Best Way to Advertise

moneymabel

wOw!! They both look great and very professional but still friendly. Couple of spelling mistakes on the homepage- on the left it says 'to suite you' instead of suit, and on the right about 1-1 tuition it says provided ( past tense when the rest of the sentence is present tense) hope you don't mind me mentioning this!! Please feel free to do the same to my site as I am good at seeing mistakes on other peoples but not my own lol!

chrisb1357

Many thanks to all that have advised and help me so far. Site is now done and Flyer is at the printers.

Just a question does anyone think that putting the price per hour on my website and flyer was a bad idea. I think its good to let people know what i charge instead of showing no price at all. A contact of mine who works in IT in another area is saying its a bad idea and that i am also under charging people which i dont think i am as other computer places in my area charge the same or slightly more than me.

Chris

chickmug

chrisb1357 wrote: »

Many thanks to all that have advised and help me so far. Site is now done and Flyer is at the printers.

Just a question does anyone think that putting the price per hour on my website and flyer was a bad idea. I think its good to let people know what i charge instead of showing no price at all. A contact of mine who works in IT in another area is saying its a bad idea and that i am also under charging people which i dont think i am as other computer places in my area charge the same or slightly more than me.

Chris

As I said in my earlier post 16 I don't think you should draw attention to your price. To a business it may seem good value but to the home user it may seem dear. As a retired owner of an Esate Agency we never put our fees as we felt there was more to our service than people just shopping around for the lowest commission. The flyer is there to get folks to make contact then you have to have your 'sales speil'?

Too cheap - mmm - I would never give my services away cheap but I would when starting off have an 'Introductory' Offer. It can be very hard putting fees up after having charged a lower fee but you DO need to get going.

lauraaurora

Been away on work, forgot to check up on this post. Flyer's loads better now, well done
To answer your question, £20 an hour is not expensive these days, recession or not. And I would want to see a rough guide before I made a phone call, only to find out it was too expensive. I'd say you could lose more clients by not putting a price than you could gain customers if you do put a price.

Hope it all goes well for you

ukbill69

pcfixmanchester wrote: »

Hiya Chris

You getting some good feedback here.

As I said on the phone last night, its not worth rushing in and getting 5,000 leaflets printed without showing that leaflet to people and getting an independent point of view.

Rather than spending the money on 5,000 very simple leaflets that people will not remember or bother to read, spend the money on getting a smaller number of better quality larger leaflets.

The art of a leaflet (or any form on Advertising) is the hook, that one thing that catches the eye and makes the person want to keep reading. I hope you can stand some constructive criticism here, but your leaflet and website have no eye catching feature to make a person picking up your leaflet from the door mat want to read it. We all get too much junk so the thing you have to do is to make your leaflet the one they read and keep while they throw the rest of the pile in the bin.

These are just my ideas, there are lots of others and I hope more people on here come and give you more ideas to play with.

1, Rather than the 5,000 at A6 size, do a small run of A4 Z fold leaflets. Z fold is where you have an A4 piece of paper in Landscape orientation, which you fold into 3 Panels or columns. This gives you 6 Pages to fill and play with.

2, The hook, that first page of the Z Fold should have very sparse text, a nice large eye catching graphic and a simple message in large bold type.

3, At the bottom of that first page should be your name, phone, web, opening times and cost. All the basic information that any person wants to know.

4, Now hopefully the person has seen your front page and is intrigued enough to either open the leaflet or flip it over to read the back. So make sure the Back is again full of basic information about you and your services, in nice large easy to read fonts, without any fussy or overly complex design features that might distract the person from actually reading. The trick here to is to further arouse interest in the reader so they will decide to keep reading or at least put the leaflet aside for when they do have a computer problem.

5, On the Inside of the leaflet you now have a huge A4 sheet to fill. But again stick to plain large easy to read fonts, avoid lots of graphics or distractions, and try and break the page up into distinct areas. For example split between Mac or Windows, Home Users / Office Users, Training or Support. That way the person doesn't feel overwhelmed and can quickly see the section that might be relevant to them.

6, Some Good Hints on actually how to deliver a leaflet.
a) Don't deliver during the day Mon-Fri as your leaflet will just end up in the pile that is picked up when they household returns from work. People just sift out the post they need and generally throw the rest in the bin without even looking at the individual items. The times I have found best is from 7pm - 8:30pm where people fill hear the letterbox go, and usually will go and see what it is. That way your leaflet is the only thing they see and they are much more likely to read at least the first page.
b) When you putting the leaflet through the letterbox, try to have it slightly sticking out, that way it doesnt fall to the floor and get stolen by the dog !! and if you extra precise like I am !! as the person walks to retrieve the leaflet they are looking at your nice large graphic and text as they are walking towards it.
c)Just do small selections of houses at a time, as you walking towards a house try and guage if they are likely to want to spend money on IT Support. Many people still dont like to spend money on IT help when they have already spent a fortune at PC World or similar, and in todays climate it is fair enough that people dont want to or have the money available to spend. So check out the driveway for nice new cars, is the house well maintained, have a walk around the area on a Saturday Afternoon, is there a gardener working away or a painter decorater van oustide. If people are already paying for services they are much more likely to be in the mindset to pay for your services.

As well as leafleting homes, have you thought about other places that offer services ? Strange as it might sound, Beauty Parlours, Spas, Massage, Health clubs are full of people who are prepared to pay to have a good service. If you go to those places and tell them how you could provide a high level of service to their clients, and you offer them a introduction fee then you may well get some work that way.

Hope this all helps

I hope its not breaking forum rules, if it is please tell me or remove, but here is my current leaflet, feel free to take as many ideas as you want from it.

http://sites.google.com/site/fixmypcdownloads/leaflets

Dont be discouraged by the feedback you have had on your leaflet, and remember, dont rush into things, you will make mistakes as you start up in business, but at least if you only order a few hundred leaflets at a time that mistake is small, compared to having 5,000 leaflets that are not bringing you any work in.

Cheers

Andy

I disagree with this comment, nothing wrong with A6 than A4, if you are the only leaflet in that door and is on there floor, you have 3 seconds to see if they bin it, recycle it, keep it and call you. I always find doing the leaflet very bright, to the point, don't have to much writing and doing the same design on both sides, so at least doesnt matter what sides it lands on there floor.

boombap

chrisb1357 wrote: »

Well here is my A6 Flyer, I have made so many changes to it i have lost count on version numbers LOL.

Any good or bad comments please


Flyer link http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3606/3663811728_30f770496e_b.jpg

How about a line at the bottom that says somethings along the lines of...

'keep me for future use!'

S.

Edit - sorry! just realised that your flyer would have gone to the printers by now thus my above comment is no use. Doh!

boombap

Andy / pcfixmanchester:

Very impressive A4 poster but I have a suggestion that may be of use to you (and also ChrisB)...

...How about a section on your flyer about help setting up web cams and other forms of communication for those with relations overseas? There must be stacks of grannies out there who would love to keep in touch with the grandkids in Australia but don't have the technology to do so.

S.