Marketing Advice / Opinions

[Liesl Dexheimer]

What are your opinions/advice on marketing? Have you tried to contact companies by phone or physically visit companies to try to get new jobs? If you have, have you had any success? How do you get most of your customers? Do your customers tend to be companies or individuals?

Generally for us it is either word of mouth or through a local search online. Lately I've been thinking of trying to get more business by physically going to companies...seems like all we get right now are individuals and not businesses. Though I must admit, I've sent out postcards, catalogs and email newsletters with no real luck...

[Mike Null]

Liesl

You're web site is very well done and exhibits your talent but it doesn't address the commercial engraving business either with text or photos. I suggest a second web site or revising this one to focus more on the type of business you want to target.

Text is particularly important and must include the terms for all things you can do. Just saying "engraving or laser engraving" is generally a waste of time. Think in terms of the search words that your customers might use.

I stopped all forms of advertising except the internet years ago as I felt they were just a waste of money.

[Joe Kace]

Very interesting post since I was just trying to figure out the same thing. The only thing I am going to do is send out a flyer through the mail targeting electrical and mechanical contractors for panel tags. Since manufacturing is more of what I want to do going forward, I choose this route to get the name out. There are plenty of places to advertise that are free, and work very well in my opinion. Since I don't have a website yet because I was uncertain on what route I was going to go down, I use Craigslist and Facebook and have received several good jobs from there. Also setting up a Etsy account is another good way to advertise.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Thank you for the compliment, however that is just my personal portfolio website. Our business site is www.classicengraving.org


Liesl

You're web site is very well done and exhibits your talent but it doesn't address the commercial engraving business either with text or photos. I suggest a second web site or revising this one to focus more on the type of business you want to target.

Text is particularly important and must include the terms for all things you can do. Just saying "engraving or laser engraving" is generally a waste of time. Think in terms of the search words that your customers might use.

I stopped all forms of advertising except the internet years ago as I felt they were just a waste of money.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

I've had similar results here with paper advertising. Spending money and getting no ROI gets old fast. We have our website and utilize Google Places to rely on most of our advertising, which surprisingly works out well. We have gotten leads all up and down the east coast AND I ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO ASK how a client found out about us. You may consider making a small give away to potential clients. At the trade show we worked, we had a "two-tier" give away (for lack of better words) - basically if we felt that a potential customer/company would be giving us more business than say just a one time deal, we had more to give away. Of course, you have to use your best judgment on a case by case basis. You may also consider new avenues of business if you feel the market is drying up. Hope this helps.

[Mike Null]

Liesl

Neat site displaying expert workmanship. I would suggest taking a hard look at words which might enhance what the search engines see. For example, think of all the types of signs that you do. Signs like the word engraving is very limiting; maybe elevator signs, emergency signs, conference room signs, warning labels, control panel labels, legend plates, etc., etc. would help to get more hits.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Thank you for the suggestion Mike! I've been trying to "optimize" my site more. That's a really good idea! :)

As far as yellow book advertising...cut back to 1 book this year. Pretty sure most companies don't even use the YP...mostly seems to be individuals wanting something small that they already bought engraved.

So has anyone ever tried to be a "salesperson" and physically gone somewhere to get new business? Does this method really work in today's economy? Or do you generally let customers come to you?


Liesl

Neat site displaying expert workmanship. I would suggest taking a hard look at words which might enhance what the search engines see. For example, think of all the types of signs that you do. Signs like the word engraving is very limiting; maybe elevator signs, emergency signs, conference room signs, warning labels, control panel labels, legend plates, etc., etc. would help to get more hits.

[Rodne Gold]

What works well is google adwords and targeted marketing
I target a group of industries like for eg, electrical contractors , make up appropriate sample packs for that industry and phone em. We dont do a whole schpiel on the phone , all we say is "Hi , I'm XYZ from ZYX , we have a sample pack of product that we think you can use that we want to send you , are you interested? Who must we address it to?" End of story. We send the sample pack + a covering letter and always include something like a keyfob or bottle opener in the sample pack. We get an incredible response rate to this , round 25% which is a huge response. It's not cheap for us to do this , but $5-10 of product and mail often get us jobs 100x that.

