Because I haven't had much in sales, I haven't any money to spend on advertising. What money I do make is just covering the rent & utilities. I need some ideas on ways to promote my store and let people know, I am there and what I sell. If you go to my homepage, it will show you what my store is all about...then maybe someone out there will come up with an idea. I am very artistic & creative and quite handy with tools. My home page is http://www.painterladysusanbriggs.com
I will definitely, appreciate any advice & tips from other business owners or "Newbies". I have found that the best and cheapest marketing is through networking in your community. You will meet lots of people and if you go with the intention of seeing what you have to offer others, as well as what help you can receive, you'll find lots of local business.
Also think outside of the box. What sorts of groups could you go and give a presentation to? Do you have a senior center? Public library? Some sort of decoraters guild? Maybe antiques clubs? If you could put together an informative and fun presentation, you could get your name out there that way.
Your products are very nice and the whole shabby chic things are so very in style. You have a crative streak with the thing you did with the doorway........may be you could put together a presentation about new uses for old things..........
Just start going out at least 4 times a week to join clubs, networking groups, downtown associations etc. It will work for you eventually. People need time to know who your are, then build a relationship with you, build trust in you as a person, then they will purhaps do some business with you.
Another thing that you could do is to have an open house. Once you have belonged to these networking groups, clubs, and given some talks etc. You'll eventually have a list of contacts. You can maybe then through an afternoon tea, or open house type thing. Pass out coupons for specials, or a discount of ___% off. Use that art and creativity. Make up a beautiful flyer with a coupon attached. Hand them out at all of you meet ups, send them to all of the contacts that you have made. Then, keep things very simple, hot tea and cookies, maybe someone from a local school that would play classical music for a small fee or trade of some sort. Maybe have different specials at different times of the day.......get people to come, browse, and maybe stay around for a reason.
Definately do not rush into this. You need the time to create relationships and trusts with people first. Then maybe do the open house or ladies tea party in 6 to 9 months.
That's my best idea for you!
Good luck, get yourself known and respected in your community.........
Happy Holidays,
Pat Bergstedt
Mia Bella Candles
http://www.MyCandleCart.com
You can find lots of places to network by going to www.meetup.com or through the chamber of commerce. Look internet services at http://www.cybershimla.com and sand a message to there costomer care they will help you. You should start by fixing spelling errors...Ive found a couple. you might consider sending sales brochures ,if you have them,to interior designers in your area...with some mention of professional discounting and the like. The other thing you might try is setting up a booth at area flea markets....more for getting your business name out there than for selling purposes but you never know. I operate out my home, I am a wedding photographer. 35 years now. I know ads are high dollars everywhere.
Yellow pages - use one-line.
Church programs on Sunday is good in some areas...
Baker Shop - use flayers or business cards
Newspaper ads get lost from readers most of the time.
Use your web page and drive people to your site is a good one.
Also use Graig's.com & Backpage.com (they are free)
Your in family home & gardens things..stay with home builders of new homes in your area..maybe people will find you easier thru them
Pray alot - it takes 5 years to build a business that can last
30 years.
Best of Luck and I liked your web site and your items look
great.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Roy Luttrell www.mykeepsake.net Dear Painter girl,
First pay attention to details in what advertising you can do on your site refrain from words like OLD and use the best photos you can your cottage chair would look better with out thee clutter around it. As far as advertising check out the book guerrilla marketing it's not very expensive and the pay off is remarkable.It has dozens of great low cost advertising ideas. First of all, you need major revamping of your metatags. You assume that your domain name is a recognizable brand instead of placing a listing of what you are offering. And the use of frames does not permit search robots to index your webpage(s).
The following article will prove helpful to you in streamlining your SEO metatags in order to attract more Net traffic by higher search engine placement.
The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is
to first set up a website and publish its domain name
on major search directories such as Google.com,
Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?...... and
MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these
search directories to provide them with goods and
services. In a sense, these search directories are a
very large Internet Yellow Pages.
Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage
fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using
such "generic" queries will not be able to discover
your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website,
in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.
You may want to consider some simple algorithms which,
when observed and committed in designing of a website
with placement of various critical metatags that can
surely achieve a high search engine presence and
increase Internet traffic to your website. These
metatag strategies work well with published webpages
at Google and Yahoo.
Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based
website, make sure to fill-in the property entries
such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing
to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can
be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the
Internet audience and their incoming setup. For
example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages
take too long to load up and therefore analog users
will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the
Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL
lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So
before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple
question, "Who's my end user - is he on dialup or
DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users
for maximum marketability, then select analog users
since 80% of most resident users are still analog
Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages
is best for them.
A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text,
is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit
the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a
graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.
Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots
are unable to properly classify textual material.
Placement of Metatags:
A ranking or search order does take place with Google
and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which
should consist of no more than 60 characters separated
by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your
domain name is a major recognizable brand name.
The second metatag is the "Description" which is
usually up to 41 words to form a complete paragraph which
best describes one's goods and services. It is not merely a list.
And the very last category - "Keywords" are also
somewhat limited to 15 words which can be plural
and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries
which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which
is defined as the loading, and submission of
repetitive words into a particular metatag category.
"Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported
to Google's spamreport.com can result in the
elimination of your website from their search
directory.
Here's an example of a very highly-placed website on
Google.com: Begin with the very "generic" search query
"sandwiches downtown los angeles," taking note to not
abbreviate Los Angeles to "LA" and of course, leave
out the parentheses ("). It will bring up some 2.4
million+ search results. Check out where "Nazos.net"
is ranked. It's on the FIRST FRONT PAGE [ranked #5]!
Again, Nazos.net's high web presence was achieved by
proper web design and placement of relevant metatags
according to Google's publication guidelines.
Good luck! You could also try a local community newspaper. Invite them to see your store and possibly write a column about you. You could also frame it from a "reality" stand point - that they could follow your progress, your struggles and successes.
It seems that you have already received some very good advice - that which strikes the strongest chord with you, is where you should start - following the suggestion of another respondent, I will pray you are blessed with the answer to help grow your business. don,t pay all your funds on ads simply do as many pr stunts as you can like get local newspapers to a story about you the more gimicky the more chance of photo s of course them photos will be taken outside your shop
outcome free advertising
hopes this helps email promotion visit site below some free some you pay one time
http://killeen.8m.com/favorite_links.htm... Go to my profile and send me an email and I will send you a list of over 75 FREE places to advertise on the web. I own a home business and put out over 200 ads a week all for free and have daily orders! It is alot of work but it is free and definetly worth the efforts! |
