Good ways to promote a start up business.

[umboma]

hello all,

My father Inlaw and myself are starting up a small business and just looking for any ideas that we might not have thought of, of how to best promote it.

It's a Home and garden care business, so far we have done leaflets, Facebook, yellow pages, gumtree ad, are we missing anything??

Many thanks in advance

 

[Uther]

Word of mouth helps a lot too in these instances.

 

[Dynix]

You could offer to do some home/garden care for free to build up a small portfolio and reviews (which you could ask to be left on your Facebook page and/or something like Trust Pilot).

 

[unwashed potato!]

other than approaching people in the street and handing our flyers, or door knocking to introduce your business, you've pretty much covered the basics.

 

[terley]

Don't underestimate Facebook & social media in general. I made the most followed independent Facebook Dominos pizza page in the UK by doing giveaways and asking people to share/like to take part.

REMOVED - no self promotion

 

[GSVBagpuss]

Mumsnet or your local version

 

[Burned_Alive]

Couple of businesses around here are giving away a summer of free mowing for liking their page and sharing the post which seems to do well. Also people seem to go crazy for voucher giveaways.

 

[Puzzled]

Ads that catch my eye on the local facebook selling pages are the ones with before / after pics or short videos showing your work.

Videos autoplay so can be good at getting your attention but keep it short and simple. For example a local carpet cleaner just puts up a 15 second clip showing the machine in action.

I'd never "like" any of that sort of stuff, focus more on who the ad is targeting.

 

[benskia]

Don't underestimate Facebook & social media in general. I made the most followed independent Facebook Dominos pizza page in the UK by doing giveaways and asking people to share/like to take part.

Isn't that exactly the opposite of marketing - I wouldn't buy a pizza from there after reading the reviews on that site.

 

[Edrof]

Get someone who knows what they're doing to look over all of your writing. Admittedly, perfect English isn't as big a deal in your line of work as it is with others but it would be stupid to lose any business because of amateurish output.

 

[terley]

Isn't that exactly the opposite of marketing - I wouldn't buy a pizza from there after reading the reviews on that site.

A fast food restaurant that is a part of a large chain achieving an average of 4.3 stars with over 1000 reviews is actually remarkably impressive.

 

[Spit]

Business networking to meet local lettings agents who can give you regular work.

 

[Tefal]

A fast food restaurant that is a part of a large chain achieving an average of 4.3 stars with over 1000 reviews is actually remarkably impressive.

people online seem to vote 5 or 1 stars for anything so over 4 means overwhelmingly good.

 

[terley]

people online seem to vote 5 or 1 stars for anything so over 4 means overwhelmingly good.

Exactly I was very proud to be honest, especially seeing as i ran the store for a number of years.

 

[TommyV]

Instagram model endorsements (once this is done please be sure to share links for research purposes).

 

[kinobestew123]

Call yourself <name of local area> gardener. Don't bother with a name like AJK Contract Gardening Services Limited or something stupid.

If I was looking for somebody to do my gardens, I'd be going to google and typing "Wigan Gardener" or similar.

You want to make sure that you're right near the top or at least on the sites that come up near the top.

Can you put yourself on sites like mybuilder/checkatrade, etc? I know that these can be quite costly but it may get you set up. Once you've got say 50 good pieces of feedback on these sites (and zero bad feedbacks!), I reckon you'd find that the work comes to you.

 

[randomshenans]

You need to do some research and monitor the activity based on those experiments. That'll be better than just randomly guessing.

 

[Phate]

Trustatrader.com

 

[JammieR]

Use social medai to promote your business. Take example of Obama and Trump. Social media played a crucial role in their winning.

 

[Soundood]

I get a ton of work via nextdoor, people are sooo into looking for local trades/produce etc. now.

www.nextdoor.com

keep all your social media tight and updated with the same branding, many people use differant forms of social media to digest info, so hit the lot, facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, google+ etc.

and please stay away from trustatradet, mubuilder, checkatrade etc.

also dont sign up to Yell.com monthly payment farce that does nothing, also watch out for any 'magazines' like police weekly or firestyle, they want you to take ads in garbage publications no one uses on the promise of loads of work.