Wow! I passed another benchmark on Twitter this week. I now have over 500 people following me and, I'm sure, each of them is hanging on every word I tweet. I'm pretty impressed! It's not the thousands that are following some celebs but more than the handful or two following some of my fellow Tweeters.
I've had some people show an interest in my services and others contact me about theirs. Some have re-tweeted things I've tweeted and others have been grateful for my RTs of their events or words of wisdom. One follower promised to pass my business info on to a friend in my area and I plan to look at doing business with a couple of the people I've been following. So I've decided to declare my ventures into the world of Twitter thus far a success.
I opened a page on FaceBook too as you'll recall. A few very supportive friends have become friends of my page but that seems to be the extent of that. To be honest, other than the standard blah blah blah about what I do and a heartfelt plea to visit my website, I'm not really sure what else to do on there. I'm sure I'll come up with something somewhere along my journey.
In the meantime, I had a little fun yesterday. For an insignificant fee, I booked a table and took my business to the Flea Market. To look the part, I had a friend join me to sell some of her darling little handicrafts alongside my cardboard display showing all the reasons this garage sale crowd could use my services. I even insisted we sport matching T-shirts promoting my business.
To my surprise, it went quite well. In the midst of all the used wares, jewelry, antiques and flea market baked goods, we definitely stood out from the rest. The handicrafts didn't go over quite as well as expected as they were a little pricey for this bargain hunting crowd. But they were cute enough to bring the customers over for a look.
Once my posters and pictures caught their eye, I was able to introduce my service and tell people about what I do. That in itself is important because my service is quite new for around here and the more people who know about it the better. Best of all, I even got a couple of potential customers out of the deal.
I can't say Flea Markets are going to be a standard part of my marketing strategy but, as experiments go, I got more out of it than I expected. I also had plans to participate in a local Outdoor Fair this summer for some much needed exposure and I feel really good about that being an even better success.
Any chance I get to talk about my business with potential clients is better than all the print advertising I can do. So be it Twitter, FaceBook, Flea Markets or Fairs, for better or worse, I'm putting myself out there. And that's what it's all about!
If anybody reading this has any other "budget" & "off the beaten track" ideas for promoting a business to home and business owners, I'd love to hear about it.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Where you'd least expect ...
It's funny how things happen. Last week I left the house to market my services in one way and ended up getting business in a completely unexpected place.
As with most people starting up a new business, I tend to get caught up in working on jobs or on the administrative tasks of running a business. I have to make a point of making time to go out to sell my services. That in itself can be a challenge when everything else is demanding your attention. But reality is such that if there's no sales, then there's no business. So I make a point of scheduling time to call on potential customers as often as I can. Last week, one of these outings turned out to be a real learning experience for me.
We had beautiful, unseasonably warm spring weather last week. So I decided to go out and call on a number of businesses in the area. I chose an area, made list of the ones that were my target customers, Googled their locations and off I went. I made my way from one to the next not having much success. In most cases the owners weren't there or they were too busy to see me. Maybe everybody was out enjoying the nice day like me!
Along the way, I stopped at a couple of other places "on a whim". Neither of them fit the description of my preferred customer, but it turns out that I'm glad I dropped by. I got bookings for my services in each of the unplanned places I stopped and was called to do a job first thing Monday morning. You can't beat that! It turned out to be a very productive day in every respect.
It also made me stop and think about some of the other times I've had success that way. It happens more frequently than I'd imagine. I'll be in the area and just feel like calling on a business or leaving my card on the door. I'm more likely to get business from that call than any of the other planned calls I make.
What's probably more significant, is that in both these cases, neither client was even close to my target customer. One was even in an industry that I would consider the last one in need of my services. As it turns out, in that new customer I have discovered a whole new target market that I wasn't even aware existed. It may end up being a more important source of business for me than my initial target market.
So I guess it never hurts to go with your gut sometimes or to explore avenues that you wouldn't normally. You never know what you'll find in the least expected places.
As with most people starting up a new business, I tend to get caught up in working on jobs or on the administrative tasks of running a business. I have to make a point of making time to go out to sell my services. That in itself can be a challenge when everything else is demanding your attention. But reality is such that if there's no sales, then there's no business. So I make a point of scheduling time to call on potential customers as often as I can. Last week, one of these outings turned out to be a real learning experience for me.
We had beautiful, unseasonably warm spring weather last week. So I decided to go out and call on a number of businesses in the area. I chose an area, made list of the ones that were my target customers, Googled their locations and off I went. I made my way from one to the next not having much success. In most cases the owners weren't there or they were too busy to see me. Maybe everybody was out enjoying the nice day like me!
Along the way, I stopped at a couple of other places "on a whim". Neither of them fit the description of my preferred customer, but it turns out that I'm glad I dropped by. I got bookings for my services in each of the unplanned places I stopped and was called to do a job first thing Monday morning. You can't beat that! It turned out to be a very productive day in every respect.
It also made me stop and think about some of the other times I've had success that way. It happens more frequently than I'd imagine. I'll be in the area and just feel like calling on a business or leaving my card on the door. I'm more likely to get business from that call than any of the other planned calls I make.
What's probably more significant, is that in both these cases, neither client was even close to my target customer. One was even in an industry that I would consider the last one in need of my services. As it turns out, in that new customer I have discovered a whole new target market that I wasn't even aware existed. It may end up being a more important source of business for me than my initial target market.
So I guess it never hurts to go with your gut sometimes or to explore avenues that you wouldn't normally. You never know what you'll find in the least expected places.
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