If You Had £300 or £3,000 for Marketing, How would you spend it?

[dominexsus]

Since i have spend tons of money for many good and many useless marketing ideas i know which has been useful and which is not for me. i am about to complete my first 10 month in the business i saved about £3000 ($5000 dollars) for my next year marketing budget. Proven marketing ideas i tried indicates me that i can double the money i am going to invest if everything goes worst. good scenario is to triple the amount by the end of 12 months from the start. plus for the. (new customers only) plus some regular customers along with word of mouth and free marketing like free classifieds exe. i would like to know 2 things

1- if you had £3000 would it be reasonable amount to spend? or to much? or not enough? and what would you do with it?

2- if this is to much to spend lets say if you only had £300 would it be reasonable amount to spend? and what would you do with it?

thanks for all replys in advance..

[Crgky127]

First off, take whatever you got, and put 25-50% away and work with the remainder. You can come back to that if something goes bad and you need to start the campaign again differently, or if something goes well and you need to do more of it. Then use the remainder on 2 to 5 different ideas. You can apply this to most ideas: instead of doing 1,000 fliers/whatever in a wide area, do 200 in a smaller area, every other month, repeating 5 times.

[JosephLeo]

Let's see...

$500 Budget]
I would hire a laborer to pass out some flyers to passerbye's in or around a busy area followed by some door knockers on my neighborhood doors. I would also call any previous contacts I have and followup with some cold calling a couple businesses.

$5,000 Budget
Print an ad in the newspaper.
Buy some radio time during rush hour on a semi-popular radio station.
Do everything in the $500 budget

That's about it really...oh and invest in some Google, Bing and Yahoo ads.

[Iconic]

From what I have seen so far, repetition is key. There was a survey done that I heard of some where along the line that said people need to see or hear of a company 5-7 times before it comes to mind when they are looking for a company's services.

Personally with budget of $3000 I would probably spread it across 3 advertising avenues.

1. Newspaper ad
2. Billboard ad on a local freeway that leads from the main city center to the rich or elite suburbs. Catching people as they are stuck in traffic on their daily commute.
3. Flyers for hand delivery by either yourself or a labourer who know a little about your business.

Scenario
Person wakes up in the morning, gets his paper from the step or at the newstand and while flipping through it with his coffee he sees your ad. Not really noticing it since he has no issues right now. That person then gets in his car and drives to work. Along the way while traveling 20km below the speed limit due to traffic he sees you ad again on a billboard. Once again not paying attention to it but recognising your company since he saw your ad in the paper earlier. This same person goes through his day and goes home, possibly seeing the billboard again if you had a billboard with 2 sides done. When he gets home and has had dinner the doorbell rings. Someone outside his door is handing out flyers for a company that rings a bell but not sure why. He listens politely, takes the propoganda and goes back to his TV leaving the flyer on the family "catch all" shelf space.

This does not sound like much but consider this. Most package newspaper ads will print your ad maybe 3 times in a week. In the mean time your billboard has been seen by every commuter for the last month depending on how long you have it up. Also you have made face time with 500-5000 people in the door to door visits. All of that combined works together to create a very impactful marketing campaign. Each thing on its own will get the attention but all together you are more likely to come to someones mind when they do have computer issues and start wondering who are they going to call.

Now remember this is also depending on your market. If you are in an area with more up-beat and tech savey people they may read online news instead of the newspaper, or if you target market has a demographic of younger families they may take public transit and are more likely to read the signs above thier heads on the bus and train more then the billboards on the side of the freeway.

Personally my market tends to be either the young professional that never quite got into computers in school other then to write up thier masters thesis, or the double income family with 1-3 kids and little computer skills other then those used in their daily jobs.

I can say with certainty that I wish I had 3-5000 a year to spend on marketing and I may in the future but for right now I am focusing on Word Of Mouth marketing more then the combo marketing I mention above.

[dominexsus]

From what I have seen so far, repetition is key. There was a survey done that I heard of some where along the line that said people need to see or hear of a company 5-7 times before it comes to mind when they are looking for a company's services.

Personally with budget of $3000 I would probably spread it across 3 advertising avenues.

1. Newspaper ad
2. Billboard ad on a local freeway that leads from the main city center to the rich or elite suburbs. Catching people as they are stuck in traffic on their daily commute.
3. Flyers for hand delivery by either yourself or a labourer who know a little about your business.

