Does anyone have any good marketing idears for reaching people??

I own a repair shop in NC, i have done many radio adds and gone house to house passing out flyers with 10% off the total bill. And i continue to find people who dont even know who we are or what we do, we have only been open a year and a half and we are on the outskirts of town. This tuesday i am going from business to business giving away donuts with business cars on them and telling people about the business, does anyone have any other good idears for obtaining business????

I have struggled with the same problem in the past. With the flyers, are you going door to door passing these out or are you sending them in the mail?
I have had more luck sending things in the mail. I contacted a Realtor that I know and had him ask the Title company that he uses to pull county records under my criteria (i.e. annual income, price of their home, and certain zip codes), and I printed the names and addresses on labels. Then I went to a local print shop and designed some really neat postcards (since the postage is cheaper at only 26 cents instead of 41 is it now?) and sent out at least a thousand of them. I was able to hit a lot of people for little money and effort. But it sounds like you are on the right track, it took me a little over a year to really start getting real business. Don't give up!

One word-Networking. If going for the older people doesn't work, change your target age group. This is a car repair shop, correct? well see what the other repair shops in your area are offering. another good Strategy is to target the 16-24 year old age group. My friend owns a repair shop in my city and he realized that there were a good 100 repair shops here, but only 1 of them was geared towards import performance. All of the teenagers would take their cars (civics, tC's, eclipses) there to get their exhausts, cold air intakes, window tints, lowering springs. all of these mods are easy for the general mechanic and can make pretty good money off teens. This will get them to bring their cars to you for everything. After you start getting some customers, you'll realize you will have some that keep coming back every time they get money to add something. These are the best customers. Give them a deal (like doing a modd at cost). This way they will go out and tell all their friends about your shop. This should help you get your network started.

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35 yrs exp in adv
I've consulted to over 7000 businesses, mostly small family-owned in local towns.

Have you ever considered going into the local Yellow Pages?
I was a directory consultant for 25 years and had many repair businesses in the book.
It's still the first place people go when they have a problem to be solved.
There are ads of all sizes and will fit any budget.
It never gets thrown out and is the bible for most people in need. You don't have to offer a discount, donuts or anything other than good service. Your YP rep will design the ad for free. And, if you like it, you can use it on direct mailers or other promotions.
I even wrote a best-selling book on amazon.com on how you can design effective YP ads.

Good luck.

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Join the Chamber of Commerce if you haven't already and make sure you go to the monthly mixers. Sponsor one of the mixers. (a lot of the chamber members do this) Other ideas are to be sure you are involved with any community events and fundraisers. Another avenue is to approach the POA of residential communities. Ask to advertise in their newsletter. It's relatively cheap, and usually, no more than one company in the same business thinks to do this. Once you have done this, referrals begin to become a large source of your business. Try each of these or a combination. When you do get calls, always ask how they heard about you. It's the best way to determine what methods work.

Good luck

I would definately try internet advertisement. You could purchase space in google with just a few bucks, or buy thousands of impressions with a large budget. there are also directories (look at http://directoryM.com) and other options.

id look at http://www.advertisingonlinesite.com/Online_Advertising.html

Have you tried Craigslist.org? You can promote yourself for free.

In North Carolina your biggest market is going to be word of mouth. But in the mean time there are many legitimate suggestions on here. www.charlotte.craigslist.org is defintely a good way to go, Yellowpage ads are a little overrated but you don't want to miss out on the market so a small ad would work. The biggest thing you want to do is get involved in your local organizations. Chamber of commerce is great, rotary club if any, depending on what you fix try to find organizations related to what you fix. If it is equipment, try to get into some of the local builder's associations, most of these are very reasonable for smaller companies. Flyers are a great idea, but delivery is more important than quantity. If you are an experienced salesman, try to make your calls warm calls (call them first, and find out who you should talk to) if not just rely on the mail like the previous listing said. It could be just as effective.

Sounds silly but doing a myspace for your business is a great marketing tool. Create a website. Speak with cab companies and start a partnership with them offering them a deal that they cant pass up, then go to limo companies, flyer out at the malls etc.

Word of mouth is the best way for people to not only hear about you, but to actually use your services. They already trust you because their friend told them about you. I would entice your current customers to send you referrals. Send a mailing to everyone who has used your shop, even once, asking them to refer their friends and family in return for an item of value (gift card, store credit, tickets) for every person they send to you. You may want to send a form to fill out with spaces for the names and phone numbers of their referrals. Car shops aren't known for their service. Offer outstanding customer service, then follow through. Whatever you do, don't do what every other shop does. Stand out!

Since 85% of Internet users rely on search engines to find goods and services, it is essential that every business promote their business via a published domain named website on major search engines such as Google.com, Yahoo.com & MSN.com. These major search engines are the Yellow Pages for all business which can be reached by anyone having an Internet connection.

Begin by publishing your website's domain name for FREE at Google's search directory, visit "http://google.com/addurl/?continue=/add... and fill-in the form. In another way, Google, Yahoo or MSN provide a Yellow Pages kind of advertisement for every website according to a set of ranking protocols. And there's where web designers and search engine optimizers play an critical role in marketing websites which in turn, display goods and services to be discovered [via search directories] by the rest of the world. The greater the appearance or presence that one's website can generate on search directories, the greater number of customers will accordingly visitor one's website.

As for the cost to market one's website via the Internet and more particularly -- search directories, will depend initially with the proper design of webpages and the proper placement of metatags which are: <Title>, <Description> and <Keywords>.

A searchable <Title> would be "[name of the goods/services - a generic domain name is okay unless you own a well-know brand], [city], [state - postal abbreviation]" -- up to 65 characters and spaces. The <Description> would be up to 20 words comprising a complete readable sentence which promotes interest in your business, i.e., "We sell quality _____ at a reasonable price, etc." And <keywords> would consist of 12-15 compound plural words separated by commas, i.e., "cars, planes, transportation, etc."

In conclusion, webpages can either be rather straightforward using only HTML text or be crafted totally as a graphic Flash configuration. Either way, care should be taken to complete the Properties entries for Title, Description and Keywords so that there is something that search robots can index. The more one is educated in crafting effective webpages along with metatag placement, the less will be spent to hire third-party consultants to assist you in this matter.

To demonstrate how search engines/directories work, go to Yahoo.com and type in the following search query: "pizza downtown los angeles." [Note: do not include the quotes (").] Again, this is a very generic query which means you want to order a "pizza" from "downtown" and in what city -- "Los Angeles." Sounds fairly simple and then hit Enter. In a moment or two, there will appear some 1.3 million search results and among the top Five rankings will be a business called "Pizza Next Door, etc." The significance of this demonstration is to illustrate that most Interest shoppers will discover "Pizza Next Door," forthright because of its high web presence and ranking within the Top Five. So these shoppers are more or less likely to patronize this pizza establishment and hopefully in the long term; validate the owner and his family as having a profitable Internet enterprise.

To further illustrate how one can achieve a TOP 10 page ranking on Google.com, type in the following search query: "ecommerce tutorials seo." [Note: do not include the quotes (").] Again, this is a very generic query. Then hit Enter. In a moment or two, there will appear some 1.44 million search results and among the TOP 10 rankings will be a website called "Welcome to Downtown Los Angeles."

Good luck!

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