I have been in business for about 10 years.... I bought the biz from my dad. He only ran if for about 2-3 years. Without making this into too long of a story, lets say that married life and certain drivers haven't been very nice to me... I was hit by three different drivers over a course of 2 years... ya might say it put me down for a bit... Anyway.... I ran the biz out of my house for those years and seemed to just get by. My only advertising was my truck and a couple of yellow page ads. In the last 2 years I met Alice and have started to make thing move abit... I moved into a shop space, about 2,200 SQFT with twin 14'tall bay doors, that I share with a good friend of mine who does custom 4x4 work about 10 months ago. I sent out flyers to everyone I had done work for within the last 5 years stating my new address, phone, etc. I was graced with enough work from that mailing to keep me busy for the first 6 months. Since then, things have slowed down considerably, very considerably. I have been sending out full color flyers to businesses in the community at a rate of about 30-50 a week for the last 5 months but only 3 phone calls have come from those. I do mostly vehicle lettering and grafix. I have flyers at the local Graingers, cards on bulletin boards and I've evn done a few HomeDepot runs, dropping flyers on "blank" trucks and vans. I feel as though I'm starting over because, mentally, I am. Is this just a matter of "keep throwing mud and eventually it'll stick" or is there something else I should be doing? Ideas? or should I just quit my whining and get used to it?
Hi Dave, It seems like you,re working at it pretty hard. I might suggest something that worked for me when I moved to Sarasota FL in 1990 ( during bigtime recession ) I did a lot of direct mail postcards ( yellow to be noticed ) postcards are good cause you don't have to open them! What I did was make up many types of cards that were geared to particular types of businesses. Some with a catchy heading such as..." Even lawyers need signs!" and so on. Be creative and make some that are geared to their needs...have fun and see what happens.
Good luck.
P.S. When I moved back to PA in 1993, I mailed out letters to all my old customers with a heading of " You were right, I missed the sleet!" Got back about 85% of all my old customers.
I don't know what kind of a community you are in but for us we live in the rural part of SW Kansas. We were getting ready to do our Grandopening. I had been in the business in Colorado for 7 years before I decided to get out from under someone elses thumb. I went to the newspaper and they came out and did an article on us and that was the begining of the gold mine. The two of us are working up to 19 hour days and are still 2 weeks behind.
Good luck to you on your experiances. May your find your gold mine rapidly.
------------------ Air, Land & Water Graphics in Sublette, KS
Posted by Dave Brill (Member # 1591) on :
Thanx for the ideas. I like the "post card" idea and I think it may work well here.Unfortunately, the buliding I'm in is an old building located in what is now a residential area... many neighbors don't like that there is a 4x4 shop, sign shop and machine shop in the middle of their neighborhood. I don't know if an article would just start up truoble with our neighbors... It is a good idea though. Thanx again!
Dave, have you met your neighbors? Some people can be asses, but most are just people. If you can explain your situation and assure them there won't be noise or clutter problems, they may even become allies.
I think the publicity angle is brilliant. Next to that is serious networking. Chamber? An organized business network group? Public demonstrations? Volunteering in high profile events? Habitat for humanity... anything to meet new contacts or show your work. Good luck.
