[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

My phone's been really busy today........unfortunately, most of the calls have been from salesmen trying to push advertising on various websites.

Of the ones I may be interested in, one is a trade directory which seems quite decent, and the other's a football website which links businesses to the local football club's page.

I'm already listed on yell.com so I have a web presence of a sort, until I get my own site up and running.  The question is, has anyone advertised on general business to business websites, or on sites which have no direct relationship to the industry (e.g. this football website) and what experiences have you had?

The rates don't seem too costly on an individual basis, but if you advertise on enough of them, they soon start to mount up, so is it worth it?

[Ian Rochester]

In a nutshell, not worth the time.

I have found that if people are looking for a tradesman of any sort they will do one of the following:

1. Ask someone for a recommendation
2. Look in Yellow Pages or Yell.com depending upon their personal preference
3. Look in local newspapers

All these calls you are getting are merely trying to sell you advertising space, regardless of the relevance of the product to the targeted audience.

Stick with the basics and ask yourself the question "If I was looking for a carpet cleaner, where would I find one?"  Remember you are no different to 99% of your customers and you are potentially someone else's customer.

[Martin Sambrook]

Hi Mark,
its a total waste of money, ive only had one job out of it since ive been on there website (6 months), there not very helpfull once they have got your money either i.e. if you need to change something on there it takes a lot of calls to get them to do it.
I wont be renewing, the only good bit is that if you believe that youve not had a good amount of work from it the contract states that i can get back 70% of my fee, but still definatly advise against.
all the best

Martin

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

Thanks Martin, that's very helpful.

So you're saying I should try to get my £20 space reservation fee back? 

They're sending me the application forms in the post, but I think I'll put the money to much better use on something else I've been looking at.

I thought I'd play them at their own game. They claim that I would need to supply them with customer references to get on there, so if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. Thanks for the website customer reference, and I think I'll decline their offer. 

Cheers

Mark

[David Ware]

Mark
£20 not a big gamble for having a link to any web site.
David Ware

[Martin Sambrook]

In hindsite i should have spent that money on Yellow pages instead, we live and learn
when they first phoned me they quoted around £1200 which ended up as £760 after lots of bartering, wont get stung like that again

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

David

The twenty quid is just the space reservation fee. There's another £430 to pay on top of that for the actual website listing in two areas. Think I'll pass on their offer, as there's another marketing angle I'm looking at which is cheaper and will give me more potential to access the type of clients I'm targeting.

[Martin S]

Mark@eco,

Don't do it!!

Regards.

Martin

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

Martin, advice noted and taken on board. 

Many thanks, and sorry the 118 thing didn't work for you, but I'm very appreciative of you letting me know. I've already cancelled this morning, and told another couple of website advertising companies that I'm not interested either. I'll just start to get my own site up and running, if I ever get around to it.

In the words of Jim Royle, I can be a right lazy get sometimes.

Cheers

Mark

[paul@ctcs]

Mark,

I would say keep it simple! Put your money into 3 well proven forms of advertising, Yellow pages, local paper and leaflets. not sure what buget you have for this but a £2000 YP add can do the business, £25 a week for a 50mm x 40mm colour add in the local rag and whatever you can manage on leaflets should help generate a decent amount of work.

To obtain commercial work a well written letter can work wonders, this has worked for CTCS, businesses call us who we mailed a couple of years ago, so they do file some of what we send rather than just chuck it straight in the bin

Regards

Paul

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

Thanks for the info, Paul.

My YP ads won't appear until July, and as I'm advertising (half page spot colour) in two major directories, it's actually double that figure. The Yell.com ad is live though, and is attracting a very healthy response.......from people trying to get me advertising on their websites!

Leaflets are going out, and are getting some responses, but a fair percentage of people ringing up are expecting to get quality cleaning for next to nothing. Had one guy phone me up this morning expecting the whole of his fully carpeted two bedroomed house to be cleaned for sixty quid! Maybe I should halve my prices and rely on tips to make up the difference?  Alternatively, I could take the money and do a 'slap and dash' on him.

