Let's Talk Advertising (Don't say anything about word of mouth)

MaksimumAuto · 09-07-09, 03:46

So last week I signed up for 4 months of YellowPages advertising. I'll be the 2nd search result in the Baltimore area on MSN, YeloowPages, and Iphone search engines. It's costing me $125 a month. The add hasn't gone live yet but I'm questioning it's return already. What lessons have you guys learned from your marketing campaigns. And please...please...please...don't say anything about word of mouth...I know it's the best.

toyotaguy · 09-07-09, 04:39

pretty much.....doesnt work! waste of money...

online will yield better results, but the actual book will suck for you as no one uses it anymore, well hardly!

I did it and paid 155 per month for, get this.....ZERO phone calls off it!

MaksimumAuto · 09-07-09, 04:54

No this is yellowpages.com I'm talking about. Sorry for the confusion. But in preparation I have beefed up my website so to speak.

Maksimum Auto Detailing – Professional Mobile Auto Detailing Serving the Baltimore Area: Home

I've added lots of pictures of recent projects I've done to one-up my competition.

bufferbarry · 09-07-09, 04:59

I got work from yellow pages its worth it.

Jakerooni · 09-07-09, 05:43

It's really all about your location and how people in YOUR specific area look for services. by and by it's a total and complete waste of money. You'll find a few here and there that seem to be in the right location that people look it up. but ask yourself this question. If you were in need of your service and knew absoultly nothing about how to find it how would you do it? 99% of the time I just google it and go to whatever websites pop up first. (mine has always been #1 in the flint area and I never paid any company a dime to do it) I rarely ever even know if there's a phone book in the house much less use it. I've never bothered going on yellowpages.com or switchboard or any of those goofy a$$ sites for anything. And I don't think any of my customers do either. The very best things that have worked for me is simple. My website that is properly SEO'd (dreading having to do it all over again here soon) WOM (it really is the best) and sites like this. Think about it. If people google detailing what are the chances of this site popping up? most will give a click and maybe read a bit. Some might even sign up and check their region to see if anyone is local. etc etc etc... Be an active member of as many detailing related sites that interest you and people will find you. But tossing out a cool hundred plus a month to something that more often than not never works is a fools folly. Think about the the product or equipment you can get with that money. Since you've already signed on I truely hope your in one of those oddball locations that it works for and you see a ROI. But if not don't get too bummed a LOT of us have tried it before and learned the same hard lesson.

howareb · 09-07-09, 06:05

Advertising is the necessary evil of doing business. How successful your marketing is, depends mostly upon the audience you are trying to reach and your location in the country.

I do advertising on the Internet, Printed Media, and also radio. Having an internet presence today is a necessity. However others are still people in my area that do not use a computer, so I have to reach them by other means. 80% of my business comes from the internet.

Also, my market is filled with competition that just have a better location than I, so advertising is the only way to get my brand out there. The Yellowpages and Yellowbook will pay for itself if you could get just one full detail a month, which going by your site, you should have no problem in doing. The way I see it, the Internet is the best (google adwords I find to be fairly successful for generating calls), but others still have their place.

I like your site..... Good luck with the yellowpages, and if you have time and we have an opening on OCT 4th, maybe you can come down to the shop and we can talk more about advertising.

MaksimumAuto · 09-07-09, 06:22

Yea I'll be there on the 4th I spoke to Got Leather.

WAS · 09-07-09, 06:58

Your success with Yellow Pages will depend on your geographical area, and your type of market. You will find those of us where it has worked, and those of us that have found it useless.

Personally, in my area, it would be useless. For me, direct un-addressed ad-mail seems to work the best, and has yielded some good returns on the rather inexpensive cost of doing it. Your experience may be different if you tired my method, it all depends, so take anything we say with a grain of salt that we all live in different geographical areas.

That said, my personal thought, you could have done a lot worse with your marketing dollars. Good luck !

JimmyCutlass · 09-08-09, 10:37

Find high traffic businesses that do not advertise other businesses very much and convince them to advertise your business! Give them a small stack of business cards to leave near their front desk/register and let them do the advertising for you. If you work at a business full/part time ask if they will help you advertise your other endeavor; if it doesn't interfere with their interests I don't see why they wouldn't oblige. I've gotten lots of business from advertising at my other full time job, including my boss!

bullitt21 · 09-09-09, 05:16

Paid advertisements like adwords is a starting point. But it wasn't until I optimized my site that I really started getting anywhere from 15-30 emails a day for quotes or appointments. After getting to the 1st page with Organic Ranking(the left side of a page on a search engine) I received much more traffic and then once I made it to the top 5 the calls have become so abundant that I can pick and choose which jobs I want to do. Jakerooni touched on this a bit already, but also consider Google Maps. I submitted multiple times to Google maps with the target market's zip codes(Not necessarily yours) and nosw when you type in Detailing+My City I show up in the top three results. Now that, along with my Organic Ranking already gets me plenty of traffic. I can't tell you enough how important SEO is, because you can do great work and have a $20,000 website but if no one see's it your not going to be happy. I like the forum's on Digital Point. Look it up and you can learn a lot, and there are many other sites that can help you with SEO. Most people are going to go to the first 3 sites in the Organic results, so that's where you want to be, and like Jake said it doesn't have to cost a dime to get there, but it is alot of work and it doesn't happen overnight. Also, don't try to go with some company that says they can get you there in a week for $100, that's just a scam. Here's the link to Digital Point, if i'm breaking any rules, please just take out the link.http://http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

Hope some of this helps, I know it's alot to take in but just keep at it and when you're phone doesn't stop ringing, don't blame me.LOL

yanks_178 · 09-09-09, 06:03

I have found that the phone book is the #1 place to get my business. Costs me about $450/year for per book (2 books in my area) but it is well worth it. The first month I got 3 details out of it and was excited. 1 of those customers told 3 of his friends and I was off and running. I would estimate since the phone book came out in June I have received almost $5K in detail bus from it.

I tried newspaper, radio, discount cards.. no response like the phone book.

vtec92civic · 09-10-09, 05:03

i advertised in the Yellow Book for the first time this year @ $200 mo. and boy it was i disappointed. I might as well have just burned the money as i didn't get much response from it at all. I maybe received 6-8 phone calls from my ad and that was it. I could have used that $2,400 on other things for the business . . . . . but as everyone says it all depends on where you are. Some people have had great success with the phone books and others not.

I will never advertise there again as long as i live in hawaii.