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Promoting our business

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Work & Study
Hey! :wave: So me and my dad are expanding our business. To give you some background, we do design, print and copying. We do a lot of business stationery, posters, leaflets but also things like wedding invitations, orders of service and personal stationery. So now we've got more space in the same location, so our shop front will be much bigger and we will have more studio space to work in. I need help with some ideas to promote us to drum up more business. Any ideas at all would be good. We're renovating our new space and once we have, I was considering a launch night, inviting our present customers and handing out flyers in the town. Is that too tacky? Help me!

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Would be worth looking into things such as wedding fayres as well... if you are a family run business you want to make sure you have a presence at local events... Having just got married I searched and searched to find a smaller business to make our invitations, I just felt they would give more time to it than a huge company.

    People like the personal touch so make sure you use that as a key point to your advertising....
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Dobbin wrote: »
    Hey! :wave: I was considering a launch night, inviting our present customers and handing out flyers in the town. Is that too tacky? Help me!



    Sounds like a good idea in general, but i'm not sure about the handing out of flyers in town, whenever i've been in town and people have gave me one, they get put in the bin, likewise with everybody else around me...

    It's pretty crucial that whatever method you go for, you get a great turn out at the event, since your success at getting peoples attention will determine how people think of your company, I'm guessing probably around half of your business (sorry wild guess!) could be from people wanting flyers/posters etc... to do the very same thing, get peoples attention.

    If your event only gets a dozen people turn out, it'll hint that your posters/flyers etc... aren't really attention grabbing?


    But i guess thats just one aspect of your business, like splodgey said things like weddings and such will have specific fayres you can turn up at...

    Wishing you every success though :thumb:
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thanks guys. Splodgey: I'm definitely looking to push our wedding stationery- we've produced some really beautiful things in the past that I'm really proud of. I'm thinking about creating a 'pack'- for example, invites, orders of service, place names, seating plans, thank you cards- and offer a discount when ordered together. I'd definitely like to have a presence at the wedding shows; and as you said, keep the personal touch. One thing that our customers comment on more frequently than anything else is the quality of our customer service, so I want to emphasise that.

    Mr Orange: Where we are in town has a fair amount of footfall so I was considering handing out flyers outside our shop. The town is also very firendly, and as all of us that work here also live in the town, we're quite well known, so hopefully the amount of leaflets that end up in the bin would be small. I want to put out balloons in our corporate colours and really make a big deal of it really. As I think I mentioned, we do leaflet design and print here so I'm confident that we can have some high quality, eye catching leaflets to grab people's attention. Right now I'm working on a marketing strategy to try and ascertain how best to go about 'recruiting' new customers. It's hard work!
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Are there any other local businesses where you could do some form of promotion? For example, you could offer a discount on printing to any customers of a particular flower shop (which shouldn't have a problem suggesting this offer to their customers because it adds value to their own product). I guess you've just got to be careful that you're not approaching businesses that already offer a similar service themselves. Obviously it works with other companies, but flower shops tend to cater for such a wide range of events that might also want a printing service, that I think they'd be one of your best assets. I think this kind of targeted marketing is far more effective than taking out an expensive advert in a newspaper, for example. And presumably you'll keep a mailing list of past customers for this type of work in particular (obviously you'd want them seperate from your business clients) and you can send them a newsletter every so often, about your current offers, just keeping your company in their minds for when they do have an event.

    Another trick however, is to make a friend at the newspaper. There's nothing better than having a free half-page "story" in your local paper about the expansion and grand re-opening of your business complete with full details of the services you offer and a contact number. We do it whenever anything changes at work, because we know the paper has nothing better to write about. You'll probably only be able to do this once though, so make the most of it.
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