I've concentrated solely on the domestic market so far, and all my leaflets are geared towards this area, but I'm starting to concentrate on the business side of things now. I'm beginning to prepare business letters and do my own mail shot.

Cheers

Mark

[Martin S]

Mark@eco,

don't know what you're on about with the 118 thing!!

Must be a different Martin.

Regards

Another Martin   

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

Martin S, it's not only another Martin, but another Martin S.

My comment about the 118whatsit website was in reply to a post from Martin Sambrook, who posted further up the thread, and who's advertised with them. Glad that's all cleared up now. God, this is all getting confusing. 

But I've taken note of your advice too. I had another one phone me up today, and told them that Martin S says you can **** ***. 

[Martin S]

LOL

[Martin Sambrook]

hehe

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

Er, I don't think it's going to be too much he he, Martin (Sambrook, that is).

Before you replied, I went along with the £20 space reservation thing, and then decided I'd cancel after seeing what you said about them. Yesterday, I got all the confirmation bumph from them and looked at the terms & conditions on the back.

"Where this advertising has been secured using a debit or credit card, the client accepts that there is no cooling off period."

Guess how I paid for the space reservation fee. Still, as a former Financial Controller, I don't think they are within their rights to enforce this clause, as it wasn't pointed out to me at the time of booking. I was told that the deposit was non-refundable, but no mention of the no cooling off period.

I can foresee a bit of a battle looming here, and I'm just in the mood for it. Bring it on, 118trades.     

[Martin Sambrook]

surley if they have taken your deposit without informing you of there clause then they are liable for the return of your deposit, they have done it  the wrong way round. they are not a good company imho and thats the polite way of putting it

good luck
Martin

[Jonny F]

    Mark,

       I use my web page as a tool to tell a story about my business. I have it on all my marketing pieces, so people can get more information.

      Recently, I have paid a company to get my website on all the major search engines here in the US and local. Plus this company has entered the correct key words, so when someone does a search local....my busines is one of the first that come up. This way Im not paying for an inbetween company. There is also a company here in the US that Brokers services and they are listed everywhere on the net "Service Magic"  They really check you out to make sure your lagit. They sell you leads that get in your area for 10 US dollars each.......but they also give the lead to 3 other companies to bid as well. You have to be fast on the phone!!   Hope this helps a little    Jon

[Mark@Eco-Powerclean]

Hi Jon. It's good to have you here and I hope you're going to grace us with your advice from across the pond for a long time.

The thing is that I've only recently set up my company, so as you can imagine, there's loads to do. I decided to set the business up as a limited liability company and voluntarily registered for VAT so I've had loads of start up issues (accountants, solicitors etc) and masses of red tape courtesy of the Government and European Union to sort out. Once I've done that, they very kindly allow me half an hour evey now and again to dabble in carpet cleaning. 

I am planning to build my own site and get it on the web. In fact, one of the first things I did when I decided to start up was buy the domain name and an internet design package. Unfortunately, the package is still sitting in the box with the PC World seal still intact. In the meantime, because I'm registered at Companies House and have got a massive leaflet marketing campaign going on, all these ad space companies (both internet and print) are bombarding me with offers to advertise. I'm going with a couple of them as you perhaps need to before marketing such as Yellow Pages has appeared. Once the site is up and running I'll certainly do what you do, and only use my own site, optimised for maximum search engine performance, and all the rest of the internet companies (perhaps other than yell.com) can go to..........

 

[Jonny F]

Hi

    Good to meet you!!  I forget how easy it is to do business in the US. My web page is very simple, but helps tell my story and gets the word out, if you haven't already, click on it and give me some feed back. I did not have the money, to have a webpage designer do it, so I got a package off the net and created it myself.....I hope to have some professional help soon.  Jon