[Shaun_Ashmore]

On advertising?

whether it be

leaflets (with delivery), yellow pages, thomsons, yell.com, parish mag, letters etc etc etc

per week will do.

I have 1 ad in YP £45 a week also database works out £40 a week (big database)

Shaun

[Neil Grainger]

HI Shaun

I was told in a previous life that you should spend approx 25% of your business Turnover on marketing. This as I was told will help your business continue to grow.

This info came from when I was working for a big corporate IT company, but according to the instructor this should be done in any business that wants to grow and stay ahead of the competition.

It does seem a lot but probably close to what I do as a 2 year old business. I imagine that once established and getting regular re-cleans and referals all the time you maybe able to lower this.

Cheers

Neil

[Mike Halliday]

i think one of the myths of our industry is that once you've been going a few year then a lot of your work will come from regular customers, maybe after 15-20yrs you can relax.

every day companies out there are marketing to your existing customers trying to lure them away, You need a constant supply of new customers, which unfortunately this cost money.

Mike

[therapist]

I'm in the fortunate position, of being around for so long that I don't advertise and the phone continues to ring, daily..........but.........if I wanted to grow I would have to continue with marketing.

I agree with the 'marketing pros' who will tell you..............the most important part of your business, is not  ''  the super duper /all powerful/ quick drying / enviro' friendly machine '' in your van.......

It's your existing customer list and with the thousands of words written in these forums about leaflets, advertising ,etc, I'm amazed that no one has ever mentioned ..........the most valuable tool available, for growing your business............your previous clients.

The only problem which some will have, is the lasting impression they left with clients. Clearly, they will not give you referrals, unless you earn them.

rob m

[Phil Marlor]

i think one of the myths of our industry is that once you've been going a few year then a lot of your work will come from regular customers, maybe after 15-20yrs you can relax.

Mike

So I can't relax yet for another 7 years?

I spend £2.80 on advertising
£45.000 on my Wife & kids

Rgds
Phil

[Spot On cleaning]

Me 11 - 16 years 

But it's okay because im only a young boy yet. 

[Ian Gourlay]

I agree with Mike,

and Neil.

But while we were in Nottingham Last week another question came up what is a reasonable  % of turnover to spend on Equipment.


Not sure if this included vans or not.

But put Marketing Costs and Equipment costs together and it gets Scary.

[Spot On cleaning]

I spend about £30 a week on leaflets and sending ut letters for commercial / retail outlets etc.

I don't pay for yp or thompson, but have a one line listing that seems to work fine. Basically then about £1500 a year which is a lot less than yp for a big advert, and why would i wan't to compete with others when i can drop a good quality leaflet through their door which is my own personal advert on their doormat.

At best i will be asked to give a quote, better still i will get the job.

Dave

[Ian Gourlay]

Dave

Congratulations

If you are covering all your personal expenses and Company expenses on £30 a week advertising, you are doing well

Especially as you have an investment in a costoly Truckmount.

[Spot On cleaning]

Thank's Ian,

Yes its working fine. Since 2002 i have had over a thousand customers, and a lot do come back to me. As you say i have the tm, but regarding the cost etc, as a trained motor vehicle tech, servicing and repairs are carried out by me, eliminating costs here, except for spares of course. I have found the fuel costs in running it have got a lot better, obviously because the unit has now run itself in.

The portable i have is still useable and occasionally i need to use it.

I have tried yp in the past, but with the return from this was not what i would call good, so i stopped yet still the work came in. A lot of my work now is through the estate agents and we currently work for four.

I suppose i was lucky enough to have a good redundancy pay off from pirelli and was fortunate enough to be able to buy my portable equipment outright and after three years of trading, i was again in the position to buy a newish van and new tm outright again. It is my intention to get quite a few years service from it and basically run it into the ground.


Dave
Anyway expense is all good for us to beat the taxman

[stains-away]

Im currently not working full time at cc but its getting harder and harder to fit it all into the 3 day week that i had allowed for the next 3-4 months,i am currently spending around £100 a week on leafleting plus a day a week popping in to introduce myself to anybody i think might be a potential customer, then there are training courses (6 days in the next month, that if i didnt have holiday pay from my other job would cost in lost working time) accomadation and fuel, plus bits and pieces brought on the courses (£1,000 ish all in), then theres the time spent quoting,(can this ever be truely absorbed into the job price?)admin etc etc, my wifes time answering the phone when im not here, add to this depreciation on your van and the residual value of equipment and the profit margins start to look a bit slimmer,but then look on it from a slightly different angle, not being away from home 3-4 nights a week, not being so knackered when you get home that you lose the first day off sleeping, the time gained with the children, not working xmas and boxing day as i have the last 5 years, and most importantly for me, not lining the pockets of your boss who takes a fortnight abroad at xmas and 3-4 other holidays a year on his workers backs, then offers 2% as a pay rise because increased market competition has slashed margins (yeah right), put a price on that if you can, its what makes it worthwhile, Andy

[Spot On cleaning]

I totally agree Andy.

