Effective Yellow Page Ads

[Nickrosis]

Make sure you're in the book you want to be in; here there are many to choose from.

Coupons for contractors have a bad ring to them in many ways. Since you're giving a quote, you could easily skew it higher to compensate for the coupon. And saying "don't tell us 'til you pay" always hints at the negative possibility that you're dishonest if given the chance to be.

I'd put the money into the ad. And make it a good ad! You can spend all the money in the world for space but if it looks blurry or silly, you're wasting your money.

 

[Stumper]

Coupons and discounts stink. I never found them to bring in enough additional business to counter their cost. If you are scrupulously honest they bite you on the butt on some marginal job but you can't get past the perception that with they could be easily manipulated-Just a bad taste in everyone's mouth. I hate coupons on principle anyway-quote me a fair price and I'll decide yea or nay. Don't dance around with coupons and rebates!

 

[a_lopa]

one guy around my area promotes himself in the y/p with''im cheaper because i own all my equipment'' wonder if it works

 

[luke montelius]

addvertizing cheap-ness is just stupid...... I am forced to YP add but i stress affiliation and quality.

 

[Acer]

My experience with YP wasn't very good..a handful of calls, most of which were invites to add my quote to half a dozen others. If you want a high volume of low turnover business, it's great, providing your advert ends up in a prominent position. People at the start of the listings get plenty of calls, and to get to the front, you need to start your company name with a full stop (alphabetically, this comes before all letters and numbers, according to YP) . That will get you noticed for one year, until a few of your competitors cotton on, and start their company name with two full stops. Before you know it, you have companies called ...........A A A A A A & A Aardvark Tree Services or similar.

I just let them get on with it and rely on word of mouth.

 

[Koa Man]

I agree with Acer 100%.

 

[Can-Do-It]

Going with the Yellow Pages

It's that time of year again for the Yellow Pages. And Yes I'm going to a larger Ad than last year. Last year was single colume by about 2". I've had my share of penny pinchers and also some very nice high paying jobs. All my YP customers were draw to the line .... ' Insured up to $1,000,000 '

I'm tripling my add size this year to single colume by 6" $232 month and making the line 'Insured up to $1,000,000' even larger. For me its worth it.

A side note: The two largest tree comp's in my area all run half page adds. The Monday after our last ice storm the larget tree comp. rec.ed 51 calls. I rec.ed none.

Have a Blessed Day

 

[MasterBlaster]

How did you find out how many call yur competition had?

 

[Can-Do-It]

Thru a reliable friend who knows the owner. There a good comp. been in business along time.



Can-Do-It

 

[a_lopa]

im in two y/ps costs around 4k im going to put it all into one now,a marketing guru who sells shrubs/trees told me you need to dominate one advertising medium, not just be there.

 

[Treeman14]

Re: Going with the Yellow Pages

Originally posted by Can-Do-It
A side note: The two largest tree comp's in my area all run half page adds. The Monday after our last ice storm the larget tree comp. rec.ed 51 calls. I rec.ed none.

The day after our last hurricane (we've had 4 this year), we received 140 calls.

Don't waste money on a small ad. Bigger is definitely better. If you want to play with the big dogs, ya gotta get off the porch. Or something like that...:alien:

 

[Menchhofer]

This thread seems to counteract previous ones in the past w/regards to YP advertising. Most folks here usually state they do not advertise in the YP.

I learned long ago...bigger is better when it comes to advertising, stump grinders, chippers, trucks, bucket trucks, etc. even though I did not believe it at first.

Always go with the largest ad you can afford. It usually pays off in the long term. Yes, it is expensive but then so are we.

Stay away from grocery store advertising and your ad on maps...on benches..or coffee cups. From experience these have been a total waste for me.

Small local newspapers are generally great.

 

[Koa Man]

After you have been in business for a few years and if you have done high quality and fairly priced work, you should have a big enough customer base so you won't need to pay money for advertising. People ask me why I don't put signs on my trucks and equipment. I tell them it is because I don't want people calling me. I already have more business than I can handle. The owner of another tree company that I had sold a chipper and stump grinder to asked me if I was busy. I told him extremely so. He said he was slow. I asked how many guys you got working for you. He said 15. I told him cut it to 8 and you will be busy too. He told me he needed all the guys when the big jobs came up. Yeah, but what do you do in the mean time? Pay for some expensive labor that is sitting around doing nothing?

