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A nice little rural post office or shop that services a large area. The one I use charge's me 50p a week for a hand written card. I used to put a posh one in but customers seem to like the hand written better!
Ditto ...Honey Badger .....
I find when there is a demand that all advertising methods yield a good response rate but you have to process them to suss out the ones which fit your criteria .
Best leads this year have come via recommendation from a client who sold up and moved to the other end of the country , a nice surprise and unplanned but he keeps in touch again unplanned .
Interesting... Nice advertisement in publication distributed to affluent areas V hand scribbled post card in post office window has attracted fewer quality leads than the postcard ?? interesting comments too from people saying they like the simplicity of the postcard and these are people who have smart phones and internet access .?? Unfortunately i dont have any more capacity so have stopped all advertising with a batch of leads to process .
Just my opinion but i feel people are becoming overwhelmed by saturation point when they go on line and can't see the wood for the tree's , so many businesses to choose from , it can be like choosing a cornflake out of a box of cereal sometimes . ?
for a small garden maintenance business, definitely go down the village post office noticeboard route, if you can. The leads you get are so local, quality non-internet type clients, it's so refreshing and a bit retro. I put a postcard in for a few weeks about 5 years ago and will never need to advertise again. As word of mouth takes over. I am inundated with a nice amount of work
i have seen a lot of adverts on the local facebook pages
Good customer equals snow ball effect. I Picked up a 600 yr old cottage garden in October, in a beautiful hamelt 10 mins from my house, I nearly wet myself over that garden! Omg the soil is amazing! From that customer four other jobs. Facebook is for tyre kicking customers, I've never had one lead of work from it.
Sounds a lovely job to do, and observing the seasonal changes of an historic garden you regularly maintain is one of the pleasures. I remember back in the day, some people would have you out to give a quote with no real intention of having you do the work. It was merely a ploy to put pressure on their partner to cut the hedge, or whatever. You would never hear anything back and would drive past a week or so later to see the harassed partner saving the cost they were threatened with, tackling it with their black n decker
Word of mouth, cards in local hairdressers have done well for me, Facebook is useless, nobody wants to spend more than a fiver. I've just taken a punt on a local directory called Denton, £180 for the year and gets delivered to 22000 homes.
I have a Bark account - and when (if) I need something I trawl that for the right type of job, then approach that person - currently it is turning up about 60 jobs a week within 15 miles of my front door!! We also get around 3 to 5 leads a week from our website or referrals from existing clients.
I'm nervous of doing it the other way round (adverts in shop windows etc) - you end up going to visit all kinds of jobs that you really do not want. Far better to see the right postcode, large or very large garden, etc etc. Basically somehting that you can see is going to be a 12 month a year job Then approach them.
The post office I use is in very wealthy area. I can normally weed the rubbish ones out from a phone call. Plus I get there full address so I have a look at on Google earth.
I'm happy to turn down massive garden's if I don't like them or if the customer's not the right. I
See some rubbish sometimes, but mostly gems.