We have been in buissness for 8 years and my father passed away. Ihave been put in charge of the business and want to expand. We do high end interior home remodeling. We have never advertised since we always get our buisness from word of mouth.

I want to expand my clients and im looking for inexpensive ideas to target new potential clients. I am stumped since I sell a service not a product i have no idea where to invest my advertising dollars. I have a domain name but never got around to making a web page. Should I target a high end community and pass flyers offering my services and maybe adding coupons?
Like a coupon giving out a rebate on x amount of dollars spent?

Please any ideas are helpful

Thank you
Tony

Rott,

Honestly, a cross channel advertising campaign may not be ideal for you. Since your business is more local based - advertising online may not by in your best interest. So, in my opinion, it would be best to save your advertising dollars by utilizing other means of advertising instead of advertising. However, what could be benficial for your business is having your website thoroughly outline your products and have pictures of other "satisfied customers." You could also design custom sets, similiar to furniture sets that are sold as a group instead of individual units, at discounted prices. You could display these sets online and have them mix and match as they need and what not. Something you may want to look into.

Secondly, I would consider newspapers. Purchase a half-page ad in the local popular newspaper (i.e. The Los Angeles Times) under the appropriate section (i.e. LA Time's has a "Home" section) and outline your services and some speicla prices with the contact information necessary. Of course, if there are local journals or "Home Magazines" that have a significant amount of subscriptions, consider adveritising in that as well. The problem with your business is that the influence and impression may be there, but your ability to conduct your services may not. Let's say you advertise on television but get someone who is 200 miles away that wants to do relatively inexpensive remodeling. It would not be worth it to you to spend the time to travel, gas prices, employee wages, etc... to service them. Try to keep your advertising campaign to a 2-city outskirt maximum in order to allow you to operate as efficiently as possible.

Next, I would recommend organizing or attending a "Home Show." The potential there is endless. Current buyers in the market, business people looking to purchase homes, companies looking to hire exclusive designing companies, your business could blossom there. If there are not any home shows around, I would recommend investing the money into organizing one.

Why:

1) Network - working with other companies in your industry will help you expand your network and build future corporate alliances with them. Leaves potential for future partnerships.

2) Market Traffic - As I said, people in the market will be there looking to remodel, add, or purchase homes. If they purchase a "fix'er upper," you could offer to do it yourself at a relatively low cost. Way to sell it, they could advertise that the home was "professionally redocrated."

3) You could have your companies name all over those flyers and billboards. You could list your company as the "hosting company" or "sponsoring company" which is always great publicity.

That is what I will tell you for now. Tired to give out the rest but maybe I'll PM you. Where is your business located?

Matthew

P.S.
Good luck.

Rott: You should match your media to your market (upscale to upscale). I would very strongly recommend that you look into a painted bulletin billboard located in the general area where you do most of your work. The board should have a "likeness" of one the jobs you're most proud of, a short slogan, and contact information. Forget the web site, it won't help you get business. You can do a defensive one, sort of like the yellow pages advertising you should also do.

Kent Capener

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Ok your service is High End Interior Home Remodeling, who needs this service more then wealthy people purchasing a nw home(or a home from another owner), in most all cases i would assume they would be willing to pay good money to have the place remodeled to there liking. Considering it is such a big investment for them and they problably have some money left to spare.

So i think that the areas you should be targeting are partnering with local High End Real Estate Agents, companies that sell or lease Apartments, and maybe to even add a little twist, high end boat manufactuers that build and manufactuer small to mid sized luxury Yahts. Also another option could be to refit the luxury interiors for Aircraft. There are many possible areas it will just be a case of researching them and making sure that you are properly connected with the companies that sell,lease or operate the places you would like to work in. Another option may even be remodeling business offices.

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Maybe a quick and easy way to get your clients to remember your services is to send them newsletters or postcards throughout the year or especially during the holiday season. It will remind them of your business and possibly help them to conduct business with you again. Although postage may get expensive it is just one way to reach out.

