Off Topic, Ideas

[Lee Gernandt]

With the slow housing mareket, I am interested to here other forum members methods of drumming up new business. Anyone care to share?

[Peter Walsh]

Lee,
Ever notice when business drops, there is less money to spend on advertising?
This is the classic dilemma.
How to market at low cost. Have you checked the cost of mailing lately?

I just decided to print up some "door hangers". These are slender ad cards that hang from door knobs. Mine is full color with photos showing some of my best job photos ( a picture is worth....). I keep a stack in the car and when on a call, I will take ten to twenty minutes to walk the neighborhood and hang these on door knobs (cost free). Obviously, you want to hang them in a neighborhood that can afford what you sell. If you have an empty day, spend all day doing this and get some healthy walking in as well.

This is not the whole answer, just one little idea. I got my door hanger printed at http://www.printrunner.com/default.aspx?ID=43. I had 1,000 printed $239.00 plus shipping. I do my own graphic design, so all I had to do was send them the file (make sure you check Print Runner's help pages with termplates, and how do lay things out) see my sample attached. Notice I promoted my cabs being printed in eCab magazine). I just started this week, so no results yet but I am hopeful. I just needed to do something productive when in a neighborhood that looks like it could use some of my work and do it without ringing doorbells or wasting time.

[Joe Redburn]

Lee,
Try listing your wares on craigslist.org
Regards
Joe

[Lee Gernandt]

Thanks for the replies. I was just curious what other ideas were out there. So far we still have a backlog of work, but it never hurts to try to stay on top of things.