 

[Nathan Wreyford]

Re: Re: Going with the Yellow Pages

Originally posted by Treeman14
Bigger is definitely better. If you want to play with the big dogs, ya gotta get off the porch. Or something like that...:alien:

Some of ya'll can't seem to get your head around the fact that not every small tree care biz wants to be like Davey Tree and the other big dogs.

Depends on your goals. If you are running a "big business" you should be hiring arborists to do the work and salesmen to do the sales while YOU manage the business. Or hire an MBA to manage it for you. If not, you will be so busy fighting alligators that you won't have time to drain the swamp.

If you are a smaller, more value added business, with less overhead, you can charge more than the "big dogs" and have fewer bills. . That is how I manage to travel so much and work less than 9 mos outta the year. I have done the running a biz with 5 employees thing before. After a while, you don't own it, it owns you.

With the YP's go big or not at all. If money is an issue, go back and read page 1 of this thread about PR.

Who is your target clientelé Junkie??

 

[MasterBlaster]

I would like a YP ad, but I can't figure out how to word it that I only climb, and put it on the ground. We have a good market here for people that just want to get it on the ground. I do jobs like that at least twice a week. I would love to skip the middleman on those jobs, and do em myself.
I would shoot for a cigarette-pack sized ad, myself.

 

[ROLLACOSTA]

Originally posted by rborist1
Go big or go home!

ahh you took the words right out of my fingers..shhh dont tell the competition to much but yeah go large or carry on crying how y/p dont work for ya..big is best !..what do i know i hear some say 8 years in the y/p half the time wasted on small adds thats what i know

 

[Koa Man]

Two ways to make lots of money. High volume with small profit margin, or small volume with high profit margin. Don't tell me you can get high vol. w/high profit. It cannot happen because if your prices are higher than almost everybody else, you are not going to get high volume. I much prefer small volume, high profit for myself. Almost all of my customers will not even bother to get a 2nd bid, even though I always encourage them to do so. I am in the middle of a 3 day job where I was the highest bidder by $250 over the next lowest one. The 90 year old father insisted I do the job, while his 55 year old daughter wanted the lowest bidder $400 cheaper to do the job. It is all a matter of how you sell the job and the quality (attn to detail) you can deliver. Much like why do some people buy a MB, BMW or Lexus for transportation when a Chevy or Ford will do? People hire me for high quality work, Davey and the others if they want a "Chevy or Ford" type work.
When you think about it, paying 10% more is not that much if you will get a detailed pruning job, landscaping not trampled and the house not all scratched up by groundies dragging the brush against it. If needed, I put tarps up against the house, cover concrete or other ground areas that would be affected by dripping sap etc. I tell them fine pruning takes a lot of time and my price reflects the cost to do it right.

 

[Nathan Wreyford]

Amen Koa !!!

 

[Nickrosis]

We're using a segmented approach, targeting all high-profit segments within a geographic area. The challenge in getting and keeping clients in these segments is being the kind of company that they want - so to take care of their needs in one place, we offer a lot of services aimed at those segments.

What happens is this: We show up for the original call, offer additional services, have a slim margin on maintenance work, a healthy margin for other periodic services, and a challenge to balance it all!

As customers spend over $50,000 a year, you begin to offer greater discounts and perks as we benefit from the greater volume. For smaller clients, each stop has to be profitable. For bigger clients, the year has to be profitable but you may not charge for every little stop.

 

[a_lopa]

Originally posted by MasterBlaster
I would like a YP ad, but I can't figure out how to word it that I only climb, and put it on the ground. We have a good market here for people that just want to get it on the ground. I do jobs like that at least twice a week. I would love to skip the middleman on those jobs, and do em myself.
I would shoot for a cigarette-pack sized ad, myself.

i ran for years with just a climbing kit,find a few subb chipping guys by the hour to easy japaneseie,bite the bullet butch $$$$