Getting the Customer!

[V-Nail]

Guy's,
At the moment I only work partime on the framing and from my workshop... I have now had all the "Friends & Family" work through.

So, I'm looking for advice on getting the word about.... should I do a leaflet drop or stand in the street with a board???


Thanks
Drew

[Pizmo]

Hi Drew

I am only a hobby framer and I get some extra work through the local college art classes .....

Pizmo

[SquareFrames]

Hi Drew,

Design an A5 flyer, print approx. the amount of postal addresses in your immediate area, (you can get this info at the post office by looking at the Electoral Role), either go to the expense of paying a professional mail shot company (very expensive), or do what I do 2 or 3 times a year, go to the expene of 5 or 6 burgers and chips and a coke, get a nephew and 4 or 5 of his mates, and drop them off in an area and collect them an hour or so later, move them to another area, and collect them again, and so on. Works wonders. An 'A' board is also a good idea, I unfortunately cannot do this because of a narrow footpath outside our shop. The odd small ad in the local rag can 'at times' also reap rewards, but dont pay anymore than £25-£40

Happy Marketing

Steven

[V-Nail]

Steven, thanks for the advise. I will look at doing the A5 leaflet drop routine and great idea for the disribution.

Thanks for your advise Steven and Pizmo


Drew

[norymags]

Drew, the only way of customers coming back that I know is to give a perfect job, a good customer service is telling them when it will be ready, and making sure that it is ready, give them a business card from your computer and wait, and wait, believe me they will come,along with their friends and aunties and before you know it you will be busy.I have never spent a penny advertising and like you I am doing it from the studio at the side of my house,it was slow at first but it soon picks up all due to your good work and framing. Glasgow is a big catchment area and you cant expect too much apart from local customers.Try the local clubs and schools and tell them how good you are or arrange a free school photo framed during the annual class photos time.Good luck because sometimes you need it.

[Framing Norah]

Hi norymags,

Welcome to the forum.

Like you I have been framing for a while now, and after spending quite a bit on advertising in the early days, I eventually realised that either advertising is a complete waste of time, or I must have been doing it wrong. Either way I've cut my losses and just don't bother any more.

Word of mouth is hard to beat.

[SquareFrames]

Hi,

Like FN, we dont bother much with advertising anymore, it is a complete waste of time and money, there are so many adverts in newspapers now-a-days, no one actually reads them, having said that, our daughter works in advertising for one of the local newspapers, and now and again when she does a feature on the town, or a new business opens, we will place a small ad, approx. £25-£30 to include the VAT, otherwise its like Norymags, doing good quality work, at affordable prices, business cards, A5 leaflets depciting our standards, and my favourite, the mail shot 2 or 3 times a year.

Welcome to the forum Norymags.

Steven

[norymags]

Thank you Steve and I mean it most sincerly. I dont normally have the time to dabble in forums such as this OR have the time to read them, but this message board can be good for me and other framers so I will continue to give my input from the south of scotland..Cheers Norrie

[norymags]

Thank you Framing Norah as well as Steve. I will continue to give an open account of how hard it was then and with hindsight how easy it is now.
January is a good month to be not too busy because batteries need recharging and we have to be out of the studio after the december rush when everyone and their granny take down all their pictures and have to put up new ones (in time for Christmas please), yes that was the only way to finish the sentence when they came through the door, but good times all the same roll on next Decenber...Norrie

[Merlin]

Welcome to the Forum Norymags. Your input will always be welcome.

We too have taken a hard long look at advertising. Last year was our last attempt. The local TESCO (or their head office) was doing a fairly good deal on printing and stocking business cards on an information board. So we took the plunge as it was within our calculated budget.

Some statistics after 9 months. Approx 20 of our cards are taken per week. On production in the shop they get a 10% discount as clearly stated on the card. To date only 12 have been used. So somebody is collecting them!

You are all correct. Word of mouth is by far the best method and not as expensive either. Plus with the customer in the shop, you can educate and demonstrate your professionalism and enthusiasm. An advertisement in the local rag cannot do this.

[kev@frames]

You fell for that one as well John. I thought it was only me!

I think it says it all that the following year they dont come back and ask you if you want to advertise again.

we did the same three years ago in the local Tescos. we'd just re-located, and thought it wouldn't do any harm. Dont think we ever had anyone brring a card in to claim the 10%. Apart from grabbing the local chamber of commerce page whenever the opportunity arises, its the only advertising we have ever done, and the most expensive.

we did ours as a 10% off for two or more frames promotion -but thats our usual discount anyway.

