Starting your own business

[OffshoreGas]

And this thread is about starting a new business so how does that square.

Well it doesn’t have to be an old business for people to recognise it. Spend enough on advertising and you can be a household name.
One pervasive and cheap method is social media.

The trade off is although you make contact with lots of people more than average seem to be fantasists and tossers.

 

[rpm]

Well it doesn’t have to be an old business for people to recognise it. Spend enough on advertising and you can be a household name.
One pervasive and cheap method is social media.

The trade off is although you make contact with lots of people more than average seem to be fantasists and tossers.

Can I ask what your budget is per year for advertising?

 

[Harvest Fields]

From the perspective of a customer. If they call you, you cannot pickup then have a nice message for them to leave a voice mail.

After that call back everyone even if you are not interested in the job. The obvious ones are turn up on time, invest in some app or software to help you with dealing with admin, quotes, invoicing etc.

Be clear on pricing over the phone if possible, it will save you a wasted journey which you could spend marketing or brushing up on your skills.

It is almost impossible to be 100% on time in the trade. My own opinion obviously.

 

[OffshoreGas]

Can I ask what your budget is per year for advertising?

I’ve just started a kitchen business and I’ve set aside £3500 for advertising/promotion in the first year. It obviously drops a lot over time as you find what does and doesn’t work.

 

[OffshoreGas]

It is almost impossible to be 100% on time in the trade. My own opinion obviously.

Very true and I think most people appreciate that, we are all juggling a lot of stuff these days. In my opinion it shows respect for people as well as professionalism to make try and communicate as much as possible. We’ve all been home waiting for a parcel etc with no idea when it’s coming. I tell people I will be there about x and that I’ll ring about an hour before I’m expecting to be there. Doesn’t cost much in terms of money or time and doesn’t start a job off on the wrong foot because they’ve been waiting in for you for 6hrs.

 

[Justice League]

It is almost impossible to be 100% on time in the trade. My own opinion obviously.

Perfectly understand this. I can appreciate it can be hard running a business whilst trying to make sure you can pickup your phone whilst you are on the job.

 

[Justice League]

I do think there are orders of magnitude more time wasters and tossers contact you via Facebook than picking up the phone. There’s plenty of evidence to show businesses that people recognise are more successful than those they don’t.

I am not on FB so cannot comment what its like advertising on there. The way I have been looking for a heating engineer is going to the website of the boiler manufacturers and getting a list of approved contractors.

I know they are all gas registered and been on the courses so they are all competent.

 

[WC1]

Still harvesting and storing mate, more and more people are recognising this and dropping these parisites.

Unfortunately there isn't much that isn't connected to t'interwebs and it all scrapes data, nest and hive are right up there, that's why I don't have them in my home. It's called "capitalization of data"

 

[OffshoreGas]

Unfortunately there isn't much that isn't connected to t'interwebs and it all scrapes data, nest and hive are right up there, that's why I don't have them in my home. It's called "capitalization of data"

I guess part of it comes down to if we care. I kind of like seeing adds for tools and other products that are relevant to me, maybe even of interest. It’s surely better than being bombarded with ads for women’s fashion etc.

 

[Millsy 82]

I’ve just started a kitchen business and I’ve set aside £3500 for advertising/promotion in the first year. It obviously drops a lot over time as you find what does and doesn’t work.

My first year my advertising costs were around 8k. It was the only thing I massively underestimated. I now have very limited advertising but that is still 3k.

As for facebook when it comes to people searching for trades on facebook there are 2 types of people. You have the market place searchers that want cheap and then you have the type that you want and they are the ones that ask their friends by putting up a post on their feed. I'm sure if you spend enough money you can get your advertising through to them as when I was on facebook if I looked at a drill from 1 place the next month I got inundated with advertising of drills but that was always from the big companies like screwfix amazon b&q etc so the ones that spends millions on advertising.

 

[OffshoreGas]

My first year my advertising costs were around 8k. It was the only thing I massively underestimated. I now have very limited advertising but that is still 3k.

As for facebook when it comes to people searching for trades on facebook there are 2 types of people. You have the market place searchers that want cheap and then you have the type that you want and they are the ones that ask their friends by putting up a post on their feed. I'm sure if you spend enough money you can get your advertising through to them as when I was on facebook if I looked at a drill from 1 place the next month I got inundated with advertising of drills but that was always from the big companies like screwfix amazon b&q etc so the ones that spends millions on advertising.

Facebook prides quite good tools for targeted marketing. If your audience is 35-75 year olds living in the north east of England who like jazz music you really can be that specific. You have to pay for the privilege but it wasn’t as much as I’d expected in the past. I’ve found it to be more effective than letter drops in a lot of cases.

 

[Millsy 82]

Facebook prides quite good tools for targeted marketing. If your audience is 35-75 year olds living in the north east of England who like jazz music you really can be that specific. You have to pay for the privilege but it wasn’t as much as I’d expected in the past. I’ve found it to be more effective than letter drops in a lot of cases.

But I dont want a 35-75 who likes jazz I want a homeowner that currently has no heating or no current plumber that looks after them I bet facebook cant tell you that but they could find out but obviously at a price that the likes of us cant afford.

 

[Harvest Fields]

My first year my advertising costs were around 8k. It was the only thing I massively underestimated. I now have very limited advertising but that is still 3k.

As for facebook when it comes to people searching for trades on facebook there are 2 types of people. You have the market place searchers that want cheap and then you have the type that you want and they are the ones that ask their friends by putting up a post on their feed. I'm sure if you spend enough money you can get your advertising through to them as when I was on facebook if I looked at a drill from 1 place the next month I got inundated with advertising of drills but that was always from the big companies like screwfix amazon b&q etc so the ones that spends millions on advertising.

Don’t think I ever spend more than £500.00 a year on advertising. How the hell do you spend £8000.00?

 

[Millsy 82]

Don’t think I ever spend more than £500.00 a year on advertising. How the hell do you spend £8000.00?

In my first year I tried quite a few things local papers, magazines, local radio had a search engine type thing leaflet delivery etc etc. Maybe it's just round me but advertising is stupidly expensive. £100 a week for a 2"×1" advert in a paper that I never got a thing from. They still phone me now trying to get me to go back. I had 4 lots of leaflet delivery which wasnt cheap but got me quite a bit of work.

Now I'm on checkatrade and that's over a grand a year 2 magazines that are £600 each a year and a few parish magazines that are under £300 a year. I do have to cover a fair size area though.

 

[Welder]

In my first year I tried quite a few things local papers, magazines, local radio had a search engine type thing leaflet delivery etc etc. Maybe it's just round me but advertising is stupidly expensive. £100 a week for a 2"×1" advert in a paper that I never got a thing from. They still phone me now trying to get me to go back. I had 4 lots of leaflet delivery which wasnt cheap but got me quite a bit of work.

Now I'm on checkatrade and that's over a grand a year 2 magazines that are £600 each a year and a few parish magazines that are under £300 a year. I do have to cover a fair size area though.

We need a chat lovie... Start a convs.

 

[Justice League]

In my first year I tried quite a few things local papers, magazines, local radio had a search engine type thing leaflet delivery etc etc. Maybe it's just round me but advertising is stupidly expensive. £100 a week for a 2"×1" advert in a paper that I never got a thing from. They still phone me now trying to get me to go back. I had 4 lots of leaflet delivery which wasnt cheap but got me quite a bit of work.

Now I'm on checkatrade and that's over a grand a year 2 magazines that are £600 each a year and a few parish magazines that are under £300 a year. I do have to cover a fair size area though.

Well I can see why I wouldn't find someone like you.