Scenario
Person wakes up in the morning, gets his paper from the step or at the newstand and while flipping through it with his coffee he sees your ad. Not really noticing it since he has no issues right now. That person then gets in his car and drives to work. Along the way while traveling 20km below the speed limit due to traffic he sees you ad again on a billboard. Once again not paying attention to it but recognising your company since he saw your ad in the paper earlier. This same person goes through his day and goes home, possibly seeing the billboard again if you had a billboard with 2 sides done. When he gets home and has had dinner the doorbell rings. Someone outside his door is handing out flyers for a company that rings a bell but not sure why. He listens politely, takes the propoganda and goes back to his TV leaving the flyer on the family "catch all" shelf space.

This does not sound like much but consider this. Most package newspaper ads will print your ad maybe 3 times in a week. In the mean time your billboard has been seen by every commuter for the last month depending on how long you have it up. Also you have made face time with 500-5000 people in the door to door visits. All of that combined works together to create a very impactful marketing campaign. Each thing on its own will get the attention but all together you are more likely to come to someones mind when they do have computer issues and start wondering who are they going to call.

Now remember this is also depending on your market. If you are in an area with more up-beat and tech savey people they may read online news instead of the newspaper, or if you target market has a demographic of younger families they may take public transit and are more likely to read the signs above thier heads on the bus and train more then the billboards on the side of the freeway.

Personally my market tends to be either the young professional that never quite got into computers in school other then to write up thier masters thesis, or the double income family with 1-3 kids and little computer skills other then those used in their daily jobs.

I can say with certainty that I wish I had 3-5000 a year to spend on marketing and I may in the future but for right now I am focusing on Word Of Mouth marketing more then the combo marketing I mention above.

wow That was very interesting idea and also similar what i was thinking but i never thought of billboards.

my plan was

£400 Google ppc.

£1300 yell.com.

£400 yellow pages.

£400 for 40000 flayers distribute by my self.

£400, 52 weeks small advert on local news paper.

[dominexsus]

Let's see...

$500 Budget]
I would hire a laborer to pass out some flyers to passerbye's in or around a busy area followed by some door knockers on my neighborhood doors. I would also call any previous contacts I have and followup with some cold calling a couple businesses.

$5,000 Budget
Print an ad in the newspaper.
Buy some radio time during rush hour on a semi-popular radio station.
Do everything in the $500 budget

That's about it really...oh and invest in some Google, Bing and Yahoo ads.

very good ideas, by Google, Bing and Yahoo adsi think you mean PPC ads yes?

[JosephLeo]

very good ideas, by Google, Bing and Yahoo adsi think you mean PPC ads yes?

Yep, PPC ads. I'd target my local area only of course and come up with a few thousand keywords.

[dominexsus]

Yep, PPC ads. I'd target my local area only of course and come up with a few thousand keywords.



few thousand ? wow i do pcc as well but i could never think of more than 280 effective keywords spread over 8 towns 1 county and 1 city. are they all computer repair related? or do you have words like Toshiba laptop parts, Acer user manual, laptop repair tools exe. i wish i can have sample of those keywords. i maybe missing something here. honestly google only suggest no more than 500 keywords for me and the half of them is useless. can you advice me if there is i am missing here?

thanx

[JosephLeo]

few thousand ? wow i do pcc as well but i could never think of more than 280 effective keywords spread over 8 towns 1 county and 1 city. are they all computer repair related? or do you have words like Toshiba laptop parts, Acer user manual, laptop repair tools exe. i wish i can have sample of those keywords. i maybe missing something here. honestly google only suggest no more than 500 keywords for me and the half of them is useless. can you advice me if there is i am missing here?

thanx

Well- I never advertised just yet since my website isn't finished but I did make a list.

So far it's about 1,500 phrases long.

I try every variation, combination and deviation of every possible computer repair, service, product I can think of.

For example...

PC
Personal
Computer
Com
Comp
Compute
Computer
Computers
Lap
Lappy
Laptop
Laptops
Workstation
Workstations
Work
Station
Stations
Net
Network
Internet
Internets
Interweb
Inter
Web
WWW
Ethernet
Ether
etc...

Repair
re-pair
re
pair
fix
etc...

Fort Lauderdale
Ft.
Ft
Lauderdale
laderdale
laughterdale
laughterdal
lawderdale
lawderdale
etc...



Most of it was manually typed, although I would love to program a script that just takes all the keywords from each group and generates a list of every possible outcome...in total I would estimate that there are 600 keywords so far including typos, abbreviations and other little misspells.

