Your ADVERTISING experiences

[adv.wastewater]

I have recently started a business, ADVANCED WASTEWATER SERVICES. My father has a successful business down in the Florida Key's and gets most of his work from word of mouth, as its such a small area and he has been there for 25 years. He does basically no advertising other than what is on his equipment and trucks. I moved to Alabama, about 35 miles north of Birmingham to train for the AMA Supercross Series and be more centrally located to all of my races. (I race Supercross and Motocross professionally) Anyways, that career is not a very long lived career and with the way the economy is, as with everything else, it is very hard to make money at it. Growing up around and on equipment I have decided to put a bunch of my attention on starting a business. My question is, what methods of advertising have you guys done and what were the results? I am willing to spend some money to get my name out there.

 

[joispoi]

The name of your company sounds good, but it is very specific. Are you willing and able to diversify and tackle other types of jobs where your machines would be required but have nothing to do with waste water?
What kind of jobs do you want to take on? Who do you want to have as clients?

One of the best advertisements is a clean finished product with a company sign on it.....provided the job isn't 3 miles into the woods where nobody is going to see it.

Yellow pages are good if you're set up to do emergency work, but it's been my experience that you get more calls from vendors than from prospective clients. Regardless, you need to list your number so that people who are looking for you can find you.

 

[Willis Bushogin]

advertising

I have recently started a business, ADVANCED WASTEWATER SERVICES. My father has a successful business down in the Florida Key's and gets most of his work from word of mouth, as its such a small area and he has been there for 25 years. He does basically no advertising other than what is on his equipment and trucks. I moved to Alabama, about 35 miles north of Birmingham to train for the AMA Supercross Series and be more centrally located to all of my races. (I race Supercross and Motocross professionally) Anyways, that career is not a very long lived career and with the way the economy is, as with everything else, it is very hard to make money at it. Growing up around and on equipment I have decided to put a bunch of my attention on starting a business. My question is, what methods of advertising have you guys done and what were the results? I am willing to spend some money to get my name out there.

Beware about letting all these advertising people, talk you into signing a contract. I did that a first and before I knew it, I was paying about $600 a month for this crap. In the real world, its good but dont over do it. I really never did see much results from this stuff, in relation to what I was paying. I would just get your name in the yellow pages phone book, under what you do. Those big bold ads, never helped me that much, most people now days are phone book shopping/pricing, so if you are in their with the people with the big ads, you will get called to.
If you can get yourself a cheap website, that will help with the computer shoppers
As stated get you a nice sign, big enough to read and put it in a good location. I had a sign shop make me up a PVC sign, with posts, it had the name of the company, picture of one of my machines and the phone number in big standard print. Dont put a bunch of stuff on the sign, it takes away from grabbing the phone number on the first go around. Make sure to check for a sign permit, some places require it
Try to get in with a good contractor, until your good work get around. Get you some cards printed up, just get nice looking ones, those real expensive ones, dont impress many people. The el-cheapo homemade business cards, usually get thrown in the trash
Bad time to be starting a business, be careful

 

[fyrwood guy]

i'll agree with the yellow pages the best i've found.

tell'em what sets you apart from the rest of'em :notworthy

 

[chrisbowles]

We dont really cater to homeowners (but we do work for them sometimes), so most of our clients are large land corporations, general contractors, developers, ect. I get online find every one i can, print there contact out. I send them a company letterhead saying what scope of work we do and the other standard stuff, a brochure, then I follow up with a phone call a week after i mail them out. Sometimes I spend all day on rainy days going through this process, but it works and works great for us. I can usually cover about 50 customers like this for 2 bucks apiece including postage. I will on avg get work from 10% immediately, seems cheap to me.