How much do you spend on advertising?

[Kwik Picture Framing]

..if any, of course. And where do you advertise? Do you find that the internet alone is enough, or do you send out fliers or place adverts with the local press?

[Merlin]

KWIK Why are you swamping this forum and The Grumble with posts ??

Is it in the hope of SEO for your new website.

Just wondering !!

[prospero]

Re ad spend. Nowt.

[IFGL]

Very little now I have dropped the yellow pages all together, we do ask new customers where they found us, very few said yell or yell online like not even 1 a year, the vast majority are recommendations, twitter and Facebook are making an appearance now.

I count our website as advertising so £20 per month.

[Roboframer]

We spent 8-9 grand a year for about 8 years on radio ads on Spirit FM which covers a huge area to our West and North - we're in a corner of the coverage area. Then we switched to Splash FM which covers Worthing and the area to our East - they're about half the price due to smaller area and lower ratings.

Both worked well but we are not renewing this year - will try a very popular free local journal.

[Kwik Picture Framing]

Merlin - I'm currently trying to improve business clients and contacts, and was wondering how others manage with advertising campaigns if at all, particularly if they're a small business, that's all. The right kind of advertising campaign is well worth investing in, but different types of campaigns work differently for various businesses.

I've used forums in the past and surely the whole point is to ask questions and get help from other people who have just walked the path that you're starting on.

Not sure what you mean by SEO but I just thought I'd ask a few questions and try to get chatting to other people in the industry!

Robo - I hadn't particularly thought about radio, thanks, that's another avenue to be explored at the next team meeting, I appreciate your response.

[Moondoggy]

I'm with you on that one Kwik, I too thought forums were for discussion and to ask questions in an attempt to increase our knowledge and expertise or have a bit of fun.
Perhaps we are missing something.

[Merlin]

KWIK.
There is nothing wrong with trying to improve your business.
Maybe I have misunderstood where you are coming from.
Yet even with your "30 years in the Picture Framing Industry" and "Expert online picture Framing" experience. I struggle to understand why in a period of 3 days you have posted over 25 times on various threads. Including those with no replies for over 12 months.

Just saying.

[JohnMcafee]

Kwik Picture Framing, my hat is off to you.

We could all learn a lesson from you about how to conduct ourselves with a quiet dignity on the forum.

[Merlin]

JM we obviously have a different understanding of the word quiet.

Where I come from it is:
1. with little or no sound.
2. free from vigorous activity.

So to please you, I will refrain from making pointless posts in the future

[benjiman grapes]

Word of mouth and recognizing the advantages of doing free charity frames.

[Not your average framer]

I'm not really into advertising and I'm also not convinced that it makes a real difference to business levels. I used to have a very small advert in the parish magazine, but that was essentially to support the parish magazine. The parish magazine is now long gone and so are the days when I used to advertise!

[Roboframer]

The reason we are not continuing with our radio ads is that we are not being treated very well by the current station, rare visits from rep etc. We thought about switching back to the twice-the-price one, who treated us really well e.g. they host events in places like Arundel Castle - Catherine Jenkins concert for example - and gave us "GUEST" badges which got us in to the VIP marquee, rubbing shoulders with the Duke of Norfolk, free booze and food, etc.

Each year they host the opening night of the Chichester festivities at (glorious) Goodwood (horse) race track and we'd be in their hospitality box having a ball; one year we enquired about our very own hospitality box next door to theirs for our own party, staff and family/friends of - quite expensive - make that very expensive, so what they did was give the organisers free advertising for the event to half the cost of our box, what a night!


Anyway, we decided just to give it a break and see what happens.

[Framerpicture]

We advertise in a quarterly regional magazine for the home,it's sort of Country Living style.
We send out 4500 Christmas cards to our mailing list by Royal Mail.
We have a budget for SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation) and for a recent event advertised on Facebook, which is cheap at £18 per 10,0000 views but only achieved engagement of about 0.8%.

The best advertising for us by far is networking and word of mouth but it doesn't really work for new websites

[JohnMcafee]

We learned early on that advertising was not for us, In our time we tried just about everything - short of TV. Maybe we just didn't have the right message, but nothing that we tried seemed to have any measurable positive results, so we just stuck with Yellow pages, gradually reducing in size over the years, and word of mouth.

We now have a website, a static affair that informs anyone who searches for "picture framer Belfast" of our existence. It brings more people to our door than our advertising ever did.

It will be interesting to see if your withdrawal from radio advertising has a negative affect on turnover, Roboframer.

[Roboframer]

We're anticipating it will but hoping it will be to the tune of less than the cost of the advertising!

[Steve N]

Have tried the local paper and glossy mags and framing features in the mags, might as well just wallpaper £50.00 notes on the wall for all the good it done

We sponsor the local Arts Trail (artist open studios) and local flower show, along with a printed banner at the local cricket club (on show 24/7/365) plus a banner in the local Football Club program each home game

The rest is by word of mouth and internet

[Trinity]

A couple of adverts in local post offices, £50/ year, poor response but cost recovered.
Trinity on the back of the spare wheel on the Land Rover: 2 x 25 miles on busy roads each day - result NIL
Website - comes up near the top but little traffic - hardly what I expected.
Best results word of mouth and networking.
Going forward it's a push strategy rather than pull.

[Abacus]

Our experiences mirror the negative ones above.

We now only do the following:

Sponsor a hanging basket on the local station with our name and contact details on it.
Sponsor the local arts fair program
Sponsor the local am dram programs
Advertise in the local free newsletter
Google places

Total cost about £200 pa. We used to spend £2,000 just on the yellow pages et al, and after pulling our listings we didn't see any drop.

We tried advertising in local and localish newspapers with zero result

[Roboframer]

Our radio ad is on a 'brand builder" scheme, everyone in it gets unsold airtime shared between them - on Spirit FM we paid for 90 ads (three different, one framing, one craft etc, one both) a month with most in 'prime time' and regularly got between 200-270 a month, no doubt with many in the wee hours, but still!

We found that toying with it, a month here, a week there, and at a higher rate than the brand builder scheme, wasn't much cop but the blanket campaign really worked, not immediately by any means.

We're hoping we're sort of 'established' in these two stations' coverage areas after such a long campaign. Personally I dislike commercial radio, especially local commercial radio and I dislike commercial TV even more, when the ads come on that's when I put the kettle on, nip to the loo, channel hop, etc. But if you asked me to name a coffee brand it would be? Go on, what would it be for you?


Nescafe, right?

Well I don't remember the last time I saw/heard a Nescafe advert! ( I don't drink it anyway, or any other instant and I couldn't tell you what brand of fresh coffee we use most, probably lavazza and I've never heard an ad for that either)!

Hoping maybe same will apply to people in our area thinking of a frame/craft shop, we'll see.