Advertising

[BUNGYSTRAP]

I know this has been discussed before and that everyone has their own opinion, but there must be a font of all knowing knowledge out there with regards to advertising and finding work. I tried a leaflet drop of 1000 targetting properties that I thought would reap the benefits and did not receive a single lead. YP and Thomson are there but slow, but more success with Yell.com. Property management businesses are regular and consistent. One thing that I did like are the fridge magnet business cards. Most people throw away a business card after a time but the magnet seems to stay. Age concern and the police have their place for all genuine and reliables. The outright winner is still word of mouth and referals even though in theory this is limited. Still offering to provide lock replacement for free if workable and and has to be damaged to open. Not drilled one yet.

[capt.dunc]

just a quick point about business cards, i had some nice ones made and the lovely man laminated them front and back. not so good, i sometimes write other details on the back for people, and i remember someone on this site suggesting putting the key code of the lock on the back and telling the customer that it was a code for a discount if they used you again. i also know that i write numbers and notes on other people's cards in my wallet, when i'm stuck for a bit of paper. i'm now twice as unlikely to bin that card, and the first business is brought back to mind. so leave the backs plain.

[toomush2drink]

I have to say my best advertising investment pounds per job is my website. Now dont get me wrong its not bringing the work flooding in or is it the best website out there but for its £5 per month cost it always pays for itself unlike other ads ive tried. I have keyrings with my company name and number on and these have worked too. im personally beginning to think there is more money in advertising as it costs a fortune.Word of mouth is good but takes time to establish but when it does its great and free !!
I personally think advertising and what works varies from area to area there is no hard and fast solution, only by trying various things can you tell what will work for you and expensive mistakes WILL be made along the way.Ive had a few calls from wannabe lockies asking what works but its a question i refuse to answer, i always say try it and see as i believe its the only honest answer to that particular question.

[BUNGYSTRAP]

I can understand if people are reluctant to reveal lessons rearnt that have cost them both time and money. Apart from going down the usual route of advertising I was hoping for a few off the wall type idea's that I could try and then report back on how I fared. There must be guys out there studying this sort of stuff at school at the moment including the phsycology involved in advertising and would be the consultation experts to learn from.

[Quin]

Here are a few tips to help boost your web site:

1. Most important is you register your site with DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org/

This is a database which is updated by humans. Almost all of the biggest engines use this link. The downside is it can take months to get on it depending on how many people update the section you want to appear in. My quickest has been a few days and the longest over a year.

2. Don't use a graphic or flash to display text. Don't count on alt tags because Search engines are slowly down-grading them because of wide spread misuse so don't count on them any longer.

3. Don't use tons of fancy scripts because it bloats the html which increases the chance of search engines not indexing properly.

4. Never, ever ever use page forwarding or a host which uses frames to show your page (geocities type frames).

5. Don't use a splash page.

6. Site maps are loved by most top search engines.

7. Validate your code if possible. If there are no errors in the html you run less risks. Run your page through this: http://validator.w3.org/

8. Meta Tags - Keywords are a waste of time, descriptions are slowly going the same route. The title tag is still worth using but keep the words under 15 in total.

9. Link exchange with "Quality" sites. Download Google's toolbar here: http://toolbar.google.com/. On this toolbar you can have the pagerank feature showing. This is a green bar that shows what Google thinks of a site. The higher the PR (Page Rank) the better. Most sites have around 3 to 5. If you're going to link to a site make sure the "Links Page" you'll be on has a good PR. If the links page has a zero ranking but the home page has a PR5 you want to be on the home page and not the links page.

10. Submitting just to google will still spread you about on other engines as most still use sites on google to add to theirs.

11. If you are not on any search engine ask someone with a good ranking to display your link on their home page for a few days. Popular sites get spidered daily (Spidered is where the search engine trawls through the site looking for new links and pages). If you just submit to google using their "Add URL" it can take a few weeks or months to appear. By just linking on one site you can be fully indexed within hours or days.

12. PPC (Pay Per Click) - Worthwhile if the words you're targeting have little competition.

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Almost all my sites (over 20) use these methods and they all have between 300 and 5,000 hits per day.