Nice people thread part 5 - nicely does it

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

I cannot believe i have spent almost all of the morning reading a book about hair. And i am still not much the wiser.

One is rarely wiser.... simply better informed.

PasturesNew

D4mn. Had a plan, but it's tide dependent. Just checked and it's high tide at 2:30, so I can't get to the secret location I wanted to pop out and photograph. Plan A was: Go snap stuff, pop into the shop to pick up some books I've spotted at £3, which sell for £5 each and take a chance on making 5x£5 for my £3 investment, get a hot pastie, come home and tell you how great the beach/pasty were. Have to go about 5ish now though.......

PasturesNew

Maybe the secret to going East/West/East is to go North-East/South-East. Go up and over to come down. But it would look the long way so you'd never try it to see.

Doozergirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

However.... having hits is useless if you're not converting.

You need to think about how you can measure your conversions. then you need to be able to convert more. This is Marketing Plan 2013 stuff.

If I turn up at your website looking for a nice kitchen - you need to know that I came and be able to entice me into getting a quote. Then you need to make sure that those quotes you are doing are converting.... and if not then improve your sales technique, or tighten up your criteria for quotations.... Marketing 2013-2014.

Think about sites you go to - which ones have you signed up with? Why did you? Did they give you something you wanted? Something free?

Oh heck! It's a funny one isn't it. I don't know how many builders genuinely find work through a website - I doubt it's many. What I'd like to do is build some credibility and give us more of a footprint so that when people do Google us, or get given a business card, or hear about us through word of mouth or see the vehicle and the boy working, they find us, it looks professional and I sound like I know what I'm talking about and that we are indeed doozering away and not hanging out on MSE all day

All I can give away free is a quote. I doubt they'll come after us for Sunlife style free pens or I'll be bankrupted by people on the freebie board asking for quotes and pens!

GDB2222

To be frank, Doozer, the best businesses are those where there is automatic repeat business. It takes longer to build up, but then you are really creating a store of value. Any business that is based on a stream of once-off projects is forever chasing around for new business or turning away customers.

michaels

I bought a climbing frame on ebay for the kids at xmas for £25. Have since found them a better one and so have just sold on the original - at £60

PasturesNew wrote: »

D4mn. Had a plan, but it's tide dependent. Just checked and it's high tide at 2:30, so I can't get to the secret location I wanted to pop out and photograph. Plan A was: Go snap stuff, pop into the shop to pick up some books I've spotted at £3, which sell for £5 each and take a chance on making 5x£5 for my £3 investment, get a hot pastie, come home and tell you how great the beach/pasty were. Have to go about 5ish now though.......

PasturesNew

Doozergirl wrote: »

Oh heck! It's a funny one isn't it. I don't know how many builders genuinely find work through a website - I doubt it's many. What I'd like to do is build some credibility and give us more of a footprint so that when people do Google us, or get given a business card, or hear about us through word of mouth or see the vehicle and the boy working, they find us, it looks professional and I sound like I know what I'm talking about and that we are indeed doozering away and not hanging out on MSE all day

All I can give away free is a quote. I doubt they'll come after us for Sunlife style free pens or I'll be bankrupted by people on the freebie board asking for quotes and pens!

Yeah - you don't have to give something away for free .... although you could get paid to give away free stuff. Marketing Plan 2014 methinks. It consists of identifying a local, complementary business to yours that would be prepared to pay you for leads..... and this is how it works:

Say you identify solar panel fitters in your area - well, you could simply add 1-2 pages and a blog post/month about solar panels, aesthetics, value, ROI, etc .... and offer a free quote. After that there are a few routes. One/easy way is to then redirect those quotes directly to a solar panel company on a "per lead" basis and be done with it. Or, you could offer a free quote and a free keyring with an LED torch (topical) and send their information into YOUR database, then forward it to the company paying for leads. They cough up enough to cover the cost of the torches.

I just made up the torch, but you could buy those for £2/under and the leads could be worth £4-5 each to you... NOW you stop caring if it's on the freebies board. Simply set some location criteria to the offer if you wish ... and you can even geo-target the page itself so people would only see it if they live in the correct region/town.... as I said, Marketing 2014.

Or set it as a "first 100", or "weekly draw" if you're nervous. All stuff to play around with - but you have to work out, from a marketing perspective, what you really want - and do your stats on conversions/profit, Cost per Acquisition. But a second, residual income stream (or dozens of them) can be handy too.

PasturesNew

michaels wrote: »

I bought a climbing frame on ebay for the kids at xmas for £25. Have since found them a better one and so have just sold on the original - at £60

You're just like my dad.... except he used to decide to sell our stuff, then sell our stuff, pocket the money and not buy us something else. And he had NO idea this isn't in the spirit of gift giving.

PasturesNew

Doozer Approved Suppliers List .... that could be worth some money.

michaels

So we were looking at this house, it was on rightmove for about half an hour Thursday morning last week, rang agent to ask if we could view this weekend but they are expecting to have at least 6 offers by the end of today, some substantially over asking price and are then going to ask the vendors what they should do next. What happened to the slow housing market?!

Then again asking price is 525, you could spend 100 extending and it would be worth probably 850 - and there is 27 feet from the side of the existing property to the boundary so if you were allowed to build a new property there you would probably have a 3 bed detached worth 450-500k and a 4 bed semi worth at least 500 same for an outlay of about 200k. It even has a sort of kitchen and bathroom so is probably mortgageable.