[dominexsus]

[QUOTE=

PC
Personal
Computer
Com
Comp
Compute
Computer
Computers
Lap
Lappy
Laptop
Laptops
Workstation
Workstations
Work
Station
Stations
Net
Network
Internet
Internets
Interweb
Inter
Web
WWW
Ethernet
Ether
etc...

Repair
re-pair
re
pair
fix
etc...

Fort Lauderdale
Ft.
Ft
Lauderdale
laderdale
laughterdale
laughterdal
lawderdale
lawderdale
etc...

.[/QUOTE]

wow again. do you actuay use them at the moment?are they working? i think i need to study ppc more, more, and more.

[dominexsus]

First off, take whatever you got, and put 25-50% away and work with the remainder. You can come back to that if something goes bad and you need to start the campaign again differently, or if something goes well and you need to do more of it. Then use the remainder on 2 to 5 different ideas. You can apply this to most ideas: instead of doing 1,000 fliers/whatever in a wide area, do 200 in a smaller area, every other month, repeating 5 times.

so far i have done 40000 in small area two ice but i dont think it worked the way i acpected. now i am going to do 40000 more but wider area once this time.

[gambit]

FWIW & IMHO:

Question: Do you have a sales person/team?


Sales comes before marketing. Also, it is difficult to get much of a return on marketing with a small budget. Depending on your media of choice, 3k might not go far.

I would hire a sales person that is 50/50 salary/commission. I would ask them to bring an existing book of business or a significant rolodex of local business contacts. Good sales prospects are from synergistic (but not competing) companies. So if you're an IT company, find people that previously sold phone systems, copier systems, etc.

Give the new sales person 90 days to pay for themselves. If they can't sell enough project work, break/fix or Managed Services in 90 days, then cut them loose.

It will cost more than 3k to get started, but the long-term ROI is much, much greater with sales than marketing - especially if you don't have anyone now. And with a little planning and goal setting, you can make the first sales person pay for the next sales person.

When the sales team is out of leads, then you can look at marketing. For most IT service companies, however, the personal sales relationship brings in more business than marketing email, GYM ads, postcards, etc. To create these relationships costs a lot more money than 3k, so make sure the sales person creates enough income for a 'individual marketing' budget (e.g. lunch with prospects, guerilla marketing efforts, etc.)

[dominexsus]

[QUOTE=gambit;81265]FWIW & IMHO:

Question: Do you have a sales person/team?


QUOTE]

i dont have a sales person since i am not selling anything. part from deffective parts needs to replacing. any other idea for computer repair business only?

thanks

[Iconic]

Yep, PPC ads. I'd target my local area only of course and come up with a few thousand keywords.

The only problem with having so many adwords is that the quality of clicks deminishes. For instance if someone is looking for a Toshiba laptop and sees you are at the top of the list due to your adwords campaign they might click you and see you are only a service location and do not sell laptops. From there they go back and keep looking, not knowing they just cost you the price of your CPC.

I ran Google adwords for a month and in my case due to the adwords I picked it was unsuccessful. I spent about $60 during that time due to the number of clicks I got but not a single call because the adwords that were bringing in the clicks were generic PC words that although related to the services I provided, were not helpful to the customer when they clicked.

I am not running Google Analytics to see what people are searching for when they come to my page. So far because my SEO is so bad the only searches that come up with my site is my business name, but i am working on that.

[gambit]

I don't understand. You are not sellling anything? But marketing?

Is this just for brand-awareness?

[BostonGeek1]

$500 on a good site on elance
$1000 on local optimization so it ranks in the top 10 in my city
$100 on good business cards with nothing on the back
$300 on the microsoft action pack subscription
$500 on graphic design for pamphlets and business cards that briefly outline your services to businesses, that you can email to them and give out.

[dominexsus]

I am not running Google Analytics to see what people are searching for when they come to my page. So far because my SEO is so bad the only searches that come up with my site is my business name, but i am working on that.


i must agree with you there. but google analytics very good for choosing right word. also mate i emailed you last week and offered you if you need i can send you free report based on your keywords inc. meta tags, title, description .so you only need to add them to your site and wait 4-6 weeks. only thing you need to make sure your content keyword rich. i am first page and top listed with google, yahoo. just type anything related computer repair keyword and add town name chesterfield you will see. if you interested i can help you.just contact me privatly.

[dominexsus]

$500 on a good site on elance
$1000 on local optimization so it ranks in the top 10 in my city
$100 on good business cards with nothing on the back
$300 on the microsoft action pack subscription
$500 on graphic design for pamphlets and business cards that briefly outline your services to businesses, that you can email to them and give out.


sory why would you need microsoft action pack subscription? i know what is about but how this will help with your marketing?

