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Add You - Marketing Techniques: What Works & What Doesn't for a PC Repair Business
It has long been acknowledged that it is easier and cheaper to get more business from your existing customers than it is to get any business from somebody who has never done business with you.Your customers already know you and their business is more profitable for you because there is no advertising cost involved.A referral system, upselling and backend selling are all worth trying if you wish to increase the income you get from your customers. They can be used for marketing online or offline and they cost little or nothing to put into practice.It is a good idea to instigate a system of getting referrals from satisfied customers. The referral system can generate a lot of profitable sales which are relatively easy to get. A customer survey can be used to gain referrals and it can be sent out by post, email, fax or put it up on a web page.Suggested questions could include:What did you most like about our product or our service?What could we do to improve our product or service for you?Do you know anyone who would want our products or services?The first questions focus on the benefits you provide and your customer is more likely to give you referrals when they think about those benefits.Answers to the first question can often be used as a testimonial if your customer agrees. The second question could give you a warning of a problem which needs to be addressd.Upselling can be achieved when your cu
In a Yellow Pages Ad, you can get carried away by trying to do a long sales pitch, when, in fact, you can just list a few important things you do, and tell them to visit your website for the full details. This gets them to your website and there you can give them the full scoop and exactly how you can help them. Just don’t spend $100 or $500 every month to tell a story that you can do for free on a website.
Here is my Yellow Pages Ad.
I spend $50 per month on this ad:
(my logo)
•Computer Tune-Ups
•Small Business Networking
•Wireless Networking
•PC Troubleshooting & Repair
•Custom-Built Computers
•Computer Upgrades
•OnSite Support
•Microsoft-Certified Techs
•Website Design & Hosting
www.LapeerTechGroup.com
Columbiaville, MI
(810) 793-1093
FREE Computer Pickup
BROCHURES & BUSINESS CARDS
Of course, you definitely need something to leave with potential and current customers. You absolutely MUST have a brochure and business card, and NOT the peel-off or perforated card stock you get from your local office supply store, and print them off on your ink jet printer! Your brochures and business cards are sometimes the only thing that a potential customer will see that represents your company. Now, you may work out of your home, but you don’t want it to look like you do. You want to appear as if you are a HUGE computer company, capable of handling any of their computer needs. A basement business card job doesn’t say that. If you want to gain good credibility, spend a little money and get commercially-printed brochures and business cards.
You will want a good image design (designed by a professional) with raised ink on the business cards and some kind of color (no black and white business cards or brochures). If you can afford it, get matching business cards and brochures, with the brochures on a white or ivory, gloss stock (like a 70# gloss text). You don’t want it to look like you photocopied the brochures. And it is proven that by adding some color to your marketing pieces, your responses are MUCH higher, than wi
Are you happy with the quality and quantity of job candidates you attract?If your total recruiting effort consists of simply placing a ‘help-wanted’ ad in the local newspaper you will often fail to attract the candidates you want. You need to take a more creative approach, especially in markets with low unemployment.You’ll also want to create powerful recruiting materials.A mistake made by many employers is to describe their job opportunity only in terms of what they require. They fail to explain why their company is a great place to work.You will more successfully attract the best candidates when you realize this truth—recruiting is a marketing activity. In tight labor markets this is especially true because your best potential candidates often currently have a job with someone else—your competition!Recognize that all potential job candidates have one question uppermost in their minds, “What’s in it for me?” When you skillfully answer that question in your recruiting materials you will attract both a better quality and higher number of candidates.If you don’t tell prospective candidates why your company is a great place to work and someone else who is recruiting at the same time does tell them, you will never be better than second choice. And over time, the quality of your team will be weaker as a result. So always sell your company as a great place to work.Now let’s look at 19 ways to attract candidates.<
NEWSPAPER ADS
I knew quite a bit about graphic design (being a graphic designer for many years), so I would put an appetizing ad, no, in fact, a COUPON, in the local newspaper. People are always looking for a discount. And EVERYONE has computer problems. So I should just get swamped with business just off this one ad. NOPE! I got one phone call from my ad. I had placed the ad in the local newspaper (our city’s main newspaper) which went to 33,000 homes, and I had it come out on the biggest readership day: Sunday. The ad I placed was a professionally-designed Computer Tune-up ad that I had done, giving them a discount from the regular price of $69, to $49. They were saving $20! It was an incredible deal! But I only had one response. Why? What did I do wrong?