Also, you may want to place an ad in an interior design/remodeling magazine. As cutomers flip through they may find your ad and end up calling you. For this, you will probably need a colorful and "eye-catching" ad.

Good Luck!

Your product and mine is very similar. I own an art gallery and framing. We are both service based, market to the more affluent, and operate with very few customers. Marketing businesses like this has been very tricky and I have made $o many mistakes its not even funny.

What I would do is this:

1) Pick a few builders that are kicking your butt. Investigate them and find out what they do well. Is there any ideas you can steal? How do they advertise?

2) Set a budget in advance. If you start seeking marketing advice from advertisers they will take every dollar you show them. You asked about low cost. I wouldn?t bet the farm on one or two ads in a paper.

3) Nix the coupons and offers. I find that they will drag in the bottom feeders that will beat you to the ground on price. Our business doesn?t have enough volume to survive when we ?go low?. HOWEVER I do have promotions, but only when I buy cheaper. For example, buy some interior doors in enough quantity that you can get it for half what you normally pay. Then ?promote? door replacements at a price that makes your competition scratch theirs heads in amazement. Your margins will be fine but you just might sell some trim, paint, locks, ceiling fans, and duct covers at full price. You won?t get rich from this but think of the intangibles. You have told your customer that your not expensive, (you know they think you are right) improved the look of their home, and gave them a positive shopping experience. You have won their business and their friends business for life. And your only investment was the doors, and you even made a tiny bit off of them.

4) Join the Chamber of Commerce and get active.

5) Home shows (give something away and get addresses)

6) Contact existing customers 3 times a year. Tell them about your door promotion.

Anyway good luck. Keep us posted. Be real careful with mass marketing media. I have little luck with them and use them sparingly. In that arena your competition isn?t just other remodelers, its everybody that is also advertising including Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, Jiffy Lube, ??? They will always spend more than you, in those areas.

Do you have a website for you business? That's the first thing you should do if you don't have. If the budget is concern, you can have both hosting ,design, and e-mail for 9.95 a month. That's all you need. Just basically explaining who you are, what's your business is all about, your services, and how can the clients can contact you.

It's like having another store that runs 24/7 and opening a door to a new clients and retains the old ones.

Adding .com to your flyers extend the dollar you spent on advertising and also not having a website is like not having a telephone nowadays.

Link Removed.

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Many of your potential clients live on the net these days, both at home and at work, so a decent web site would be a plus. Not a necessity, but it would not hurt.

My suggestion would be to promote through your satisfied customers. Don;t be so crass as to offer cash, but a gift certicate for $ 50 at a good restrauant will not only show your appreciation with class, it WILL get your name mentioned.

You are in a field that is overrun with contractors who constantly over promise and under achieve. A three week project turns into 3 months. If you do good work, on time, you should have no problems having past customers becoming your "commissioned" salespeople, at $ 50 a sale.

In virtually every community there are several restrauants that will get even the most stay-at-homeish folks out for an evening. Chose one of them and let your past customers know it will be "dinner on me" for a referral that becomes a sale.

This is not my area or expertize but I like Jay and Pete's answers. I do have a couple of clients that are doing much the same as you but they are purchasing the home and remodeling it for resale. If you look at who is the owners of the homes to remodel you may find that a large percent are senior citizens fixing up that 20-30 year old home that the tub, fixtures, etc. are wearing out. Senior women like that 10% coupon in the back of the yellow pages and the local junk-mail coupons. Damn if I understand it as even they know its considered in the price quote anyway, but its one of those female genes I guess.

You might also consider looking for advice and marketing plan help from your local public agencies. Places like Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) and Business Information Centers (BIC) offer free help to businesses in various areas of business managment including marketing. There is also SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives). One website that can help you find these public programs is at http://www.buzgate.org. You can go there, click on your state, click on "free help," click "by service," and click on "business marketing." They organize the list by location and give you the program's decription as well as contact information. I used this site a lot when I first started my business to take advantage of the free public resources out there as I couldn't afford to hire for-profit professionals for everything. Good luck.