If You Had $5,000 to spend on Advertising What Would You Advertise With?

ShineTimeDetail

ShineTimeDetail

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I don't necessarily want to spend that much but I want to get the word out!! Mainly I want St. Louis to know that I do mobile detailing and oil changes! I want to really push the oil change aspect. I have considered a couple billboards, doing a TV commercial, radio commercials also I am looking into running some ad booklets they send out quarterly. The add booklets will cost about $2500 for around 45000 homes. I can pic which 2 zones I want. The $2500 is for the back cover. They won't let anyone but restaurants and entertainment go on the front cover. I think if I have the money I should be able to pick where I want my ad.

What would you do?
 
I would say radio would be a great choice! I'm not sure what you mean by add booklets - like coupon books the size of checking books? We get those up here, but they end up in the recycling bin in our house.

Radio or a good placed billboard would be best (with radio being number 1 I think). Maybe even advertising on your local radio stations websites.

I think nowadays, most people hate what they get in the mail and normal toss it unless its from family, friends or Publisher Clearing House lol
 
We have these things called ad pages here in STL and a lot of people seem to look at them. You don't get incredible deals in them but its a way to advertise.

What time of day would be good for the radio? A station I checked with last year said they start at $500. I can get a billboard for around 600 per month with a 6 month lease...
 
After reading about the "About Ad Page", page, its quite a cool thing to have near by. Think it would be a good target of people to hit. Most likely to hit familys looking for deals.

For Radio I would say in the morning during the commute to work is when most people listen to the radio - I know its when I do. Once work day is over I play my music through my ipod and unwind. But I know many still listen to their radio station and unwind also - either normal radio or satellite.

Lunch time wouldn't be to bad of an idea either, but thing is I dont think most people listen to the radio during lunch. Just those who can at their job.

Don't forgot about maybe an Ad on the radios website. I log on to B96 while at my computer or at home and listen to the radio...they have little ads that are embedded in the player which just kind of cycle through. I find the bigger brands get the "commercial break". Which is normally about 15-30sec and sometimes a video or just audio with and image (like the progressive women standing there while audio plays)
 
If you're even thinking about radio...I would swap gift certificates for advertisement. I do it with two radio stations in my area, and have been running radio ads for almost 2 years consistently. Now, I'm booked into mid May...and I wouldn't doubt the radio has something to do with it.

They sell half off deal certificates, keep the money, and in turn give you radio ads of your choice. Beats paying them thousands to run ads. Plus, the customers come in with the certificates, and spend more money on packages. Can't lose.

$5000 is a LOT to spend on advertisement. I wouldn't go and just drop all that money directly into different forms of advertisement.

I think anyone in this business would agree...that ads don't work the first time. The second time they start to....and the third time you are seeing results. That's pretty much the rule for most advertising. Being repetitive is the key to advertisement success.

Obviously your choice of advertisement is also important. Today, I honestly think putting money into search engine optimization is very important. Everybody and their mother uses Google. You use google, your friends use google...which tells me, pretty much everybody uses search engines. I would look into that.

Radio is OK. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's worked for me, but that doesn't mean it will work for you. The station you choose to do business with is crucial. Choose the station that people listen to most in your area. More or less you wanna use the station people go to for the weather, school cancellations, or the station you hear in most retail stores, etc.
 
The gift certificate idea is an awesome idea for sure for the radio, love that idea of the trade!
 
I understand that in a way I will be working for free if I drop money on advertising but I like to get paid when leaving a job. I don't like to go somewhere and leave with no money. I don't know how I feel about the coupons on the radio.
 
ShineTimeDetail said:
I understand that in a way I will be working for free if I drop money on advertising but I like to get paid when leaving a job. I don't like to go somewhere and leave with no money. I don't know how I feel about the coupons on the radio.
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They are money certificates towards your services. Most stations do either $100, or $50. I prefer doing $50, cause you'll get more customers. Plus, it's not so much of a hit.

What's $50 off when the customer is spending $250 or more? It's nothing, and most likely you wouldn't have ever had that customer to begin with.

