Paper Advertising - A Trial

[DSLiverpool]

Well we have decided to do the bleeding obvious and after importing cheap phone systems for years we are going to install them locally at first then once I have sussed out the pitfalls we will open it up.

How to reach the quite defined market was difficult, online would lose us in a myriad of hosted and cloud based large telecoms companies and this is very different.

We are very much aimed at small start ups or even home users with a separate home office / line really at the S end of SME and we sell lots of these already by mail order and typically once they have had a quote that either baffles them or scares them financially.

I got the Liverpool Echo chap in and was surprised that we can get a half page in the weekly SME supplement for £500 good value I thought so we will trial this followed up by 2 quarter pages on the following weeks for £1k and they give you an entry in an online directory I had never heard of or used before.

Now it may be £1k wasted - anyone tried anything similar? but I couldn't think of anything else

Quite looking forward to going out on quotes again, not done this for nearly 30 years when I did alarms.

[DSLiverpool]

To reach a small SME is hard, last few customers were
Ball bearing and belt seller
2 New letting agencies (one quoted £2k by daisy)
Solicitor
2 Doctors surgeries(small)
Roofer
Restaurant with cordless headsets for bookings
So very diverse that they are hard to catch and online our spend is swamped so lets try the papers!!

[DSLiverpool]

Thanks chaps - the sweet spot for a guy buying a phone system is very narrow however people setting up a biz do tend to peruse biz type articles a lot before setting up and we need to hit them LOCALLY. The paper supplement is a SME special and for £1k over 3 weeks we only need a few customers to get that back.

The BNI meeting type stuff isn't for us as the window of opportunity is too small, we are cheap and fast I am hoping to do a few systems a day. Once my consumer credit approval comes through we will be offering £99 down terms to sole traders and I expect to expand into the further North West but this will be a good experiment. Note the advert will also push our headsets, business phones, conference phones etc so may get some off target sales.

[DSLiverpool]

Hoofy said:

Google ads? You can focus the advert on local areas. Have a landing page with everything the potential customer needs.

That's in the pipeline and a good call - its quite a skill setting them up correctly

[DSLiverpool]

jamescodriver said:

What about a referral offer for local Commercial Agents? they'll be letting the offices and shops etc?

Check planning dept for change of use applications etc?

We are asking the commercial agents if we can include an advert / flyer type thing - the local roller shutter company puts stickers on everyones doors so maybe a sticker on all empty commercial units (no I wouldn't do that)

[DSLiverpool]

richardxjr said:

I know you can get mailing lists of newly moved businesses, or you could a while back, updated every so often. From BT data I expect. If it's local I'd be knocking on their doors or leaving a leaflet, and then the neighbours whilst you/whoever is there. Whilst the ads are running so they may already be aware.

Glenigans (sp) is the industry standard, when I worked for NOVAR (MK electric accessories) we used Gennigans (sp) to get all new projects etc but this is tiny and for now the advert will do. I have reduced the cost by selling a third of the advert to an IT support company (the one we use) who need to attract the same sort of customer so a £666 outlay

[DSLiverpool]

BrabusMog said:

I sent out a dirty fax mailer on Wednesday and we've managed to get 3 new customers from it already - as well as about a million faxes telling us to fk off! Not bad for £100 + VAT.

Fax number list from ? ie if it was easy to get its a no brainer once in a while but getting to my target is not easy.