Unfortunately, I was forced to use a horrible, red border. It is HUGE! In order to get the deal I was getting for this ad, my ad had to be put in with a couple of other ads (not related to the computer business) and have an ice cream-looking coupon border around it.
The ad had all of the elements of a good coupon. It has a GREAT deal! You are saving $20 off the regular price (this is the next best thing to FREE – a dollar value of savings). They have to act now (call to action) because it is for a limited time and expires in two weeks. People are graphic in nature and the picture of the computer and the words, “Computer Help!” in the screen will identify with people having computer problems. The headline is bold and heavy, it stands out from the rest – so that you don’t have a paragraph of information that people won’t read, and it speaks directly to people having a slow computer (everyone has a slow computer). Then it goes on to explain the headline in more detail with a subhead. Plus, there is a GUARANTEE of a speed increase. You CAN’T go wrong with an ad like this, can you? Well, I did. I don’t believe that the ad is evil and doesn’t work. I believe that I had the ad where people don’t look.
Whenever you get ready to do any type of advertisement, you should test-market it, first. Whether it is an ad, a website (or page), direct marketing (such as mailers, mailed brochures or ads), etc., you should test it on different types of people to see how they will respond, and record their responses. In the case of the ad, I should have passed this ad out to several people and got their responses of the ad. I should have then placed this ad on a page with several other similar ads and got responses from different people looking at the entire page of ads, had them put down the page, and asked them to tell me what stood out. Could they remember any good deals? This would tell me if my ad would stand out in a newspaper, among other similar ads.
In my particular instance of only getting one response from my “great” ad, it was literally buried in with other ads that looked similar to mine. In fact, my ad was not even on a page with other services, but “hidden” on a series of pages that had nothing at all to do with what I was offering, or computers, or even a story about a computer… nothing! People who would be looking for my type of service were not going to look where my ad was, and that is the lesson: PUT YOUR AD WHERE YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS WILL LOOK, NOT WHERE YOU GET A GOOD DEAL ON ADVERTISING ! and DO TEST MARKETING.
After my ad came out, I gave my wife the newspaper and asked her to find my ad (test marketing after the advertising came out… too little, too late). It took her TWO TIMES of going through the newspaper, page-by-page (and this is a small city newspaper) to find my ad (and she knew what to look for and what the ad looked like). So how are potential customers going to find my ad if they don’t even know that they need to look for it??? They won’t!
Think of it like this… if you want to sell motorcycle parts, put your ad in a motorcycle magazine. You have to think like the customer. A customer wants motorcycle parts, so where should they go? They start looking at places that sell motorcycles and accessories, groups that are associated with motorcycles, magazines that cater to the motorcycle crowd, message boards and websites that are all about motorcycles. You may or may not go to the newspaper and look through every page and see if someone is selling motorcycle parts. In fact, it is probably safe to say that a person looking for motorcycle parts won’t leaf through pages of articles in a newspaper, looking for motorcycle parts. They may look through the only place in the newspaper that they think might list places that sell motorcycle parts, and that would be the business section of the newspaper and/or the classifieds. So, if you were in the business of selling motorcycle parts, you would want to have an ad right where your potential customer expects to find an ad for motorcycle parts. Place the ad in those sections ONLY. Do not place it where I did (in the middle of a bunch of articles) because I got a good deal.
So, in case your eyes just rolled back in your head, here is the gist of what I just said… when placing an ad for PC Repair in your local newspaper, either place it in the Business Listing for Services in your area, or place it in the proper classified sections, where people will look for your type of service. Do a test: ask a few people you know where they would look in your local newspaper if they needed PC Repair Help. Let’s say that their computer was running extremely slow and they needed help before they pulled out the rest of their hair, where in the newspaper would they look. Ask at least 10 people. And whatever the majority is, that is where you should place the ad (no matter how much it costs). If not, you are just wasting your money. Remember to always think like your customer.
