished in a week or so. All in all we are going to try everything and see what works and what doesn’t.

I can’t believe how much it all costs 😮

Aaron. 😀

[Lynn Normington]

it will not be yellow pages apart from free listing same with thompson the reps all think you have loads of free time to spend with them like you don’t have a business to run 🙄 then they are going to save you loads of money with discounts etc.!! so how come it’s dearer for less than last year (?) who in all honesty thinks to look in thompsons or yellow pages, if I need a plumber I ask some one I trust same with gardener etc.
and I now have a tingle up my spine have we not been here before??

Lynn

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Lynn:

have we not been here before??
Lynn

i think we have lynn… 😀 https://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=10382 this one here which was a while back, i know yp always takes over the discussions, but it would be interesting to find out what folk do other than yp, and most importantly if it works 😉

nik

[Peter Normington]

Spend all your pennies on a ding ding frog. that seems to work 😀
Peter

[Paul Franklin]

Word of mouth seems to get us most of our work.
A lot comes from going into transport cafes most mornings and just talking to people. Cafe owners are often a wealth of information on who may be able to provide us with work.
Also our van is quite noticeable and we change it every few months. It currently has a 300mm wide pink stripe with our name and services down both sides and a couple of other loud coloured outlines showing a T shirt, vehicle etc. It may look tacky, but we have had a lot of people stop and ask us for a card / flyer and have most certainly had work because of it.

[David Rowland]

a lot of small bits and peices comes from Yellow Pages, Business Pages and all the other varients.
When BT started their joint business/phone book, the litho business that I do work for placed an ad and no other litho business was dominate on the page. We had weeks of work!

The thing with advertising, people remember the imagery and not the text, so we place adverts in most of the directories, it most certainly works for us. We are with Yell.com which does attract some work but not a lot.

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Peter Normington:

Spend all your pennies on a ding ding frog. that seems to work 😀

:lol1: :lol1: :lol1:

nik

[Paul Franklin]

Maybe we’ll make the ding ding frog the subject of our next vehicle advertising campaign. A frog wrap perhaps!

[Hugh Potter]

i’ve only recently set up myself, the majority of my small jobs are just word of mouth, small cheap van jobs, but they all count hey ?!

my bigger jobs are usually as a result of my poking my head through the door and introducing myself, of leaving a card with most commercial places i visit, whether it be the local tyre centre of the kebab shop ! it’s surprising how many people follow up the informal conversation with some work, or a friend of theirs !

i do plan shortly do print some more leaflets and drop one with a busness card through the local busnesses doors, high street and the industrial estate,

i dont chase alot of work right now, as i have other things i’m trying to wind up, but i’m geting 2 full days a week of work with no advertising at all,

i won’t be using yella pages, i know of too many people who’ve nothing good to say about it, i only opened my copy yesterday to look for a sign material suplier local to me, it only took me 3 months to use it !

i do a little on ebay, i like to be original in what i offer, but it seems everytime i offer something that sells well, you get a dozen others who jump right on it, i find that rather anoying, there’s just no respect on there !

i’ll stick to my usual methods i think.

[John Singh]

I’m with yellow pages and Yell.com
I’m not having a fantastic response with Yell.com but I notice more of my competitors are now listed with them.

Of interest is a large well established Sign firm close to me who always had a big spread in the Y.Pages every year. Always outdoing the competition with the largest advert you can get

This years edition!! Non existent not even a line entry (?)
But they are advertising in Yell.com

I’m only going on what I tend to do when I want something
I immediately do a search on the internet
And I think a rapidly growing amount of folk are doing the same

I think back and ask myself: When was the last time I pulled out the yellow pages to search for something or find a supplier and the answer is worrying since it isn’t that often

It seems to the web now

Granted some still may be hanging on to how they have done things in the past as old habits die hard

Hence the question were are you placing your bets

Little John

[Peter Normington]

John, the web is in effect just a dirty great big yellow pages, to get the “big” add you will have to pay big bucks I dont need to teach you to suck eggs. If you want to get “real” advertising buy or make a perspex box, then live in it, suspended over the millenium dome or even better, the houses of parliament for a year, 😉
Peter

[David Rowland]

the weblogs on some of the websites I have made do have a pretty good Yell.com response.

Also, having a Massive printed advert can have a negative, it feels sometimes that they only want to attract the ‘biggest shops’.

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote DaveRowland:

the weblogs on some of the websites I have made do have a pretty good Yell.com response.

glad you mentioned that dave as the guy from yp has been trying to get me too sign up since it started…. 😛 still not convinced it will pull most of the surfers out there 😀

nik

[simonb]

1’st time poster on the board.
sort of going into vinyl signs as wanted to update my “A” board out the front of the shop as lots of bits of paper on it looked shabby and also the main window. hope to change it regulllaly and didnt want the longterm expesnse of getting it redone every time.

intending to do the signs as a addon to my usual business (as no local signers) but don’t intend to make that much money out of it. had been thinking about it for a while and bought a cheep machine to get me going in the last couple of days.

advertising—-for the last 2 years i’ve been the owner and have used yellow pages and thompson, and a 3″ by 4″ in the local paper and mailshot homes (i sell foam, fabrics and haberdashery). and this year i took out a extra on yell.com

to be quite honest for the money i spend i figure most of it is wasted and next year my advertising will be based on what gets the money through the door.