In the end Mrs P resorted to helping herself to a handful of cards on a daily basis.... just to claw back a token amount, but to be fair they were refilled every day! in the end we just ended up paying some very expensive advertising for some business cards on the shop counter.

he was a very plausible salesman, that advertising rep. Everyone else we sopoke to who fell for the same advertising gimmick said it was a waste of time and money too.

well, at least great minds think alike. Or is it that we cornishmen, or ex seafarers have this air about them that says "mug me" im daft

Dont know how we fell for that, as my wife used to sell advertising for the local paper.

Back to the main topic - imho the only one worthwhile for the money is yellow pages. so this year we are going in the fine art trade guild box.
Other than that, word of mouth seems to be the most cost effective.

[Merlin]

We tried Yellow Pages for two years previous to being that easy target.

To be quite honest, that didnt work either, I probably could have counted on one hand the number of calls we had asking for a quote to frame this or that. On asking the enquirer where they got our number from, very few actually said YP.

I think most of those calls were from competitors just checking up on the local area pricing.

Hey Ho! Customers, dont you just love them?

[kev@frames]

dang. too late to cancel. word of mouth it is, then.

I might be behind the times here, but dont you get a free YP lineage listing if you have a business line?

Mostly the YP for the benefit of existing customers or people who know us and want the number -we all to often hear "i couldn't find your phone number in the book" then they look aghast at you when you say "we are not in the book".

funny thing is until recently we steered clear of having a phone book entry at all. most phone enquiries were straightforward "what time do you close" "is my frame ready" but most of the enquiries about prices resulted in a nil result.

Funny nowadays how many local people see the website and then telephone or call in. So we have our opening hours on there, and a picture of the shop, and a map!

So i suppose if you have some free webspace, you've nothing in the world to lose from having a website.
and i'm one of those who, insteasd of reaching for the phone book, just googles and adds "contact" 99% of the time you get the contact page email and phone number you wanted.

yeah that works. I just tried mine in google -< moonshine framing contact> and there you are, up it comes, top of the page - and thats quicker than yellow pages!
Googling is another thing altogether.

likewise try google "picture framing <your-town>" i googled "picture framing <where-I-live>" and there we are, number one.

Try googling <mount cutting>

thinking on- The good thing about a website is that you can track who was on your site and where they came from through your stats. I was looking at my stats yesterday and noticed there was a bit of traffic from google searches for "medal frames" and "fottball shirt framing" -low and behold today there are orders for 2 medal cases online, and a phone call from a gent wanting 5 football shirts fitted into frames.

[SquareFrames]

Hi,

Without getting into the 'why fors' and 'why nots' of.....and into a discussion about Fine Art Trade Guild, over the past 2 years, as members of the Guild, we have had a huge amount of success for our training school coming through our listing in the Guild's Directory, so for us, its more than made up for the cost of membership.

The only place I have seen the business cards idea over here is in B&Q, mind you I dont go into Tesco's that often so am not aware if they have a similar scheme here.

Apart from a label on the back of a clients finished work, does anyone else put a business card or A5 leaflet with some details on the standards, work done, etc??? For us this has worked out quite well.

Steven

[absolute framing]

hi all,


I found the (YP) or as we call it here, Golden Pages a god send when i first started. Thanks to a tip from the G.P. sales rep we changed our name to Absolute Framing, from Strahan Framing - making us the 3rd listing in our County.

But you need to do more to get them to come back. As steven said, good work and good service !! I include a copy of the F.A.T.G. " Framed For Good " leaflet, business card and picture hooks with every frame.

Most of all - Word of Mouth.

Good Luck,

Stephen

[norymags]

Thank you John, this advertising business is somewhat difficult to assess but it all comes down to there`s no advert like word of mouth.
Like the rest of you I try to find wee inroads as to how we can get the customers because there must be hundreds of business cards of mine all around Dumfries and Galloway in wallets, in back pockets or even in drawers , and I never know where my customer comes from but fortunately they do. For the price of a few cards printed off each time I run out, then that is the cheapest form of reaching out I know and like Steven at square frames I tape one on to the wrapping, just in case...Norrie.