WORD OF MOUTH ADVERTISING
Once I started getting customers, because I always did a little extra for the customers, I received really good word-of-mouth advertising and referrals. Referrals are gold! When you can call or stop by and see someone about computer problems that you already know that are having (from their friend or relative) and you can drop a name of someone they know who sent you, you are as good as IN THE DOOR! If your service was good for their friend, it will be good for them. And when you have the name of their friend, it is like you are their friend as well.
One way to get referrals from your customers is before you are completely done with the job you are doing for them, and they can see a definite improvement, give them a piece of paper and a pencil and ask them to write down 3 friends or relatives of theirs who could benefit just like they did. Most of the time they will be happy to give you the names, if you have made them happy. If you do this at every job, your business will snowball! This is the best way to build a business: by doing a good job and having a good reputation, with a network of people who sent you to the next customers, stamped with their seal of approval. It doesn’t get any better than that!
YELLOW PAGES ADS
A Yellow Pages ad is a good thing, but you don’t need to spend the big bucks to get the biggest, most colorful ad, with ALL of your possible services, mother’s maiden name, the history of your business, etc. on it. You need something a little more than the listing (just to stand out from the other guys a little). Your ad should list your company name, address, phone, and some services. One thing that has helped me get business over my competition is that I offer FREE Computer Pickup. People either don’t like to, or don’t know how to, unhook the web of tangled cables to their computer, for fear that they will never get them hooked back up. I offer a FREE Computer Pickup, where I come by and work on their computer right there, or I unhook it for them and take it back to my shop to work on it. And when I return, I don’t just drop it off at the front door, I go in and hook it all back up for them. This is not only a HUGE benefit of them going with me over my competition (who is standing behind a pretty glass case, waiting for business to come through the door), but also shows that I really did fix their computer and it now works and works better. It is a reassurance factor and builds credibility.
In a Yellow Pages Ad, you can get carried away by trying to do a long sales pitch, when, in fact, you can just list a few important things you do, and tell them to visit your website for the full details. This gets them to your website and there you can give them the full scoop and exactly how you can help them. Just don’t spend $100 or $500 every month to tell a story that you can do for free on a website.
Here is my Yellow Pages Ad.
I spend $50 per month on this ad:
(my logo)
•Computer Tune-Ups
•Small Business Networking
•Wireless Networking
•PC Troubleshooting & Repair
•Custom-Built Computers
•Computer Upgrades
•OnSite Support
•Microsoft-Certified Techs
•Website Design & Hosting
www.LapeerTechGroup.com
Columbiaville, MI
(810) 793-1093
FREE Computer Pickup
BROCHURES & BUSINESS CARDS
Of course, you definitely need something to leave with potential and current customers. You absolutely MUST have a brochure and business card, and NOT the peel-off or perforated card stock you get from your local office supply store, and print them off on your ink jet printer! Your brochures and business cards are sometimes the only thing that a potential customer will see that represents your company. Now, you may work out of your home, but you don’t want it to look like you do. You want to appear as if you are a HUGE computer company, capable of handling any of their computer needs. A basement business card job doesn’t say that. If you want to gain good credibility, spend a little money and get commercially-printed brochures and business cards.