Just don't offer anything that will completely pay for a service...cause like you said, you wanna get paid if you go out.

I forget sometimes that most detailers are only mobile. Having a shop I guess does make doing things like this easier. It would suck to go out and get slapped with a money off certificate. But, you still get paid, and you get your name out there.
 
charity??? free detail extensive for one car and do a long writeup and post on ur local car foums.

look at todd helme article on the 458 and veyron. lots of respect to that guy.
 
100 dollars for google placement a month - keep the rest for a rainy day :dblthumb2: Word of mouth is free and better IMO than anything you can buy or pay for. We were talking about that tonight - how there is no doubt that we are growing and will be growing more from word of mouth alone. Today for example : Boat detail turned into a larger boat job for next week, a truck detail today has the owner talking about bringing us on to detail 20 Semis every month..... word of mouth and doing a great job is by far the best form of advertisement :dblthumb2: No money can buy that IMO.
 
qaz393 said:
charity??? free detail extensive for one car and do a long writeup and post on ur local car foums.

look at todd helme article on the 458 and veyron. lots of respect to that guy.
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Local forums are a joke in my area. I posted what I do and had a couple guys say "I have a couple cars in my shop I need washed or degreased". I also hooked up a guy with a 1 step to spread the word because he hangs out with the crowd on weekends, zero people contacted me. They are not interested in how their cars look, only how fast.

*Edit - I should add that they are big on Turtle Wax Ice. These are the people who won't spend money on quality.
 
ShineTimeDetail said:
Who do I talk to about search engine optimization?
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I used to sell Google Adwords placement for an advertising company. I can tell you anything you want to know. Basically it is super easy to setup and you start seeing results instantly. You will want to make sure you have analytics code on all your web pages so you can see how and where the Adwords traffic is driving customers to interact with your site. It is also better if you create a dedicated "landing page" your advertisement will link to with a call to action, much like the "free shipping" promos AG does sometimes.

Anyway, yeah, I would recommend search engine placement for sure.
 
Problem with ad words no one is searching for mobile oil change bc they don't its an option...
 
Google would be my first choice, radio second if you can get a morning drive slot, that's if you can bump out the tons of car dealerships. Local forums will work but you just need to pick the right forums, like on my local diesel truck forum I can think of maybe 5 or 6 of us that really take an interest in not just how our truck perform but also how they look, and that's out of a few hundred, most use a car wash twice a year whether they need it or not. But if you can find a Corvette, Mustang, ect ect club you would probably get better results, ESPECIALLY if you have photos. And I would say if you don't have a good digital camera, get a photographer to shoot some of the cars you have done and get those pictures up, that will sell more than just saying I use X Y and Z products. You get some really quality photos up i think that will help vs cell phone pictures that you really can't show off your hard work.
 
OH.... I would also advertise at the pro sports games if you can, either on the big screen or have some kids handing out fliers.... just a thought. You have what 3 pro sports teams? What about college games?
 
ShineTimeDetail said:
Problem with ad words, no one is searching for mobile oil change bc they don't [know] its an option...
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You could advertise with search terms like "Jiffy Lube" or whatever is the name of the local shops in your area to scoop up business from people who might otherwise be thinking about taking their car in for an oil change. The term "oil change" would probably be pretty cheap too and currently Google automatically localizes the search with Google Maps results so if you had a page on your website dedicated to mobile oil changes and listed your business on Google Maps you could probably end up getting free first page results after a while.

Advertising for oil changes would IMO probably be a lost cause though because you would rather be doing detailing with the oil change as an add-on service, right? A radio spot or local coupon book for detailing with a "free oil change - limited time" offer would be a good call to action for people who are holding off getting their cars detailed.
 
Yea but if he had say 4 or 5 oil changes and picked up some extra detail work... I guess it could go either way.... What do you do with the oil Tom? Keep it in a 55gal drum or haul it off each time? I don't know about Missouri but here we have to sign for each disposal and you are allowed only so much... Of course if you go to a different auto parts store each time... Sorry getting off topic...
 
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