I spent twelve years working 12 hour days and nights. The first four years i worked four on two off shift pattern, and it always seemed like i was in work or working overtime.

When i left in 2002 i was earning less money than twelve years previously due to a change in the shift pattern, and getting rid of double time payments for every restday whether weekend or weekday. I finished on £10 an hour and this was a skilled job.

It was hard at first, but it is only recently that we have had leaflets made for us professionally. At first i would buy the cheap ink from the super markets when on offer and fill my own cartridges. The kids guillotined the paper for me and we would all go out posting leaflets together.

I would never go back to working in a factory, and if you want a day off, you just take it. What a good life we have. :

Dave

[Shaun_Ashmore]

I read somewhere that CD franchises have to spend 33% of their turn over on advertising!!

I can't believe that as most are shifting some serious turnover (not profit), imagine a £300000 turn over with a £100000 advertising budget, yell dot com and thomsons and the police hand books and supermarket trolleys and local football teams calendars would have a field as you wouldn't be able to get rid of it.

Shaun

[Barry Livingstone]

Think about it this way COKE (not the robbie fowler type lol)
 
Why do they advertise so much millions all over the world?
why do they spend so much with the ads at Xmas time with santa in the ads?
they have been around a lot longer then 10 or 15 years BUT they still do it?
 to look at your business look at it from outside the box or pepsi will get you!

In our case the splash n dash

Marketing a evil within or like the wife if you have 1 (cant do with cant do without)

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Because we are selling a service and not a product we have limitations of what we can do with our selves in a certain amount of time. So the idea is to gross well and pay out less in that time. Pepsi and Coke have distributors that can sell morning, noon and night 365 days of the year, can you clean carpets that long? So to keep selling so much so fast heavy advertising is needed.

If you get say 20 phone calls to do 20 jobs for a week you are then full, if Coke get 20 installations calling them to stock the shelves in thier shops then they start making things fster for tommorrow. We can't compete in the same way as a can of Coke takes 1 second to sell but a carpet takes a lot lot longet to clean.

Shaun

[Spot On cleaning]

Wow, a £300000 a year turnover, are they all earning this, or is this the real business people who have bought a franchise with two or thre vans on the road, as opposed to the guy with one van working out of his house rather than a retail unit?

Sometimes though it's your turnover that governs your advertising budget. If we were all earning serious amounts then we could all afford a whole page colour ad in yellow pages and to stop the taxman getting it. Talking of the taxman, does anybody know what......Pelicans, Penguins and the inland revenue have all got in common..............

They can all shove their bills up their arse :

Dave

[clive]

£2000 yp
£800 bt book (trying for the first time)
£800 CHECKATRADE
£250 Thompsons
£40 parish mags

clive

[Spot On cleaning]

Clive, a couple of things.

What is checkatrade, and secondly do the parish mags bring in much work?

My accountants husband, an old school friend of mi'ne suggested this a few years back but i never got around to it.

One thing i am going to use is a local guide distributed to local house in my area. Apparantly the householders use these rather than yp etc.

Dave

[Paul Kettless]

I know we are talking about a different side of the cleaning market but we advertise in parish rags for domestic and commercial cleaning, and have found them to be very good.

Especially as an addition is hangin around for a month and we pay approx 25 quid for a quarter of an a4 page.

IME tho, they are better in rural areas, as they do not get the local freebie papers etc to pick up when they need a service.

Regards
Paul

[Barry Livingstone]

Note
I am note asking you to compete with coke or pepsi but as a rule of thumb coke do not just advertise in 1 place do they
(tv ads, sponorship etc ,etc ,etc)

Now do we carpet cleaners advertise in the one place? NO

When we look at the BIGGER picture it is all about BRAND recognition be it FREDS CAREPET CARE OR SPLASH N DASH we need people to recognise us Mr M Halliday understands this just look at his advertising, NO really look at it!

About 3 years ago their was a chap in the daily express his carpet cleaning business turnover was 1.8 Million in ENGALAND and he said i was DEAR AT 2.00 per m2 now how did he do it?