You will want a good image design (designed by a professional) with raised ink on the business cards and some kind of color (no black and white business cards or brochures). If you can afford it, get matching business cards and brochures, with the brochures on a white or ivory, gloss stock (like a 70# gloss text). You don’t want it to look like you photocopied the brochures. And it is proven that by adding some color to your marketing pieces, your responses are MUCH higher, than wi
The highly competitive surroundings of the business world have instigated the need for a company to boost its corporate branding. Compelling presentation materials are needed to be used as direct mail pieces or hands outs during trade show and conventions.One effective material in building a company’s corporate identity is the presentation folder. The basic use of presentation folder is to carry your direct mail or hand outs. But they posses great marketing potential beyond what they are expected to be. Yes they serve as a package of your company’s business cards, brochures, direct mailers, and other company literature but their role in business has shifted into something more remarkable. Presentation folders not only convey what your company is all about for they also entice your potential market to patronize your company.Basically to achieve a winning promotion, you should consider how you will be able to heighten your corporate image. You see how your potential customers or clients see you imply your image. For this reason you should take note of your folder design. A presentation folder is considered to be good if it’s able to impart what you’re trying to say to your prospects and drive them to get in touch with your company. It’s more of stimulating your customers’ minds to bank on your products and services.Avoid putting too much text on your folders for it may make your promotional material dull and more likely it will go directly to t
Whenever you get ready to do any type of advertisement, you should test-market it, first. Whether it is an ad, a website (or page), direct marketing (such as mailers, mailed brochures or ads), etc., you should test it on different types of people to see how they will respond, and record their responses. In the case of the ad, I should have passed this ad out to several people and got their responses of the ad. I should have then placed this ad on a page with several other similar ads and got responses from different people looking at the entire page of ads, had them put down the page, and asked them to tell me what stood out. Could they remember any good deals? This would tell me if my ad would stand out in a newspaper, among other similar ads.
In my particular instance of only getting one response from my “great” ad, it was literally buried in with other ads that looked similar to mine. In fact, my ad was not even on a page with other services, but “hidden” on a series of pages that had nothing at all to do with what I was offering, or computers, or even a story about a computer… nothing! People who would be looking for my type of service were not going to look where my ad was, and that is the lesson: PUT YOUR AD WHERE YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS WILL LOOK, NOT WHERE YOU GET A GOOD DEAL ON ADVERTISING ! and DO TEST MARKETING.
After my ad came out, I gave my wife the newspaper and asked her to find my ad (test marketing after the advertising came out… too little, too late). It took her TWO TIMES of going through the newspaper, page-by-page (and this is a small city newspaper) to find my ad (and she knew what to look for and what the ad looked like). So how are potential customers going to find my ad if they don’t even know that they need to look for it??? They won’t!
Think of it like this… if you want to sell motorcycle parts, put your ad in a motorcycle magazine. You have to think like the customer. A customer wants motorcycle parts, so where should they go? They start looking at places that sell motorcycles and accessories, groups that are associated with motorcycles, magazines that cater to the motorcycle crowd, message boards and websites that are all about motorcycles. You may or may not go to the newspaper and look through every page and see if someone is selling motorcycle parts. In fact, it is probably safe to say that a person looking for motorcycle parts won’t leaf through pages of articles in a newspaper, looking for motorcycle parts. They may look through the only place in the newspaper that they think might list places that sell motorcycle parts, and that would be the business section of the newspaper and/or the classifieds. So, if you were in the business of selling motorcycle parts, you would want to have an ad right where your potential customer expects to find an ad for motorcycle parts. Place the ad in those sections ONLY. Do not place it where I did (in the middle of a bunch of articles) because I got a good deal.
So, in case your eyes just rolled back in your head, here is the gist of what I just said… when placing an ad for PC Repair in your local newspaper, either place it in the Business Listing for Services in your area, or place it in the proper classified sections, where people will look for your type of service. Do a test: ask a few people you know where they would look in your local newspaper if they needed PC Repair Help. Let’s say that their computer was running extremely slow and they needed help before they pulled out the rest of their hair, where in the newspaper would they look. Ask at least 10 people. And whatever the majority is, that is where you should place the ad (no matter how much it costs). If not, you are just wasting your money. Remember to always think like your customer.
WORD OF MOUTH ADVERTISING
Once I started getting customers, because I always did a little extra for the customers, I received really good word-of-mouth advertising and referrals. Referrals are gold! When you can call or stop by and see someone about computer problems that you already know that are having (from their friend or relative) and you can drop a name of someone they know who sent you, you are as good as IN THE DOOR! If your service was good for their friend, it will be good for them. And when you have the name of their friend, it is like you are their friend as well.
