[Rob Hall]

Where do you advertise?
Do you know how much business you get from your Website?
Where do you consider the best place to advertise is?
There will probably be some on here that do not need to advertise, but maybe still have a website?

[Rob Hall]

Just a quick 'Thank You' to our first 5 viewers, obviously can't be ars@d to contribute, or are far too busy doing their next advert . And I thought this was meant to be an helpful forum, its a shame it is not possible to see who visits each thread. I would equally ignore their requests too.

[Jamie Pearson]

For floorcare work we find its more about networking with suppliers and installers as they are usually the first people to either needs problems sorted or the place the customer comes too when the off the shelf maintenance product no longer works.

For our wood floor sanding work Yell.com works out at about £5 a lead which isnt far off Adwords for same service. That said we get almost double the amount of leads from the above for the same service.

[Rob Hall]

For floorcare work we find its more about networking with suppliers and installers as they are usually the first people to either needs problems sorted or the place the customer comes too when the off the shelf maintenance product no longer works.

For our wood floor sanding work Yell.com works out at about £5 a lead which isnt far off Adwords for same service. That said we get almost double the amount of leads from the above for the same service.

Thank you Cleaning SystemsUK, I knew it would be you who would be first with a reply. I can always rely on you. I have had about 10 views and only your reply, its a shame there isnt a private message service on here, those that CAN be bothered could stay in touch and all the hangers on can ignore each other.
To be clear, do you prefer the yell.com over adwords?
Also, do you know if there is a private messenger service on here? It does seem a shame to share such useful information with those who who take and don't contribute?

[Jamie Pearson]

I dont prefer one over the other. They both yield a good return on investment so we use them all.

The only one that hasnt really worked is a BT phone book ad. Yellow Pages still works.

I have just renewed the phone book at a much reduced cost and will give it one more year then decide to bin it. It only got us one enquiry but it turned out to be a £1200 job. The ad that year cost £400 this year its only £125 after a call from the retention team.

[Jamie Pearson]

I have to add that in our local area we have little competition for the wood floor side of things.

[Rob Hall]

I have to add that in our local area we have little competition for the wood floor side of things.

Thanks again CSUK
28 or so views and only you who can be bothered to contribute on such a useful topic, says a lot for the rest of them doesnt it?

[Denise l]

At the moment we just have our website which I can put al our latest news on, then use tags so it links into Google. I did try Yellow Pages once but only had one enquiry in a year. We buy our leads in.

Denise

[Rob Hall]

At the moment we just have our website which I can put al our latest news on, then use tags so it links into Google. I did try Yellow Pages once but only had one enquiry in a year. We buy our leads in.

Denise

Thanks, very helpful.

[Kev Martin]

Rob

You always get Lurkers and readers but then they don't reply or post.  Look at some of my posts in some cases 300+ Views and 2 replies!  It happens!  Personally I can't help because we are one of those companies that don't pay for any advertising.  I tried Yell some years ago and just ended up passing over £500 + for zilch.  When we used to advertise I found local advertising used to help such as Parish & Church Magazines and publications.

Kev Martin
Tiling Logistics
Marblelife Ltd

[Graeme Smith]

For stone/hard floor cleaning+sealing advertising would be website backed with PPC in a radius of 10 -25 miles. If I was able to deliver full blown natural floor restoration i.e full lipage removal I would use PPC on a radius of up to 100 miles. All other forms of advertising seem a bit patchy at best or at worst a total waste of money.

[Rob Hall]

Rob

You always get Lurkers and readers but then they don't reply or post.  Look at some of my posts in some cases 300+ Views and 2 replies!  It happens!  Personally I can't help because we are one of those companies that don't pay for any advertising.  I tried Yell some years ago and just ended up passing over £500 + for zilch.  When we used to advertise I found local advertising used to help such as Parish & Church Magazines and publications.

Kev Martin
Tiling Logistics
Marblelife Ltd

Thanks Kevin
Your reply is equally important to me.
I haven't advertised in many years, but I can feel it coming.
I have a new website coming in the next few days and would like to promote it. Does anyone know anything about adwords?

[Rob Hall]

For stone/hard floor cleaning+sealing advertising would be website backed with PPC in a radius of 10 -25 miles. If I was able to deliver full blown natural floor restoration i.e full lipage removal I would use PPC on a radius of up to 100 miles. All other forms of advertising seem a bit patchy at best or at worst a total waste of money.

Sorry for being a numpty, Graeme, what is PPC?

[Graeme Smith]

adwords is Pay Per Click or visa versa. You can spend a lot of money on it - Google loads it in favour of themselves if you ask them why you are not getting the return you want they just tell you to spend more!!
You need to tailor your campaigns carefully or its a money pit. Looking at your location you are near (ish) to Harrogate which seems a prime location for expensive floors Lapacida tiles are based there and I think there is an off shoot of people who went into the posh floor polishing market?? If you type in marble floor polishing harrogate I think they will come up. They had a look at a friend of mines floor in one of the outlying villages he did not go for the company in the end but I think they do ok. I would definately like to target that area on adwords if I were closer.

