advertising

[EROSS17]

I've been in the business for 4 years now and never really had to do a whole lot of advertising. I've always had pretty reliable "hook ups". But this year I'm going to advertise more. What's the best way you guys have found? How much do certain methods usually cost?

[Skookum]

Ones you can do yourself and target a specific area I think work best as in actual dollar spent. You can put a big display ad in the paper, phone book, etc,.. but you will get calls from all over the area. For me I like to target a specific area where I already have accounts and use post cards, tri fold mailers or door hangers that I make myself on the computer and send out myself.

You can design a mailer that is tailored for a specific subdivision and add a actual intiser basic price for a standard yard in that addition. I see this as one simple yet sometimes over looked method by LCO's.

[BUSHMASTER]

My two boys are playin ball this season. One in c-ball the other in B-ball..i vollentered to make up a game program for each player on both teams when we play...you know player name
age some ad space to rasie money and i get my logo on all programs . lets see we have 25-35 games 15 kids per team that's 2100times these people see my logo and name ...some 3 times a week .....i'll let you know how it goes..

[Scape Sculptor]

Do flyers...I feel it is the best bang for the buck...Target the homes you want. I wrote over $30,000 in estimates the last week and half. And it is just beginning.

[syzer]

Flyers worked very very well for us last year, we got much more business then we had thought from them!

We had also used a couple adds in the local papares which worked out pretty well also.

[Pooners]

EROSS17...try the flyers!!! These folks know what their talking about. I've been reading Lawnsite for a year...never could come up with the "perfect" flyer. Finally..remembering what someone had wrote on this site.." doing something is better than doing nothing" (something like that). I put a flyer together, nothing great actually kinda goofy ...targeted a Private Estate area that's within 5 miles of my house (I already have one customer there). Had my two little boys go door-to-door. We passed out about 40 flyers yesterday. Had one call when I got back home and received 4 more today all asking for bids. Good Luck....and thanks everyone for the assistance.

[Groundcover Solutions]

Pooners, That is a pretty good return rate for you flyers!! Good work. I have allready put out about 2,000 flyers in my area and plan on putting out about 5,000 more. Worked great last year hope it dose agean this year. Pluse on of my freinds in the lawn business is puting out about 60,000 flyers in the mail and with a 1% return he will get more thatn he can handel so he is going to give us some of his lawns so i plan on having a good season just my 2 cents

[Greenkeepers]

The flyer route in my opinion is the best way to go.. Ray (Kirby) had a nice flyer he made up in publisher that you may want to check out. It was on a post or you can probably email him.

[beck]

i got prices from a coupon mailer for around 450 dollars they would mail 10,000 homes in a certain area. the catch was you had to do two mailings. so 900 dollars granted that is a lot of homes but i decided to go with flyers

it cost 35 dollars per 1000 on colored paper and black ink at Office Depot. this way i can be selective to the houses and areas that i choose. targeting areas that i already have
accounts in. skip the houses that have dogs or unfavorable mowing conditions, etc.

i rolled up the flyer so that my name appeared on the outside so they would at least see what it was about, for the mailings not every one opens them.

so far i have acquired five new accounts for this year with two houses on one street within 3 houses of each other then another one a block away, then the other two are within 3 houses of each other as well i have also picked up 3 side jobs

[LoneStarLawn]

60,000 flyers through the mail. That is alot of money for advertising.....Doing it yourself and getting (I think) a bulk rate that $10,000...WOW. I hope they have a secretary and a estimator with over 600 calls to handle all of them.

[Edited by LoneStarLawn on 02-27-2001 at 08:51 PM]

[jjfehr]

I'm not in the business yet but have worked for an apartment complex in the past. I have been self employed before as an auto detailer, similar business, mobile, residential. For advertising, I think that this might work for some of you folks. With your existing client base, tell them that if they get an imediate neighbor to use your service you will knock $5 off their weekly bill as well as the new customers bill. Let me explain the logic:
If you have a res. that takes you 30 minutes and charge $30 and then load the trailer and drive down the block and unload to do another lawn that takes 30 minutes for $30, you just lost 10 - 20 minutes. Now to make $60 it took you 70-80 minutes. If you had two neighbors you could make $50 (with $5 off each bill) in 60 minutes.If you do this you will be making $49.80/ hour, if your factor in the drive time and no discount you will be making only $45/hour.
I hope this will work and makes sense to you, as I don't truly know your business, but I do know that drive time is a killer!
Let me know if you feel that this will be useful

[KirbysLawn]

According to the survey I'm currently running flyers are by far the best choice for the dollar.
http://apps3.vantagenet.com/zsv/survey.asp?id=2332305

[jason2]

Just a little pricing info for anybody interested. Yesterday I was getting low on flyers, so I stopped by Staples. They ran off 1000 copies of single sided black and white flyers for me for .02 a piece. Twenty bucks total.

Much cheaper and faster than I can make them at home. Took them about 15 minutes to do them. It would take me all day to run off half of that at home myself.

[thefarmer4]

We're doing doorhangers this year. They are more expensive than just running flyers, but I think they look more professional hanging on the door then a flyer stuck in the door.

We are also running classified ads in 2 Local papers
and 2 small display ads in the same papers but in specific towns.

We also have flyers to hang up at other business' and have other companies sending us their over flow.

Get Guerilla Marketing book it has many great ideas for small and large companies.

I believe the more places people can see you r name the better. Only do advertising in papers if you have the budget for it.

[SDF250]

do flyers door hangers or direct mail post cards

stay away from the yellow pages unless you go with the 500-1000 per month ads 38-180 doesn't do it but if you go big sadle up your going to "GO BIG" if you get the calls you got the work

[kutnkru]

When people talk about flyers I always picture door knockers. I like the door knockers the best.

Good Luck this season!
Kris

[thefarmer4]

I have a hard time believing that everone is talking about door knockers. alot of these guys are talking 3-5,000 flyers I can't see them knocking on that many doors.

Maybe we should clarify exactly how we distribute flyers?

[Greenkeepers]

The majority of people around here have mail boxes with additional paperboxes built in. We just put the flyer in these paper boxes... Some even have a piece of 2" pvc pipe for their homeowners assoc. letters so we use these also..

[kutnkru]

MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE ,,,

MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE ,,,

WILL THE REAL ,,, -lol

Actually I just wanted to clarify on something. If anyone sees me use the term DoorKnockers Im talking about the doorknob hangers used for advertising.

I would have no knuckles left if I literally knocked on every door -he.he.he.

Sorry for the confusion.
Kris

[thefarmer4]

That better sense to me thanks for the clarification kutnkru

Doorhangers (door knockers) are what we are going to use this year.

[joshua]

word of mouth has been my best advertisement, but everything the guys have said are good. i have found that if you go up to the potetial (spelling) client and talk to them and tell them about your services and stuff like that, the outcome is very good.

[lawnboy82]

now my question is this:
working at small homes that are only worth like half a million dollars is no big deal to drop off fliers on doors and what not. even some places that are worth like a million is no big deal. however you get these places over in bedford that are worth 5, 10, 15, 20 + million dollars how do you get into those places. i mean i was workin last year at a place that is worth 20 million, but i got fired because of the stinkin tree man. so how do i get into other big places like that? i really like going to these large homes and sitting there for the whole day just cutting and what not. it is better than driving all over the county all day. plus also at that place i was workin at it was a guaranteed check on the last day of the month, no "can we pay you next week" or whatever.