One way to get referrals from your customers is before you are completely done with the job you are doing for them, and they can see a definite improvement, give them a piece of paper and a pencil and ask them to write down 3 friends or relatives of theirs who could benefit just like they did. Most of the time they will be happy to give you the names, if you have made them happy. If you do this at every job, your business will snowball! This is the best way to build a business: by doing a good job and having a good reputation, with a network of people who sent you to the next customers, stamped with their seal of approval. It doesn’t get any better than that!
YELLOW PAGES ADS
A Yellow Pages ad is a good thing, but you don’t need to spend the big bucks to get the biggest, most colorful ad, with ALL of your possible services, mother’s maiden name, the history of your business, etc. on it. You need something a little more than the listing (just to stand out from the other guys a little). Your ad should list your company name, address, phone, and some services. One thing that has helped me get business over my competition is that I offer FREE Computer Pickup. People either don’t like to, or don’t know how to, unhook the web of tangled cables to their computer, for fear that they will never get them hooked back up. I offer a FREE Computer Pickup, where I come by and work on their computer right there, or I unhook it for them and take it back to my shop to work on it. And when I return, I don’t just drop it off at the front door, I go in and hook it all back up for them. This is not only a HUGE benefit of them going with me over my competition (who is standing behind a pretty glass case, waiting for business to come through the door), but also shows that I really did fix their computer and it now works and works better. It is a reassurance factor and builds credibility.
In a Yellow Pages Ad, you can get carried away by trying to do a long sales pitch, when, in fact, you can just list a few important things you do, and tell them to visit your website for the full details. This gets them to your website and there you can give them the full scoop and exactly how you can help them. Just don’t spend $100 or $500 every month to tell a story that you can do for free on a website.
Here is my Yellow Pages Ad.
I spend $50 per month on this ad:
(my logo)
•Computer Tune-Ups
•Small Business Networking
•Wireless Networking
•PC Troubleshooting & Repair
•Custom-Built Computers
•Computer Upgrades
•OnSite Support
•Microsoft-Certified Techs
•Website Design & Hosting
www.LapeerTechGroup.com
Columbiaville, MI
(810) 793-1093
FREE Computer Pickup
BROCHURES & BUSINESS CARDS
Of course, you definitely need something to leave with potential and current customers. You absolutely MUST have a brochure and business card, and NOT the peel-off or perforated card stock you get from your local office supply store, and print them off on your ink jet printer! Your brochures and business cards are sometimes the only thing that a potential customer will see that represents your company. Now, you may work out of your home, but you don’t want it to look like you do. You want to appear as if you are a HUGE computer company, capable of handling any of their computer needs. A basement business card job doesn’t say that. If you want to gain good credibility, spend a little money and get commercially-printed brochures and business cards.
You will want a good image design (designed by a professional) with raised ink on the business cards and some kind of color (no black and white business cards or brochures). If you can afford it, get matching business cards and brochures, with the brochures on a white or ivory, gloss stock (like a 70# gloss text). You don’t want it to look like you photocopied the brochures. And it is proven that by adding some color to your marketing pieces, your responses are MUCH higher, than wi
Should we believe the experts in business? In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell offered his telephone patent to Western Union, the largest telegraph company in America, for $100,000. A committee of experts was convened to decide on the company’s interest in the new technology. The decision was clear.“Bell’s profession is that of a voice teacher … yet he claims to have discovered an instrument of great practical value in communication, which has been overlooked by thousands of workers who have spent years in this field. Any telegraph engineer will at once see the fallacy of this plan. The public simply cannot be trusted to handle technical communications equipment … When making a call, the subscriber must give the number verbally to the operator who will have to deal with the persons who may be illiterate, speak with lisps or stammer, or have foreign accents or who may be sleepy or intoxicated when making a call … In conclusion, the committee feels that it must advise against any investment whatever in Bell’s scheme.” (Martin 1977, p 11) What was the cause of the blindness exhibited by the Western Union committee? Another common cause of expert misjudgment is the “numeration bias.” Experts, like all humans, tend to assign a value to an idea by the number of people who support it. On the one hand, Western Union had all the “thousand of workers who spend years in the field” and on the other, the lone Alexander Graham Bell,
So, in case your eyes just rolled back in your head, here is the gist of what I just said… when placing an ad for PC Repair in your local newspaper, either place it in the Business Listing for Services in your area, or place it in the proper classified sections, where people will look for your type of service. Do a test: ask a few people you know where they would look in your local newspaper if they needed PC Repair Help. Let’s say that their computer was running extremely slow and they needed help before they pulled out the rest of their hair, where in the newspaper would they look. Ask at least 10 people. And whatever the majority is, that is where you should place the ad (no matter how much it costs). If not, you are just wasting your money. Remember to always think like your customer.
