The setting up a handyman business series contains four posts:
- Basics before you begin.
- Advertising and Marketing.
- Administration and Communication.
- Van layout.
A snippet of the Advertising & Marketing text is below. The full text is five thousand words and includes a video demonstration of the basics of web development.
Businesses need customers and making sure you spend your money and time on the most effective advertising & marketing is very important.
Advertising
Although I have statistics on which advertising worked for me this is quite old and certainly some of it is out of date; hope you appreciate the honesty. There are, however, some general points to note which will always be in date.
- Generally you will get a free listing with the major directories, so make use of it !
- Mail shots, i.e. sending out speculative letters can be effective providing they are well targeted. Here’s an example; we targeted sports clubs for master key systems in the Edinburgh area and followed up by phoning all of them. It was successful and we gained one customer, who came back to us several times, as well as several others which made this advertising campaign worthwhile. It should be noted, however, that folding letters, putting them into envelopes and sticking stamps on them is time consuming. If you are planning a very large mailshot, time how long it takes you to fold, envelope and stamp ten and do the sums. There are companies which will handle mail-shots for you at a price.
- I believe in Van sign writing provided you make it sufficiently distinctive and eye catching. You must also obey the golden rule for van sign writing. Go large on the phone number and web address, and try to make your web address as memorable as possible.
- Leaflet drops take a long time and the rewards will only be worthwhile if the leaflet drop is well targeted and followed up regularly.
Here are the actual statistics from the beginning of using the current accounting software in 2002, until I stopped doing Handyman repairs and Fitting seriously around the end of 2005……
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