heres my rundown

yellow pages. about £1500. a few people mention it when they phone but not many. in most businesses theres a mark up and they vary in the different things we sell. as a guide though i would say they have to get £3000 through the till in order just to pay the bill. £60 a week – not to sure on this one as it might. any less than that and i’m wasting my money. looking at the phonecalls i get (1 to 2 a week) they dont but some people come in and maybe dont mention where they saw us. This year i reduced the pages advert as i was going to reduce advertising but ended spening it on yell. it was £600 and think it was the biggest waste of money ever. lets face it why advertise it on yell when you can submit it to search engines yourself. my website now gets us more enquiries than everything below and cost next to nothing to set up)

thompson. same amount £1500 but i’ve had 1 phonecall in 4 months that mentiond them. so their not getting my money unless it late space at a third of the price in the next directory.

local paper.we get a 3″ by 4″ space for £55 and we do it every other week £1300pa. recently had a promotion where we changed the usual advert as we were doing something new (memory foam). i expected a few call as its product that aids sleep etc but to date havent had one phone call. are people not into it (foam) or are people not reading the newspaper? buy we can change it when we want so can always have specials mentioned in it. a plus side of it over yellow /thompson.

leaflets. had my nephew deliver some (200) and got 1 reply.

So………
advertising is going to get a bashing from now on

yellow pages is going to have to be cheaper or i’ll go for my free advert.

yell.com is non starter

thompson is going to have to be very much cheaper (1/3) or i wont bother

local paper will continue as i can always put new stuuf to the shop on it.

my A frame outside my shop. recently did a “BLACKOUT MATERIAL IN STOCK” and had a lot more people come in and it paid for itself 1000 times over (used 6 sheets of A4 with tape holding it together),,, which is why i’m buying the vinyl cutter…

as on the apprentice with alan sugar. the idea of advertising is to get the money back through the door with extra. it’s no good just thowing it out to get your name about, it has to bring in revenue.

less will be going out in conventional ways and more will be going on the internet but i dont think pay per clicks are the way either as it just another way of spending money when you could do it yourself at no cost.

hope this makes sense to some of you and will read further post with interest.

[John Singh]

Well that was a good post
and your first

Welcome (is it Simon?) to the Boards :yeeha:

and may I say I found your comments most interesting

Little John

[Chris Hooper]

Yellow pages customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

I remember hearing from supposedly some big shot company executive saying ” half my advertising works really well, the trouble is I don’t know which half” – there is a truth in that. If you don’t monitor where the inquires are coming from you how do you know if the £’s you are spending is getting a return for you.

Not saying I ask every time – however my gut feel is that about 10% of inquiries is from yellow pages at the moment. We have continued with them again this year but have cut the advert size down.

[Rodney Gold]

I find small display ads in the paper to be good , business card size done lots of times (you need to do these regularily before any obvious response)
Whats VERY effective for us is a letter targeted to various industries and to inlcude samples in these. (we just sent out 300 letters to prom co’s listing our prnading and printing options , included domed flexible stickers and some of the rpomo stuff we do in it (badges , keytags , coasters and so forth)
Next campaign is to architects and developers for models , signage etc etc
A website is cheap , you can do it yourself , our web is an online catologue and is pretty deep , so another very effective item for promotion isn that we burn the web onto a CD and then use the digital printer to make labels for it. We give these out to all and sundry.
Apart from that , we laser engrave and die cut our business cards and they NEVER fail to elicit a “wow”

[Hugh Potter]

welcome Simon, you’ve confirmed my thoughts on many forms of advertising,

simple things can often be more worthwhile, for example,

i signed a ‘new’ shop this past week, the stock all turned up and the guy has been busy setting it up all week, he’s had only two people enquire into the shop during this time, i gave him his finished A board on tuesday, it mentioned that the shop opened on this saturday,

he had over 20 people walk right in simply because a sign was outside !!!

i find most of what i want on the internet now, not that i find i need to look for much, i usually get numbers of suppliers etc by reccomendation, its the best way !!

[Chris Hooper]

Rodney – would like to look at your web site whats the URL?

Chris

[Rodney Gold]

http://www.tokerbros.co.za

[Ian Higgins]

Hi Folks,

I am very fortunate that I have a main road position and from the day I started I have never paid to advertise.
I can not believe the prices that are being talked about for yellow pages etc.

From day one I put a swing sign out front of the workshops and this has brought me in most of my business. I change it every couple of months to keep it fresh and even bring it in when I am too busy.

I have good business cards which I always hand out at every oppertunity and always put my company sticker on any job I do, even if it is on the back as when someone takes the old one down they can see our name.
Every vehicle we do we always put a small discreet sticker on it… I have only ever had one customer complain and take it off.

We have just had a website done (so I guess that is paying for advertising) and we have already had a few calls from that.
I guess I am fortunte that I have been able to build up a good business with no major advertising outlay.

Cheers
Ian

[John Singh]

quote :

From day one I put a swing sign out front of the workshops and this has brought me in most of my business. I change it every couple of months to keep it fresh and even bring it in when I am too busy.

Bit like the Bed & Breakfast sign saying ‘No Vacancies’ 😀

Nice to be in a position like that where you can turn work away

Little John