WORD OF MOUTH ADVERTISING
Once I started getting customers, because I always did a little extra for the customers, I received really good word-of-mouth advertising and referrals. Referrals are gold! When you can call or stop by and see someone about computer problems that you already know that are having (from their friend or relative) and you can drop a name of someone they know who sent you, you are as good as IN THE DOOR! If your service was good for their friend, it will be good for them. And when you have the name of their friend, it is like you are their friend as well.
One way to get referrals from your customers is before you are completely done with the job you are doing for them, and they can see a definite improvement, give them a piece of paper and a pencil and ask them to write down 3 friends or relatives of theirs who could benefit just like they did. Most of the time they will be happy to give you the names, if you have made them happy. If you do this at every job, your business will snowball! This is the best way to build a business: by doing a good job and having a good reputation, with a network of people who sent you to the next customers, stamped with their seal of approval. It doesn’t get any better than that!
YELLOW PAGES ADS
A Yellow Pages ad is a good thing, but you don’t need to spend the big bucks to get the biggest, most colorful ad, with ALL of your possible services, mother’s maiden name, the history of your business, etc. on it. You need something a little more than the listing (just to stand out from the other guys a little). Your ad should list your company name, address, phone, and some services. One thing that has helped me get business over my competition is that I offer FREE Computer Pickup. People either don’t like to, or don’t know how to, unhook the web of tangled cables to their computer, for fear that they will never get them hooked back up. I offer a FREE Computer Pickup, where I come by and work on their computer right there, or I unhook it for them and take it back to my shop to work on it. And when I return, I don’t just drop it off at the front door, I go in and hook it all back up for them. This is not only a HUGE benefit of them going with me over my competition (who is standing behind a pretty glass case, waiting for business to come through the door), but also shows that I really did fix their computer and it now works and works better. It is a reassurance factor and builds credibility.
In a Yellow Pages Ad, you can get carried away by trying to do a long sales pitch, when, in fact, you can just list a few important things you do, and tell them to visit your website for the full details. This gets them to your website and there you can give them the full scoop and exactly how you can help them. Just don’t spend $100 or $500 every month to tell a story that you can do for free on a website.
Here is my Yellow Pages Ad.
I spend $50 per month on this ad:
(my logo)
•Computer Tune-Ups
•Small Business Networking
•Wireless Networking
•PC Troubleshooting & Repair
•Custom-Built Computers
•Computer Upgrades
•OnSite Support
•Microsoft-Certified Techs
•Website Design & Hosting
www.LapeerTechGroup.com
Columbiaville, MI
(810) 793-1093
FREE Computer Pickup
BROCHURES & BUSINESS CARDS
Of course, you definitely need something to leave with potential and current customers. You absolutely MUST have a brochure and business card, and NOT the peel-off or perforated card stock you get from your local office supply store, and print them off on your ink jet printer! Your brochures and business cards are sometimes the only thing that a potential customer will see that represents your company. Now, you may work out of your home, but you don’t want it to look like you do. You want to appear as if you are a HUGE computer company, capable of handling any of their computer needs. A basement business card job doesn’t say that. If you want to gain good credibility, spend a little money and get commercially-printed brochures and business cards.
