advertising

[rjs]

My son is new to the business and i want to help him. Do any of you do monthly advertising with val pac? Is it worth the cost? Any help would be great.

Thanks, Rich

 

[Royal Man]

Too broad of a question.

How many other cleaners are in valpak in your area?

What is your service area?

What is the population?

Are you able to charge less and still make a profit after all your upfront costs including the cost of the ad?

 

[rjs]

Dave, there are three carpet cleaners in val pac now in my area.
My service area is Orange county NY, about 60000 homes
I would not want to clean cheeper than they are advertising.

Rich

 

[Royal Man]

Valpak seems to be driven by low price and /or offering a unique service.

How can you separate your company from the rest?

 

[bob vawter]

val-pac sucks.........
go local paper flyer inserts...
about four times in a row!

around here the cost is $250/10,000 inserts
they fall out into mrs Phifts lap..and she sets it on the coffee table

a grand will get you going BIG TIME!

 

[Able 1]

Flyers.

 

[Royal Man]

Marketing is not really about should I do Valpak, Flyers or Inserts.

It's about building influentual relationships in your area.

You need to turn over a few rocks to find the golden nuggets that are waiting just to be picked up.

A great place for you to start is here: (This is like giving you a freaking real live treasure map)

http://www.ocpartnership.org/webpages/page1.asp

You'll be surprized how much easy gold you can find for the taking if you know where to look and how to mine it.

 

[Jeremy]

Depends... What kind of work is he looking for?

 

[Brian R]

Get a website and submit it to all the local search engines. Claim your listing on Google, Yahooo, Bing, Network Carpet Cleaning shiteatinggrin You name it.

I would get that started as soon as possible because your ratings increase with time.
Post your website on every free directory that you can find that is listed in your geographical area...then listed it on every other one.

This is an easy and inexpensive way to get started.

If you feel you need to go the "physical" route after that like flyers, mailers etc...then so be it.
I wouldn't do phone books.
If you are looking to spend some money on directories, I would do it online. YP.com etc
It's instant...almost...and you don't have to worry if mistakes are made and some are not doing long term contracts anymore so you don't get locked into a crappy phone book ad for a year or better.