[dominexsus]

Is this just for brand-awareness?

yes it is. maybe i didnt used right word sorry. i mean advertise about my company so if any body needs a pc repair the company can be find easier,qicker,more often,and every importand place. if posiablle top position.

[TechForce]

your selling a service rather than a product. it's still selling eithier way.

[dominexsus]

your selling a service rather than a product. it's still selling eithier way.

so from your reply i take it you would do what gambit would do to grow hes computer repair business?

he reply was = Sales comes before marketing. Also, it is difficult to get much of a return on marketing with a small budget. Depending on your media of choice, 3k might not go far.

I would hire a sales person that is 50/50 salary/commission. I would ask them to bring an existing book of business or a significant rolodex of local business contacts. Good sales prospects are from synergistic (but not competing) companies. So if you're an IT company, find people that previously sold phone systems, copier systems, etc.

Give the new sales person 90 days to pay for themselves. If they can't sell enough project work, break/fix or Managed Services in 90 days, then cut them loose.

It will cost more than 3k to get started, but the long-term ROI is much, much greater with sales than marketing - especially if you don't have anyone now. And with a little planning and goal setting, you can make the first sales person pay for the next sales person.

When the sales team is out of leads, then you can look at marketing. For most IT service companies, however, the personal sales relationship brings in more business than marketing email, GYM ads, postcards, etc. To create these relationships costs a lot more money than 3k, so make sure the sales person creates enough income for a 'individual marketing' budget (e.g. lunch with prospects, guerilla marketing efforts, etc.)

OK this must be the one marketing way of groving computer repair business i never knew. thanx for the advice anyway

[BostonGeek1]

so from your reply i take it you would do what gambit would do to grow hes computer repair business?

he reply was = Sales comes before marketing. Also, it is difficult to get much of a return on marketing with a small budget. Depending on your media of choice, 3k might not go far.

I would hire a sales person that is 50/50 salary/commission. I would ask them to bring an existing book of business or a significant rolodex of local business contacts. Good sales prospects are from synergistic (but not competing) companies. So if you're an IT company, find people that previously sold phone systems, copier systems, etc.

Give the new sales person 90 days to pay for themselves. If they can't sell enough project work, break/fix or Managed Services in 90 days, then cut them loose.

It will cost more than 3k to get started, but the long-term ROI is much, much greater with sales than marketing - especially if you don't have anyone now. And with a little planning and goal setting, you can make the first sales person pay for the next sales person.

When the sales team is out of leads, then you can look at marketing. For most IT service companies, however, the personal sales relationship brings in more business than marketing email, GYM ads, postcards, etc. To create these relationships costs a lot more money than 3k, so make sure the sales person creates enough income for a 'individual marketing' budget (e.g. lunch with prospects, guerilla marketing efforts, etc.)

OK this must be the one marketing way of groving computer repair business i never knew. thanx for the advice anyway


That's so general/ambiguous and unrealistic for him to achieve. YOu really think there are people walking around with lists of business contacts just dying to figure out your business model so they can sell managed services. Do you really think he knows how to design and setup a managed services offering? There are many smart people that are already established that struggle with converting EXISTING clients to this model. You sound like managed services is this gold mine of free money - its VERY HARD to implement. Telling a newbie to go out and find a salesman to sell managed services for him is ludicrous.

That advice may work 2 years from now when he's got a good website, good knowledge of the market, some clients with steady recurring revenue, etc.

Sometimes I feel like the advice people give here is intentionally designed to make newbies fail. Follow my advice and you'll be charging $80-$100/hour comfortably within a year with 10-20 repeat customers making $1500-$2500/week. Then you can look around and decide what you wanna do.

[dominexsus]

That's so general/ambiguous and unrealistic for him to achieve. YOu really think there are people walking around with lists of business contacts just dying to figure out your business model so they can sell managed services. Do you really think he knows how to design and setup a managed services offering? There are many smart people that are already established that struggle with converting EXISTING clients to this model. You sound like managed services is this gold mine of free money - its VERY HARD to implement. Telling a newbie to go out and find a salesman to sell managed services for him is ludicrous.

That advice may work 2 years from now when he's got a good website, good knowledge of the market, some clients with steady recurring revenue, etc.