You will want a good image design (designed by a professional) with raised ink on the business cards and some kind of color (no black and white business cards or brochures). If you can afford it, get matching business cards and brochures, with the brochures on a white or ivory, gloss stock (like a 70# gloss text). You don’t want it to look like you photocopied the brochures. And it is proven that by adding some color to your marketing pieces, your responses are MUCH higher, than wi
What?The good…the bad…and the ugly! That pretty much sums things up on the topic of meetings. There are good ones, bad ones and ugly ones.So What?Stop going to bad or ugly meetings. Stop conducting bad or ugly meetings. Meetings are often necessary, so if you must have one, make it a productive use of everyone’s time.Now What?Here are a few quick tips to help get your meetings going in the right direction.Clarify and clearly communicate the purpose of your meeting. The more you clarify, the more you increase your chances of having a successful meeting.After you clarify your purpose, try to find any legitimate reason to avoid having the meeting. Can things be handled in a memo or an e-mail? Would one-on-one conversations be as or more effective?Are the right people invited to your meeting? Are people included that don’t need to be there?Can materials be sent to attendees prior to the meeting to facilitate discussions or decisions?Be ruthless about starting and ending on time.Do not allow off-topic discussions. Use a flipchart or pad of paper to capture these items and handle them later. Get back on the topic of the meeting as soon as you capture these off-topic ideas.Have one person designated as a recorder to take notes for everyone and distribute the notes to all meeting attendees. Everyone
One way to get referrals from your customers is before you are completely done with the job you are doing for them, and they can see a definite improvement, give them a piece of paper and a pencil and ask them to write down 3 friends or relatives of theirs who could benefit just like they did. Most of the time they will be happy to give you the names, if you have made them happy. If you do this at every job, your business will snowball! This is the best way to build a business: by doing a good job and having a good reputation, with a network of people who sent you to the next customers, stamped with their seal of approval. It doesn’t get any better than that!
YELLOW PAGES ADS
A Yellow Pages ad is a good thing, but you don’t need to spend the big bucks to get the biggest, most colorful ad, with ALL of your possible services, mother’s maiden name, the history of your business, etc. on it. You need something a little more than the listing (just to stand out from the other guys a little). Your ad should list your company name, address, phone, and some services. One thing that has helped me get business over my competition is that I offer FREE Computer Pickup. People either don’t like to, or don’t know how to, unhook the web of tangled cables to their computer, for fear that they will never get them hooked back up. I offer a FREE Computer Pickup, where I come by and work on their computer right there, or I unhook it for them and take it back to my shop to work on it. And when I return, I don’t just drop it off at the front door, I go in and hook it all back up for them. This is not only a HUGE benefit of them going with me over my competition (who is standing behind a pretty glass case, waiting for business to come through the door), but also shows that I really did fix their computer and it now works and works better. It is a reassurance factor and builds credibility.
In a Yellow Pages Ad, you can get carried away by trying to do a long sales pitch, when, in fact, you can just list a few important things you do, and tell them to visit your website for the full details. This gets them to your website and there you can give them the full scoop and exactly how you can help them. Just don’t spend $100 or $500 every month to tell a story that you can do for free on a website.
Here is my Yellow Pages Ad.
I spend $50 per month on this ad:
(my logo)
•Computer Tune-Ups
•Small Business Networking
•Wireless Networking
•PC Troubleshooting & Repair
•Custom-Built Computers
•Computer Upgrades
•OnSite Support
•Microsoft-Certified Techs
•Website Design & Hosting
www.LapeerTechGroup.com
Columbiaville, MI
(810) 793-1093
FREE Computer Pickup
BROCHURES & BUSINESS CARDS
Of course, you definitely need something to leave with potential and current customers. You absolutely MUST have a brochure and business card, and NOT the peel-off or perforated card stock you get from your local office supply store, and print them off on your ink jet printer! Your brochures and business cards are sometimes the only thing that a potential customer will see that represents your company. Now, you may work out of your home, but you don’t want it to look like you do. You want to appear as if you are a HUGE computer company, capable of handling any of their computer needs. A basement business card job doesn’t say that. If you want to gain good credibility, spend a little money and get commercially-printed brochures and business cards.
