advertising budget

[cutterj]

i was wondering how much you guys spend on advertising each year. I can get direct mail done here for 3.4 cents a house (about 400,000+ available) I was just looking for an opinion on how many to send out. I had good reponse from 20000 last year, but had a hard time getting a hold of a lot of people who called (atleast 20-30 i couldnt reach). I also had even better response to flyers i passed out which was like around $250 for 10000. I'm looking to expand into more accounts, as well as get into small landscaping jobs. I also have experience with brick paving. Itd be nice to send the guys out cutting and be able to do landscaping and paving jobs on the side. Let me know what you guys think. Ive put a lot of money away from last year to expand this year. Thanx

Jason

[nu83]

3.4 cents a house? It must be a valpac. Which is not direct mail. Also, how did you send out 10,000 flyers for $250? I am sending approx. the same number this spring and the total cost is around $4k. What kind of sign up did you have with your $250 flyers?

[cutterj]

sorry let me clear it up. no its not a val pac, they actually are direct mail, if that slot is taken it is just inserted in the local papers. and the $250 was jsut to have the flyers printed, had to pass them all out myself. When is the best time to send them out, my cutting starts april 15th

[nu83]

Well ideally you would be constantly advertising, but the biggest sign up time for me starts March 1 - April 21. The weather is a bigger factor than the date, if it is still cold people havn't begun to think about lawn care yet.

[turfmarketing]

Many things determine the advertising budget for an organization. Ideally, your advertising or marketing budget are determined by your business plan, not the other way around. An organization sets a business objective like customer retention, new accounts, selling additional services to existing customer base etc., then develops a marketing plan to make the business objective succeed.

In addition to assigning resources to specific business objectives, organizations also need to spend money on a continuous basis for name recognition or brand building. Things like yellow page advertising, signage, sponsorships, etc.

As a general (very general) rule, most businesses use a 2 - 5% of sales as a figure for marketing or advertising. So you should probably be spending $2,000 - $5,000 in marketing for every $100k of sales.

[bubble boy]

2.0 cents here (and thats Cdn$)

last yr spent about $4500, from what i recall.

had good growth.

[f350]

you have a p/m

[mowing king]

You can do the budget backwards.

If you want 100k in landscape installs and the avg size job is 5k then you will have to sell 20 jobs. if you close on 50% of your sales call you will need 40 appointments. the avg response from direct mail is 1% so you will have to get 40,000 pieces out.

the most important thing about advertising is getting the info to the best prospects and freqency. Sometimes cheap ways to mail might not get you the people you want. We mail to mail carrier routes that we pick out. this way you can hit the same neighbor hood over and over.

For maintence flyers work well as do personnal letters.For landscape install jumbo post cards work well.

[Sean Adams]

I believe that flyers are a good way to develop name recognition. And often times very good accounts will be the result of a targeted flyer campaign (right time, right neighborhood, a little luck, etc...)

But direct mail, if set up correctly, cannot be matched (telemarketing aside). If you take the time to target your audience carefully, have an excellent approach letter, professionally set (envelope, letterhead, business card) in a hand addressed envelope, personally addressed to that particular homeowner or business owner, your response should always be much higher than 1%-5%...

[lawncare3]

You are lucky for getting direct mail for $.03 I have to spend that much on a flyer. My budget is about $130.00 and I hope to get at least 30 customers that is pretty good for being 15yr old!

[lawnMaster5000]

This past spring I spend about $300 on door hangers and paid another $100 in labor to pass out. From those proffesionaly printed hangers I recieved about a 1% response rate. This may be attributable to the weather, I am not sure. That $400 was about 1% of my annual sales.
Last week I purchased 1000 new business cards for mowing and Landscaping (2 sided card) costing about $150 - those should last for a couple years though.
I also mailed out 100 christmass cards at a cost of $2 each all inclusive
My annual advertising expense is then $750, around 4% of sales.

I am not sure that i will do the professionaly printed door hangers again b/c of the low response rate that i recieved. In the past i distrubuted flyers designed on MS Word and that cost be about $0.07each rather than $0.40 that the hangers cost. I also recieved greater response with the flyers.

Like i said before there are several variable that i have to consider such as the areas that i targeted, the weather, and the economic hard times that everyone thought we were going through.

[jocko1104]

ITS AMAZING HOW LONG PEOPLE CAN HANG ON TO A DOOR HANGER. :dizzy:

[Rhett]

Spent 200 in newspaper ads, about 50 in flyers and 125 in signs for the truck. Had a bunch of one time clean ups from the newspaper and 2 regular accounts. Flyers 4 regular accounts and a dozen one timers. The truck was a big zero. Rest of regular accounts were word of mouth.Looked into yellow pages but the cos would break the camels back. Next year will start flyers in Feb and do a couple thousand. Gotta get better :(

[rkbrown]

My plan for the spring will start in February. Down here we have homeowners accociations that are managed by property management companies. Each subdivison has a monthly newsletter that is printed by the management company. The cost varies between $35 and $50 per newsletter. I plan to do three subdivisions...mine, a large one south of me that has a bit more expensiv homes and one behind me that is a 55+ age subdivision (ie. active retirees).

We have had quite a bit of new construction between my subdivision and the one south of me. I plan to hire two teenagers that I know and have them distribute flyers or business cards to these subdivisions.

Also, even though we are near Houston, we have our own small town newspaper. It is a weekly paper and I will put a business card sized ad in the "Business Services" section at a cost of $50 for 4 issues.

My truck signs have gotten me work. So have my business cards that people have allowed me to put in there places of business. I got one account just a couple of weeks ago from a woman who just moved into her 1st house. While I was doing my 1st service there, another woman ame up to me and asked if I would take a look and give her an estimate. So presence is also a good method of advertising.