[Rob Hall]

adwords is Pay Per Click or visa versa. You can spend a lot of money on it - Google loads it in favour of themselves if you ask them why you are not getting the return you want they just tell you to spend more!!
You need to tailor your campaigns carefully or its a money pit. Looking at your location you are near (ish) to Harrogate which seems a prime location for expensive floors Lapacida tiles are based there and I think there is an off shoot of people who went into the posh floor polishing market?? If you type in marble floor polishing harrogate I think they will come up. They had a look at a friend of mines floor in one of the outlying villages he did not go for the company in the end but I think they do ok. I would definately like to target that area on adwords if I were closer.

Thank You Graeme, how much would you expect to pay for pay per click?

[Graeme Smith]

Its a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question or answer
You can set your bids manually say 1.20 per click which would get you onto page 1 for someone typing in 'marble floor cleaning' but you could only be in position 6 on the sponsored links which means you are on the right hand side of the page. if you drop down lower than position 3 enquiries drop off. So to stay in the top 3 spots you need to bid more per click - so you can see where the money pit comment came in. You can cap your budget to control to stop runaway spending but that means your disappears when your budget is spent so there's obviously no chance of enquiry after the budgets gone.
Just to make this more confusing/annoying you can sometimes get a higher position by getting a better quality score from google. If your adword advert appeared as 'marble floor cleaning' and underneath it said something like 'marble floor cleaning service Harrogate' and the advert pointed to a landing page on your website which was titled 'marble floor cleaning' and on that page all it talks about was marble floor cleaning and the website itself was called www.marblefloorcleaning.co.uk that advert will get a better quality score than a general cleaning site that just talks generally about hard floor cleaning. So you could pay less per click that a competitor but appear higher up the page.
You can make your budget go further by tailoring the key words to stop useless clicks from people seeing your add who are not really interested - they type in 'marble floor cleaning products' and your add pops up as google thinks its relevant, you get clicked on and pay £1.50 for nothing you are not selling a product you are selling a service. Put the word 'product' in as a negative keyword and hopefully you will not come up.
I have been trialling adwords and its better than most forms of general ads but it is hard to get it right I certainly have not mastered it. I guess if you ever really nail it you could just sell yourself as an Adword consultant. There seems to be quite a few web designers who offer adword campaign management I would bet money a lot do not know that much and in particular do not understand industry specific marketing. It is still trial and error for me and has not made me rich the enquiries are not coming thick and fast but I do tend to convert most I get. Its getting me off carpet & upholstery cleaning and I could do with a better website so its small steps.   

[Rob Hall]

Its a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question or answer
You can set your bids manually say 1.20 per click which would get you onto page 1 for someone typing in 'marble floor cleaning' but you could only be in position 6 on the sponsored links which means you are on the right hand side of the page. if you drop down lower than position 3 enquiries drop off. So to stay in the top 3 spots you need to bid more per click - so you can see where the money pit comment came in. You can cap your budget to control to stop runaway spending but that means your disappears when your budget is spent so there's obviously no chance of enquiry after the budgets gone.
Just to make this more confusing/annoying you can sometimes get a higher position by getting a better quality score from google. If your adword advert appeared as 'marble floor cleaning' and underneath it said something like 'marble floor cleaning service Harrogate' and the advert pointed to a landing page on your website which was titled 'marble floor cleaning' and on that page all it talks about was marble floor cleaning and the website itself was called www.marblefloorcleaning.co.uk that advert will get a better quality score than a general cleaning site that just talks generally about hard floor cleaning. So you could pay less per click that a competitor but appear higher up the page.
You can make your budget go further by tailoring the key words to stop useless clicks from people seeing your add who are not really interested - they type in 'marble floor cleaning products' and your add pops up as google thinks its relevant, you get clicked on and pay £1.50 for nothing you are not selling a product you are selling a service. Put the word 'product' in as a negative keyword and hopefully you will not come up.
I have been trialling adwords and its better than most forms of general ads but it is hard to get it right I certainly have not mastered it. I guess if you ever really nail it you could just sell yourself as an Adword consultant. There seems to be quite a few web designers who offer adword campaign management I would bet money a lot do not know that much and in particular do not understand industry specific marketing. It is still trial and error for me and has not made me rich the enquiries are not coming thick and fast but I do tend to convert most I get. Its getting me off carpet & upholstery cleaning and I could do with a better website so its small steps.   

WOW!!
I could not have expected such a concise answer, thank you very much. I hope I can return the favour one day.

[Graeme Smith]

Rob if you really start looking at adwords and how to make it work without it costing the earth it makes your brain fry! good luck

[Graeme Smith]

Rob - what do you currently do to get tile/stone floor cleaning work??

[sherco]

Most of my work comes from referrals these days, But tile retailers are a good place to leave cards also local magazines i get lots of work from. Dont go for the cheap mags try the glossy up market ones. I think my ad cost £150 per month and on average gets me £1500-2000 worth of work.