You will want a good image design (designed by a professional) with raised ink on the business cards and some kind of color (no black and white business cards or brochures). If you can afford it, get matching business cards and brochures, with the brochures on a white or ivory, gloss stock (like a 70# gloss text). You don’t want it to look like you photocopied the brochures. And it is proven that by adding some color to your marketing pieces, your responses are MUCH higher, than wi
As the owner of a flourishing business, you need to cultivate three essential skills. While emphasis is often given to skills like reading and analyzing financial statements and how to sell with conviction, the following three skills are less spoken about and yet ultimately mark the difference between someone who is self-employed and a true visionary leader. All great business people must know how to discern a good deal from a bad deal and act on that decision, when to listen to their gut and how to set priorities. This boils down to the ability to think, feel and act. These three skills are not often addressed in a business class or even in most MBA programs thus cultivating them will truly put you among the business elite. We’ll briefly explore why each of these is important and how to apply each skill to making your business flourish.How to think through critical decision making: You must know how to analyze a situation, whether it is real or imagined, with past numbers or projected figures and see the business sense of it, or the lack thereof. This is critical thinking. You must be able to do this despite knowing little about a situation. The ability to make good decisions, given often limited information, is a skill to cultivate in order to become a master CEO. You also need to be the strategic thinker, the marketing mastermind and the visionary. Ultimately your plan should be to stop doing the minutia that runs the business and delegate th
In a Yellow Pages Ad, you can get carried away by trying to do a long sales pitch, when, in fact, you can just list a few important things you do, and tell them to visit your website for the full details. This gets them to your website and there you can give them the full scoop and exactly how you can help them. Just don’t spend $100 or $500 every month to tell a story that you can do for free on a website.
Here is my Yellow Pages Ad.
I spend $50 per month on this ad:
(my logo)
•Computer Tune-Ups
•Small Business Networking
•Wireless Networking
•PC Troubleshooting & Repair
•Custom-Built Computers
•Computer Upgrades
•OnSite Support
•Microsoft-Certified Techs
•Website Design & Hosting
www.LapeerTechGroup.com
Columbiaville, MI
(810) 793-1093
FREE Computer Pickup
BROCHURES & BUSINESS CARDS
Of course, you definitely need something to leave with potential and current customers. You absolutely MUST have a brochure and business card, and NOT the peel-off or perforated card stock you get from your local office supply store, and print them off on your ink jet printer! Your brochures and business cards are sometimes the only thing that a potential customer will see that represents your company. Now, you may work out of your home, but you don’t want it to look like you do. You want to appear as if you are a HUGE computer company, capable of handling any of their computer needs. A basement business card job doesn’t say that. If you want to gain good credibility, spend a little money and get commercially-printed brochures and business cards.
You will want a good image design (designed by a professional) with raised ink on the business cards and some kind of color (no black and white business cards or brochures). If you can afford it, get matching business cards and brochures, with the brochures on a white or ivory, gloss stock (like a 70# gloss text). You don’t want it to look like you photocopied the brochures. And it is proven that by adding some color to your marketing pieces, your responses are MUCH higher, than with black and white.
And by having matching business cards and brochures (the same color stock and printing), you show your potential customers that you have it together and this isn’t some basement operation (although it might be). Appearance and perception is everything. And your marketing material represents how you appear to your customers. Don’t skip corners here; you will regret it and it will cost you more money doing it the hard way. Trust me!
If you would like to have the rest of this article, in the form of a 15-page “Marketing Techniques… What Works and What Doesn’t For a PC Repair Business”, along with accounting forms for a PC Repair Business, a PC Repair Business Website FULL of Content, Step-by-Step How-to’s and much, much more, visit http://www.LapeerTechGroup.com/businessplan.asp for all of the details.
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<a href="http://www.addyou.info/article/29077/addyou-Marketing-Techniques-What-Works--What-Doesnt-for-a-PC-Repair-Business.html">Marketing Techniques: What Works & What Doesn't for a PC Repair Business</a>
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