Do you advertise? Budget for advertising?

[Nicki-Marie]

Ive recently had a visit from a sales rep trying to offer me a two year contract for an advert on a 42 inch plasma being put into a childrens play activity centre (ball pools, slides and the like) where parents would be sitting for hours at a time watching their kids play.

I literally told him i dont actually budget for advertising, purely as i dont do it.
okay a couple of mail shots, treatment vouchers here and there, but nothing more. He laughed when i said i dont advertise. Which i thought was rude. okay big companies with money to throw into these kind of things fair enough, but the smaller salons and such its a lot of money.

It got me wondering about what other salons do for forms of advertising? Friends I have with salons are in the same boat as me and dont plough crazy money into advertising.
Im interested to know if any of you have paid a good amount of money for advertising such as this that has worked for you and got you a good client base from it?

Personally for me word of mouth is how i work. Ive never advertised (okay once i did a teeny weeny snip in the paper) I could be busier. But i cant justify spending thousands on advertising myself. And what if i did spend, and i didnt see a return?

Feel free to post anything regarding advertising and your own experiences. Im interested to know. xxx

 

[ValencianNails]

What do you get for your money and how much does it cost?

When you're advertising you have to remember that it's a numbers game, the more people who see your advert means the higher chance you have of receiving calls...

How many people will see the plasma screen?
What is the adult foot flow in the play centre each day/week/month?

2 years is a long time IMO... I wouldn't be happy about signing up to a 2 year contract.
3 months at a time, yes, but definitely not 2 years.

hth's a bit

 

[Chameleon]

Personally Nicki,thats a long time and i wouldnt do it!

With all the advertising we did in the first 2 years,only 2 worked...leaflet drops from US,which was a surprise...we did thousands of houses in the space of 6 months,every sunday and evenings Rich and i put leaflets through the door,and i did get quite a good response.

The other is word of mouth.

I am very sceptical of all other advertising

 

[Nicki-Marie]

I have got all the statistics, cant run them off, off of the top of my head though. The adult flow was reasonable, with the majority or adults statyng 2-3 hours at a time.
He wouldnt negotiate about the contract it was two years and all paid for within the first 4 months with an upfront payment in his hand also. I just dont have that money floating around!

He was offering a 10 sec advert which was on a loop of different adverts. all the adverts were played lasting 8 mins, so every 8 mins my advert would appear. id be offered all artwork they would do that. And 4 advert changes per year. Basically the advert would be running everyday for 2 years solid.

 

[ValencianNails]

The 'problem' I have with the 2 year contract is that it's a lot of money to shell out in a short space of time AND most importantly you have to find out what would happen if the play centre went 'bust' after 6 months (for example), what would happen to your money and advert then?

This is why I wouldn't personally sign up for anything more than 3 months initially.

 

[Zo Zo]

I wouldn't do it, mainly because it won't have a proven success rate like some of the other more traditional methods do. At the moment I'm doing Yellow Pages, and I also do a local A5 mag which has worked REALLY well for me over the past couple of years. I have been offered all kinds of wonderful-sounding schemes but I'm not even tempted any longer, I just think about the number of pedicures I have to do to get my money back and that is usually enough to put me off:lol:

 

[loubylou]

I have been a fool and paid for one of these big screen ads lasting 2 yrs, it is in the A&E department of my local hospital, in quite a big town and i haven't had one client from it yet, it went live in may,
you keep your money hun, its not worth it

 

[Nicki-Marie]

Zoe. Many thanks for the info you sent me. how rude i havent said thankyou yet. :o :hug:
And yes thats it exactly. When you calculate the treatments you have to do to cover what you've spend .. well it gave me brain ache.

And it hadnt even crossed my mind to think 'what if' they had gone bust. Thats such an important thing to think of. Good point.

 

[Nicki-Marie]

I have been a fool and paid for one of these big screen ads lasting 2 yrs, it is in the A&E department of my local hospital, in quite a big town and i haven't had one client from it yet, it went live in may,
you keep your money hun, its not worth it

Thanks for giving me feedback though its good to know its been tried and tested. Sorry to hear its not proven to work for you yet :hug: I will admit i was tempted.