Sometimes I feel like the advice people give here is intentionally designed to make newbies fail. Follow my advice and you'll be charging $80-$100/hour comfortably within a year with 10-20 repeat customers making $1500-$2500/week. Then you can look around and decide what you wanna do.

I agree with what you are saying and I don't believe he's idea would be easy to establish but I respect he's idea since its very unique marketing way of investing for Computer repair business :)

[dominexsus]

$500 on a good site on elance
$1000 on local optimization so it ranks in the top 10 in my city
$100 on good business cards with nothing on the back
$300 on the microsoft action pack subscription
$500 on graphic design for pamphlets and business cards that briefly outline your services to businesses, that you can email to them and give out.

this is very vice way of investing but i still didnt get answer for: why would you spend $300 on the microsoft action pack subscription?

[dominexsus]

so far i have done 40000 in small area two ice but i dont think it worked the way i acpected. now i am going to do 40000 more but wider area once this time.

note i am only doing fliers for advertising purposes. i dont think i can make money on it.

[BostonGeek1]

You do realize that advertising is supposed to make you money right?

I just think you should try to land 4-5 bigger clients. They'll keep you afloat and you'll learn how to handle larger networks and larger clients with more complex corporate structures. Get 4-5 business with 25-50 employees and hire a helper. Thats the fastest way to 6 figures.

[dominexsus]

You do realize that advertising is supposed to make you money right?

I just think you should try to land 4-5 bigger clients. They'll keep you afloat and you'll learn how to handle larger networks and larger clients with more complex corporate structures. Get 4-5 business with 25-50 employees and hire a helper. Thats the fastest way to 6 figures.
how can i do that? could it be done easly? specialy without marketing? if there is a way i want to try what ever it takes. i was trying to get bigger clients true yell.com and yellow pages. is this waste of money? thanx for your reply up front

[jay c]

I have 2 clients with 25+ employees and one of them has a couple of full time IT staffers. They bring in $400-$600 per month, which is a long way from a 6-figure income, but it's not bad either. If I had 10 more like them...

I got both of those accounts through personal networking. The operations manager for one client is a fellow member of a local social organization (think Lion's Club, Knights of Columbus, Rotary Club, etc.). The IT manager of the other is a fellow member of a local IT user group that meets for lunch once a month. I spend about $45/month with the club and also get lots of beer and live music in return. :D I spend about $20/month for lunch and a few hours volunteering with the IT group.

Here's my $500 breakdown:

$80 Pair of magnetic signs for my car
$300 1000 professional looking brochures to give to prospective customers
$30 Domain name registration
$15 One month web hosting
$75 Social/professional networking

My $5000 breakdown:

$500 Everything above
$1200 Yellow pages ad
$100 Professional (not free) business cards
$1000 Radio advertising during the morning weather and most popular talk shows
$???? Billboard sign on most heavily trafficked highway
$??? Billboard signs on the home-run fence of the local high school's ball field
$180 Chamber of Commerce membership
$???? ?????

I'm intrigued by the idea of commissioning a sales person. Not sure if it would work in my small town environment, though.

[JosephLeo]

I have 2 clients with 25+ employees and one of them has a couple of full time IT staffers. They bring in $400-$600 per month, which is a long way from a 6-figure income, but it's not bad either. If I had 10 more like them...

I got both of those accounts through personal networking. The operations manager for one client is a fellow member of a local social organization (think Lion's Club, Knights of Columbus, Rotary Club, etc.). The IT manager of the other is a fellow member of a local IT user group that meets for lunch once a month. I spend about $45/month with the club and also get lots of beer and live music in return. :D I spend about $20/month for lunch and a few hours volunteering with the IT group.

Here's my $500 breakdown:

$80 Pair of magnetic signs for my car
$300 1000 professional looking brochures to give to prospective customers
$30 Domain name registration
$15 One month web hosting
$75 Social/professional networking

My $5000 breakdown:

$500 Everything above
$1200 Yellow pages ad
$100 Professional (not free) business cards
$1000 Radio advertising during the morning weather and most popular talk shows
$???? Billboard sign on most heavily trafficked highway
$??? Billboard signs on the home-run fence of the local high school's ball field
$180 Chamber of Commerce membership
$???? ?????

I'm intrigued by the idea of commissioning a sales person. Not sure if it would work in my small town environment, though.


Hate to break it to you, but if you live in a populated town then you probably can't even afford 1 billboard with your entire $5,000 budget.

[jay c]

I live in a small town (~15k), but you might still be right. $5000 for marketing is way more than I have available, so I haven't bothered to check.