[Barry Livingstone]

Ok Say you had £1000 to spend on Marketing (NOW) and in these Hard times what would you spend it on?

a. What would give the best RIO
b. Method of Delivery?


Leaving out the fact you have a website already, this is purely marketing cash!

Answers on a postcard please 

Barry

[Barry Livingstone]

My First Buy would be Own Label spotters..

[Ricky M]

they are all methods that your comp are already doing , so think out of the box a little and there some brill ways to expand your client list.

Just look at it from the clients eyes , what would somebody be able to put to you to have your whaT ever cleaned and do it sooner rather than later.

[garry22]

Barry,  is this for new customers or existing?

[Mike Halliday]

!) tele-sales girl  for a month, make sure she is experianced..... i made the mistake of give an inexperianced girl a job Oct-Dec last year and wasted a lot of money.

2) leaflets

[Barry Livingstone]

lets go for New Customers, Letters to old Customers should be the norm.

How did the Tele sales go Mike? you still doing it?

[Mike Halliday]

I had her ring up business' and offer to send some information of our cleaning services and whose name to put on the letter, she then sent them a letter and 4 days later rang them and ask if the wanted a free quote.

she also recorded the details to create a mailing list of local businesses who we could constantly mail to.

this was a tried & tested method for a telesales campaign

but she was useless and did it all wrong..... I should have sacked her in the first 2 weeks but she was a nice girl and i wanted to  give her a chance.... then it got close to Xmas and how heartless do you have to be to sack someone just before  Xmas

[james roffey]

If i could guarantee delivery probably leaflets or spotter bottles with company logo for customers after a clean.

[Jamie Pearson]

I would buy the data for whatever market place I was wanting to target.

[dek]

I would use it to subsidise earnings for a while. Then go out on the " knocker " to local business, tell them what I do and offer a free demo clean.The old saying that seeing is believing still rings true.In my opinion leaflets, telesales etc. are to distant/cold.Just my opinion.

[Steve Chapman]

The best thing I ever did was buy a book on google Adwords, study it so I understood every word and then implement it to the letter,

I spend around £80 a month on adwords now and it brings in a constant stream of work every week.

Whats interesting is that I get more work through my Adwords ad than the maps or natural listings, I always imagined it would be the other way round, but not so in my case.

I wouldnt attempt to do it if you don't know how to get decent cost per click.
You could throw a lot of money down the drain.

Regards
Steve

[Andrew Briscoe]

We have finally dropped yellow pages for the forth coming year, and decided to do something a bit different.

We have a monthly local magazine  come out with a 20000 ciculation and growing.
It is also connected to a website and a yearly publication, also to start this year ia a community radio station

For £1200 pound we are in the classifieds each month, have booked also 7 1/4 page ads for different services, gone on the web and the yearly publication which customer is ment to keep, and 5 radio ads per day for the year.

The magazine is proving popular with businesses getting full page editorials, and talking to customers, it seems very popular.

We have had a busier start to the year than normal and we are taking on 3 extra staff.

It will take the full year to see if it works, it is cheap in my opinion and is so because it is run for the community as a non profit making company.

Other than this we have a website and do a lineage advert in our weekly paper.

Andrew

[Russ Chadd]

The best thing I ever did was buy a book on google Adwords, study it so I understood every word and then implement it to the letter,

I spend around £80 a month on adwords now and it brings in a constant stream of work every week.

Whats interesting is that I get more work through my Adwords ad than the maps or natural listings, I always imagined it would be the other way round, but not so in my case.

I wouldnt attempt to do it if you don't know how to get decent cost per click.
You could throw a lot of money down the drain.

Regards
Steve

Hi Steve

Whats the book called?

Cheers

[Jamie Pearson]

The best thing I ever did was buy a book on google Adwords, study it so I understood every word and then implement it to the letter,

I spend around £80 a month on adwords now and it brings in a constant stream of work every week.

Whats interesting is that I get more work through my Adwords ad than the maps or natural listings, I always imagined it would be the other way round, but not so in my case.

I wouldnt attempt to do it if you don't know how to get decent cost per click.
You could throw a lot of money down the drain.

Regards
Steve

Perry Marshall is your man for this.

[Barry Livingstone]

you stole my thunder Russ

[Steve Chapman]

I knew that question would be asked,   

one was 'Adwords Secrets Revelaed' by Larry Johnson

And another was 'top 37 Adwords pay-per-click secrets' by Roger C Hall


Theres probably loads of others available now as these are a few years old and i bought them when starting another business unrelated to carpet cleaning and then subsequently used what id learnt for my cleaning business.

They help you understand the concept of adwords and how to make it work without chucking loads of money away, and its not as easy as what you think but takes a bit of time and dedication.

Once you understand how they really work, (and google doesnt really make this clear), then you can use the know how for any business.

One common mistake is to have one ad and then stuff it full of all the keywords related to carpet cleaning and then hope someone clicks on it !

This is probably what google wants you to do as it makes them a lot of money, What you really should do is mentioned in the book 


Regards
Steve

[wynne jones]

Give it to your favourite local charity. Then milk it for all its worth. Everybody wins.

[Steve Rothwell]

Give it to your favourite local charity. Then milk it for all its worth. Everybody wins.

That is not as cynical as it first seems.

Every now and then we do a "free" clean for a charity shop, and we get loads of paid work straight after....

[Mr Dvae]

mate of mine started a carpet cleaning company in the late nineties, did 250k in his first year, all off the door.

Dave

[Linds Russell]

Good old fashioned leaflets.

By my reckoning, to print and distribute 5000 leaflets costs around £279, so £1,116 gets you 20,000 leaflets printed.

If you play it smart with the leaflet - have a strong headline offer with a deadline of say 2 to 3 months ahead, you will average 4 jobs per thousand, so that is 80 jobs. 80 jobs at your average job price packed into a 2 to 3 month time window is a very good turnover - who would like an additional 6 jobs per week in the areas of your choice? Me please!!!

You then do the same again in the same areas with some of the proceeds from your leafleting success in one month time and then again in another month's time. This time next year, you could in theory be doing an extra 6 jobs a week, every week at your average job price.

That's how I would spend it. Now, where did I put that spare grand?...