[Mike Null]

Liesl

I do not do cold calls. I will call on exisiting customers or on customers who inquire and seem to have potential but most of my face to face is with existing customers trying to expand their purchases or just keeping them happy. With commercial customers there may be several purchasing entities within the company and one generally doesn't know what the other is doing--especially true with schools and universities.

[Doug Griffith]

I work freelance for a large thermoforming company and often drive to meetings with the owner. There are many times we've driven by companies that obviously use thermoforming in some sort or another and we stopped to "check it out". This almost always gets work. I think the key to success with this approach is 2-fold. 1) the person making the cold call needs to be dynamic and personable and not take no for an answer. 2) the pitch needs to be "we are the best at what we do and we can beat whatever price you are currently paying". Like I said before, this almost always gets work. The company I work with has more business than they can possibly do right now and is successful in this crappy economy. They've never even advertised. The problem is that most people making cold calls just aren't dynamic and personable enough to get past the receptionist much less to the person making the decisions. I would never try this approach because I know I don't have what it takes.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Very interesting responses. I agree that schools & universities can't always keep track of what the other is doing. I have tried to expand purchasing with my existing customers but find it difficult, some are happy with the product that they have & don't seem interested. Others will say they will keep it in mind. I'm going to try to work a little harder at getting them more interested.

[Joe Pelonio]

Never had any return on money spend with marketing and advertising. I have always been 90% commercial work 10% personal until recently and now it's 99% commercial and of that most wholesale. I used contacts and word of mouth among business and some personal visits with samples ad prices, mainly targeting other sign shops that I knew didn't have a laser. If you can compete with Gemini and deliver faster, and even install, it's an easy sell. It helps to be in area with close to 100 sign shops, though that's dropped by about 10 in the last two years. I also do work for electronics manufacturers who found me on internet searches.

[Michael Hunter]

My experience is that word-of-mouth and a decent website both work well.

I have tried most of the tricks in the "start your own business" book with negative results.
Rodney's send-out-samples thing did not work for me. When I did follow-up calls, hardly anyone even remembered seeing the samples.
Press-releases can get you into the business pages of the local paper for free (particularly if you supply a striking photo), but the result is a plague of phone calls from insurance salesmen and the like.... and no sales leads.
Adverts in specialist magazines (light aircraft, model making etc.) just about covered their costs, but attracted the most time-wasting of customers (e.g. 12 emails from one about wanting a 3x2" plaque for his aeroplane)

PS A further thought about advertising.
A single ad to test the market is OK, but if you run a series then you have to carry on forever. If you stop a series, the people who had noticed the ad assume that you have gone bust.

[Rodne Gold]

Whatever marketing plan you use , the ultimate question you have to answer and communicate to your customers is this: "Why should you use ME and not anyone else"
Some plans will work better for one person in one industry niche than another. I am finding google adwords really works well and the reason my sample pack works is that I don't just offer laser engraving , with my machinery I can offer a lot more and almost become a one stop shop.
Lots of competition in the laser engraving industry - and now , what with cheap chinese machines at 1/4 the price of mainstream , expect a TON more , barriers to entry have tumbled and the "cost per minute" has tumbled too.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

I think part of our problem is that we are located in a rural area & are home based. If we were in a city I think we might fair a little better & have more exposure. I agree that sign shops can make great customers and am definitely looking into targeting more of those.

[Scott Shepherd]

One thing to also consider, if someone's doing something that works for them, they probably aren't going to tell you all the details in an open forum, that would allow others to mirror their efforts and either A) Cost them more money to advertise or B) Create competition for tehmselves.

It's a really tough thing to get good, specific answers for on an open forum, in my opinion. If I tell you that google ad words works great for me and I'm spending $200 a month, 5 people read this and decide it's a great way to go, they jump into the "pool" and now my ranking goes down until I pay more. So there's no incentive for some information to be shared publicly.

A lot of people are saying things on the fringe here. If you can read between the lines, you'll tap into it. But I don't think you'll get too many specifics, because it's not smart business, again, in my opinion.