[Nameless Drudge]

One quick sum,estimate £10k advertising,average lead at £12 so you need 833 converted leads,quoted and agreed to cover initial cost,more money and staff to handle the quick influx and offer the leads to your guinea pigs,administration costs to handle this properly and efficiently,collection of your dough without problems!,handling an odd lead and getting paid might be easy enough. Your going to need a customer complaints department. I reckon you will need 6 times as much money than you think to roll this properly and then you will realise you bought yourself a complicated monster that only just covers costs and you will wish you just had a compact window cleaning round of profitable pleasant householders.

[Sir Squeaky]

Hope you get a good return on your £25k outlay...

[Clive McDonald]

Don't listen to that, let's start working on the concept lee.

[Alan McTernan]

Hope it goes well

I am toying with radio advertising  for next year, not quite the same!!!

Regards
Alan

[Lee Pryor]

I guess that only time will tell eh guys, in the mean time, handling the influx if it goes big wont be a problem thanks to the fully automated website my designers will be building for me which is currently in the design stage. we will try radio first but my meeting next week will give me a clearer idear of whats involved and the cost.

[Paul Coleman]

This is madness Lee. Absolutly bonkers.You are having delusions of granduer.

Tell you what, do a utube vid, a basic version of the kind of thing you want, and i'll give you the verdict.


This might be a better approach.A good utube vid and a referal email.

Well it's better than I manage.
I sometimes get delusions of competence 

[Paul Coleman]

I didn't say i didn't believe you.

Lets look at the creative side of the advert shall we?One problem is if you make it too boring no one will listen, if you rev it up too much this will stop sales.

You need impact, engagement, a totally new approach-.... and money to burn.

That's why utube is a great tool.You don't have to tell me your big secret, i'm saying kick around the idea of mocking up an ad- then find out what your wife and a few friends and customers think.

You may be able to script it yourself or might need gold or me or bateman.Either way these are all resuources that are free.At the very worst you can find out what you don't want.

Doiing some kind of dress rehearsal without the big outlay does sound like a good idea to me as well.  It will give opportunities to iron out any gremlins.

[clarkson]

  Hi Lee
  Go for it !

   I think its a great idea, especially if you role it out nationally and sell leads to those in the consortium (dont forget me!)

   As you have said many are spending that on leaflets with poor results. I would expect the tv results to be far higher than any other direct medium. its just whether the return is there for the spend.

 
  Sean
  Your figure of 833 leads converted is an over simplification, you wouldnt expect to get your return on investment like this immediately  a few hundred jobs at 12 an hour would pay for the adverts over time.

  That is managable and if you look after them you will keep most for years, your costs of advert, vans,staff, and insurance would be covered in year 1 perhaps with a small profit, in year 2 you would have estabilished work.

 After all if you brought a round worth a few thousand you would pay this sort of money for it and we all know that can have its hickups. and you wouldnt earn anything of it until fourth or fifth clean.

Another thing occured to me as well, I think you might start to see a pattern of areas where there is no window cleaner or people are dissatisfied. you could then target canvassers in areas where there is going to be a good reception.

cheers

john

[jasonl]

I wish someone on the carpet cleaning side would start this , It is a great project to be involved with.

Response handling is easily outsourced these days very cheaply per lead.

The economies of scale make it very affordable if you get enough in the consortium.

Best wishes with this , I am sure it will be a success.

[Steve_c]

I dont mind telling you I have a meeting in London next week with a TV marketing company to look at the cost of advertising on ITV1

Lee I know we havent seen eye to eye recently but have you got a budget for this? Have you any idea what this is likely to cost?

Im away at the moment but look forward to your posts on my return once youve met with the your TV marketing company. It should be interesting the figures they offer you, hope youll let us know, I love a bit of number crunching, seeing how viable a project is.

Matt

Are you home? i thought you were still on holiday.

[Alex Allen]

how much does it cost to advertise on the radio
that might be the place to start

[Lee Pryor]

how much does it cost to advertise on the radio
that might be the place to start

Im looking at both options at this time, but may well start with radio.

[cozy]

Check out this link mate. Not much detail, but may help.

http://www.tvadvertising.co.uk/tvadvertising/tv-advert-1.php

By the way, that's only the production costs, not the broadcasting costs.

[Nameless Drudge]

  Hi Lee
  Go for it !

   I think its a great idea, especially if you role it out nationally and sell leads to those in the consortium (dont forget me!)

   As you have said many are spending that on leaflets with poor results. I would expect the tv results to be far higher than any other direct medium. its just whether the return is there for the spend.

 
  Sean
  Your figure of 833 leads converted is an over simplification, you wouldnt expect to get your return on investment like this immediately  a few hundred jobs at 12 an hour would pay for the adverts over time.

  That is managable and if you look after them you will keep most for years, your costs of advert, vans,staff, and insurance would be covered in year 1 perhaps with a small profit, in year 2 you would have estabilished work.

 After all if you brought a round worth a few thousand you would pay this sort of money for it and we all know that can have its hickups. and you wouldnt earn anything of it until fourth or fifth clean.

Another thing occured to me as well, I think you might start to see a pattern of areas where there is no window cleaner or people are dissatisfied. you could then target canvassers in areas where there is going to be a good reception.

cheers

john

I might have got this wrong but my understanding is that the tv advertising is to generate leads that can be immediately sold on,so once paid for they have no further value to the advertiser. Charging more for them as if they were a permanent customer for the purchaser could be tried but in my opinion would get only a tiny response from buyers.  I just don`t see how  there can be a stage ,if all done correctly,that ends up showing a profit.

[Clive McDonald]

Absolutely Sean, but an interesting idea.My big fear for us right when i very first started was if a big brand- an anglian or a tesco started umbrella advertising our service.They could make so much money at it and it would dovetail with some of their other stuff.

There is an advert with john cleese in where the message is a bit jumbled, it seems that the AA do handymen jobs, but the ad also seems to plug yellow pages, so it's probably a lesson in how not to do it.However you can see what i'm saying if Tesco had a couple of us who knew what they were talking about they could probably do a lot of damage.Lee's efforts probable stand more chance of alerting the big boys to the opportunity than succeeding themselves.

[♠Winp®oClean♠]

Absolutely Sean, but an interesting idea.My big fear for us right when i very first started was if a big brand- an anglian or a tesco started umbrella advertising our service.They could make so much money at it and it would dovetail with some of their other stuff.

There is an advert with john cleese in where the message is a bit jumbled, it seems that the AA do handymen jobs, but the ad also seems to plug yellow pages, so it's probably a lesson in how not to do it.However you can see what i'm saying if Tesco had a couple of us who knew what they were talking about they could probably do a lot of damage.Lee's efforts probable stand more chance of alerting the big boys to the opportunity than succeeding themselves.

You're way off the mark slumpy! No tesco etc. could ever take this trade over! I can't see a "green thumb" style system ever working either.

These dreams will never work on a big scale. You should have learned by now just why!

[Lee Pryor]

Well at least were all having some fun thinking outside the box! lol