 

[Jennykins]

i completely agree with sandi, 3 months at a time is best when it comes to paid for advertising...you never know how your circumstances could change xx

 

[Zo Zo]

No worries Nicki.
I am embarrassed to admit this but 2 years ago I paid about £500-600 to advertise on a bridal planner in Pronuptia. It never even got printed:irked:
Now when I get calls about advertising I just hang the phone up! Someone rang the other day and asked me to advertise in some children's charity thing. I just said no, so the little creep said, 'Don't you want to help underprivileged children?' Well, tbh, that didn't make me feel like advertising :lol: the cheeky little sod.

 

[Shar]

Hi

Has anyone had any experiences with agreeing to this then changing your mind.

I'm sorry to say I was talked in to signing up for a 2yr contract with one of the plasma screen adverts in local kiddies play centre. After giving it some thought I decided I didn't want to continue so I phoned the company, they said no problem put it in writing which I did. All this was done withing 10days.

They are now saying they will cancel the contract but I have to pay £150 in liquidated damages, this is written in very small print on the back of the agreement but was not pointed out to me when signing, I have not paid this yet as my arguement is they have done no artwork for my company what am I paying for.

What should I do I really can't afford to throw away £150

 

[ValencianNails]

What should I do I really can't afford to throw away £150

Contact your local Citizens Advice Bureau, they should be able to help you.

The thing is... if it's written on the contact, even in small print, and you signed it, then I doubt there's much you can so about the additional payment.
I hope the CAB can help you :hug:

 

[Zo Zo]

Hi

Has anyone had any experiences with agreeing to this then changing your mind.

I'm sorry to say I was talked in to signing up for a 2yr contract with one of the plasma screen adverts in local kiddies play centre. After giving it some thought I decided I didn't want to continue so I phoned the company, they said no problem put it in writing which I did. All this was done withing 10days.

They are now saying they will cancel the contract but I have to pay £150 in liquidated damages, this is written in very small print on the back of the agreement but was not pointed out to me when signing, I have not paid this yet as my arguement is they have done no artwork for my company what am I paying for.

What should I do I really can't afford to throw away £150

I'm not totally sure what to suggest, but I would start with trading standards, hth's

 

[pazzy]

the problem with these cold calling advertising agencies is they have no experience in the beauty trade.

After all of these years and wasted money in advertising schemes I realised that it takes 3 years to get a business going - long and slow process.

When you get your clients - treasure them. They will bring you the new clients and the extra revenue.

If your good at what you do - you will always have clients.

Usually once your tied into anything you cant get out. Their contracts are water tight.

You can negotiate anything if you want to . Remember THEY need YOUR business too .

 

[pure]

Be very careful with this type of advertising!

My husband and I also have another business, in IT, and a couple of years ago we signed up for a similar advertising scheme except it was to be displayed in a large local supermarket.

Well it turned out that for one reason or another the screens were hardly ever on!! In the end we, and several other businesses, took the matter to a solicitors as we were never able to get a reasonable response from the company.

We ALL got our money back and the company wasn't used in the supermarket again!

I think with such advertising there are too many possible pitfalls and 2 years is a long time to be tied into something which you may not be happy with.

Save your money would be my advise!:green:

 

[EMMA AT ELITE]

:hug:
HI NICKI

JUST READRING THREADS AND SAW YOUR QUESTION ABOUT ADVERTISING.

SO THOUGHT I WOULD LET YOU KNOW ABOUT GUMTREE.

Flats to rent London, jobs in London, flatshare, free classified ads UK

IT IS BRILLIANT, AND FREE.

I DONT HAVE AN ALLOWANCE ON WHAT I SPENT ADVERTISING, AND WOULD NOT DO THE PLASMA TV SCREEN THING MYSELF.

I DO LOADS OF ADVERTISING ON GUMTREE AND ITS ALL FREE, YOU CAN BUY THINGS SELL THINGS, LIST BUSINESSES.

I LOVE IT, AND THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE HELPFUL FOR YOU TO KNOW, (CONSIDERING YOU HAVE ANSWERED MY QUESTIONS ON WEBSITES)
YOU CAN ALSO TELL PEOPLE ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE ON THERE.

ANYWAY BEST OF LUCK.

EMMA