I'm mailing 6700 postcards to the same areas I have been mailing. Will probably hit the areas starting next week, then in the middle of June and in September. No need to advertise close to the holidays. I save those spots for repeats.
I am cutting YP back to a bare minimum. Just enough for repeats to find me if they need to. Oh, and I will mail to my customer base at least 4 times. I might start doing the newsletter thingy.
I haven't done any advertising since mailing postcards last March except YP and I'm already staying booked up, but I hope that by gaining more of a customer base my busy times will trickle over into my slow times more giving me a full schedule.
I'm also trying pay per click ads on Yahoo and Superpages.com. So far lots of clicks but no callers. Probably just other cleaners looking at the site, or may be my website sucks, one of those designed by me deals, feel free to click on it and scrutinize it if you feel so inclined.
Have a good one!