Advertising your services?

[Stu3y]

just wondering, you do set your self a monthly advertising budget, or is most of you work word of mouth? did you advertise to start off with? where does most of your work come from?

 

[TimeServed]

Get your self a website and advertise on as many free online spaces as you can.
I paid for advertising once, in the local newspaper £90 for the month with a return of 0 calls, only me and another plumbing firm in there.....

 

[lame plumber]

£117 a month for inserts in 2 local advertising flyers/mags, which give me most of my new work, plus a couple of parish mags. Total of less than £150 a month. the thing to remember, when advertising, if work is not out there, then you have to keep advertising when the rest give up as no ads ensures no work. Got a website, which brings in a bit as well

 

[iain85]

When I started out I used mybuilder.com. Once you build up positive feedback work seems to flood in. I don't use it really now although often get sent jobs to quote on. You pay for your leads but sometimes you can get people who don't want to pay anything or get time wasters. It's the risk you take but have got some decent work in the early days. Keeps the fees manageable if your just starting out.

 

[codcutter]

When i first went on my own (1987) advertised in free papers like Friday ad etc, at relatively low cost. Once i had a decent customer base didn't really need to advertise..........
Moved to a new area and was lucky?? to pick up a fairly big job straght off, once that ran out tried using Yell.Com (total waste of £800 quid)
Lately tried the local paper (due to work drying up) £35/week, another waste of time

Have found that a presentable sign written van works as well as anything

 

[Ermintrude]

Yeh moving area is a scary thing. Toyed with moving back to oxford / Birmingham , but means starting again ...... Scary thing really

 

[Stu3y]

do any of you use social networking sites to gain work or is that a waste of time as well?

 

[PlumbBobBob]

i get a bit of work off facebook, i'm on a couple of local pages.

 

[Stu3y]

in my current business, i get LOADS of work off facebook, would be nice if it went the same route for the plumbing and heating!

 

[fogarty]

What is your current business Stu3y ?

 

[Stu3y]

i own a dog grooming business atm

 

[Whl4852]

Facebook works really well for me, then parish mags, then gumtree in that order. As a rule I never spent of £90 a month on advertising, but will try different things at different times. I also offer a free 'check over service' for landlords, I get quite a bit from that, only takes 20 mins at most

 

[Scott_D]

How are you advertising on facebook? do you mean you have a facebook page for your business?

 

[basildog]

I would say run a search !
Thinking about it with the words grooming and dog in it you could end up in a world beyond your worst nightmare !!!!!!!

 

[Gas]

Through Gas Safe website mainly

 

[PlumbBobBob]

How are you advertising on facebook? do you mean you have a facebook page for your business?

yes and occasionally post it the local groups i belong to

 

[DaveTidy]

If you do a website make sure you pay someone to do the seo or it's not a good spend. Know a few people who have a paid for a great website which sits on page 2 or three where there aren't many people looking for it.

If you do get one done you need to think about what search terms (keywords) people will look under to find you as you want these on your site in the right quantity and not all website designers know what these should be! e.g. Petersfield Gas Engineer, heating engineer, boiler, comb repairs etc etc.

Example of how many visitors to the top ten searches on page one (organic searches, not paid).

Google Rank Average Share of Visitors
1 32.5%
2 17.6%
3 11.4%
4 8.1%
5 6.1%
6 4.4%
7 3.5%
8 3.1%
9 2.6%
10 2.4%

 

[Chalked]

I always make sure I have as many customers emails as possible and make sure they have yours.

 

[helpsy]

I was word of mouth for about 4 years. I decided to up my game earlier this year. I got a 2 page website £210 all in. Then advertised on Yell.com ( Hibu) and Yellow Pages ( whats left of it ! ) I paid £694 over a year and within 3 hours of "going live" had £2K worth of work ! It seems to have worked for me but I guess it's not for everyone! Tax deductible so worth a shot ! Have a look at my website if interested. Simon Helps - reliable and friendly plumber serving Bath and North West Wiltshire

 

[fogarty]

I was word of mouth for about 4 years. I decided to up my game earlier this year. I got a 2 page website £210 all in. Then advertised on Yell.com ( Hibu) and Yellow Pages ( whats left of it ! ) I paid £694 over a year and within 3 hours of "going live" had £2K worth of work ! It seems to have worked for me but I guess it's not for everyone! Tax deductible so worth a shot ! Have a look at my website if interested. Simon Helps - reliable and friendly plumber serving Bath and North West Wiltshire

Whose the dodgy looking bloke next to your van. I'd keep an eye out for him if I were you. Looks like he's up to summat.