I'm now at the stage where I need to start heavily advertising my new handyman business.
So far it's been mainly pay out; vehicle, vehicle insurance & tax, corporate clothing, business cards. PL Insurance etc. On a positive note I've also earned a few quid, so not too bad.
The choices I see so far are;
Thompson & Yellow Pages - want loads of dosh & you always appear alongside your competitors. Only catches people who already realise that handymen exist and are looking for one. Thompson don't have a 'Handyman' category anyway, only 'Property Maintenance'. I'm not sure the public would think of looking there.
Leaflet drops. Expensive to arrange for individual leaflets. Much cheaper as an insert with the local free paper, but less effective.
Local paper advertising. Not yet finalised the costs.
Leaflets under windscreen wipers in shed carparks.
Foamboard posters on traffic light posts.
Parish magazines.
So, where would you look for a handyman if you needed one? What would influence you?
I don't think I would trust any of those methods. Do a good job for someone. Ask them to spread the word. Every job you do, treat it as if it was your own house. Never get greedy. Never lie. Never take a client for a mug.
I wouldn't bother with either of these myself. They may have been the advertising medium of choice up-until the mid-1990s for the sort of service you provide, but I would personally use Google ahead of either of these methods. As you have a website, maybe you should try buying some clicks from Google?
Not a bad idea, I reckon. A local plasterer put a card through my letter box the other day just as I was thinking "I really don't fancy trying to get a decent finish on that wall...". I haven't called him yet, but I probably will (the thought of plastering a whole wall myself fills me with dread - it is a skill I have never been able to get to grips with).
Don't do this. It is a real annoyance. Any oik that demands my attention by wedging something under my property is not going to get my business. Ever.
The one and only time I have ever used anyone who leafleted my house was when the leaflet said "we are working today at No xx in your road". That allowed me to call on the relevant neighbour, who gave the contractor a very good reference, and I went on to use them successfully myself. But that was for a roofer to do a job I just had not been able to find anyone to do. Normally I associate leaflets with desperation. It has to be word of mouth. To get over the catch 22 element of this, I would suggest that your advertising (by whatever method) offers to put people in touch with satisfied customers. Obviously requires some of the latter first - not to mention their agreement to take phone calls - but sounds like you have some already, just not enough.
As for newspapers etc: I agree with others - web only.
Looks pikey, and leafletting in private carparks might get you banned. Be a bit awkward being banned from B&Q if you're a handyman :-)
Unauthorised roadsigns illegal and the council might charge you for taking them down.
Probably cheap and implies trustworthy; larger proportion of older readers. You might also consider staff magazines of large employers, and internal noticeboards if any friends or relatives work there and will put up cards.
Paying adverts in YP etc are vastly overpriced but a one line advert is free* - you can insert the ad online - One line is name address and telephone number so make your name 'Medway handyman' or suchlike. I have now removed my ad, having never got any work from the yellow pages, only people saying "can you skim my bathroom walls" but ymmv
relatively free. They pester you to upgrade to a paying ad every six months or so
Many people also start at the beginning and stop at the first local supplier they find, so having a name beginning with one of the early letters of the alphabet is an advantage. I usually go the other popular route; choose from the display adverts, looking for someone whose advert specifically lists the service I am looking for.
However, it is probably the most effective way. If you do a bit of preliminary work, analysing the demographics of your existing and potential customers, you can be quite precise in your targetting, which considerably improves the cost effectiveness of the method.
With both those, you would need to be fairly sure that the paper reaches the people you want to sell your services to. I don't accept free papers and I don't get a local paper.
They are incredibly annoying and anyone putting one on my car is guaranteed that I will never use them. I have usually loaded stuff through the rear door, walked to driver's door, got in *then* seen the notice, so I have to get out again, go around to the passenger side (the wiper parks to that side, so that is usually where they are put), remove the leaflet, then get back into the car, as often as not when it is raining.
Flyposting is a breach of the Town and Country Planning Acts or the Highways Act, depending where the posters are put up. You could be fined up to £1,000 per offence and / or be the subject of an ASBO as a result of flyposting.
Usually cheap, so probably cost effective even with a low rate of return. Supermarket notice boards and newsagents' windows fall into the same category.
Whenever I want something I haven't bought before, I always start with a web search. You need a web site and the site needs to be clear and informative. The DTI Business Link pages have a lot of useful information on how to design a web site - follow the IT & e-commerce link here:
formatting link
whole site is probably worth a trawl through for information. It is designed to help small businesses.
We had a window cleaner come round t'other day door-to-door canvassing. He'd signed up lots of people, mainly because it's difficult to find a window cleaner in this area.
It's about A4 size, with the top quarter occupied by essential telephone numbers.... police, hospitals, gas, electricity, trains, buses, crimestoppers, etc.
The rest of the card is sponsored advertisers for various home services, for this area. The rear of the card is for us to add our own useful numbers.
We do keep it by the phone (for the top numbers), but have used one of the tradesmen's numbers.
Pink Card is at 08700 602 138 and there should be many more who produce such things, maybe even a local company.
BTW: I would have thought that OAP's could be the best source of handyman business these days. OAP's don't generally have a computer and are not usually out and about a lot. So best access to OAP's is probably leaflets through the letterbox.
Tell them you're just starting; give them a few copies of your flyer and ask them to pass them on to friends (locally) if they're satisfied with your work.
Good advice too. We started a building business 4 years ago. We got our first few clients, and still get some recommendations, from the estate agent we bought through. But other than that ALL our clients come from word of mouth, personal recommendations, we have never advertised at all. Currenly have work planned until about this time next year and have had to turn down some good projects recently. Do a good job and once you get started I think you'll find yourself very much in demand. Good luck,
-- Holly, in France Gite to let in Dordogne, now with pool.
Surely people who park in shed carparks are the least likely to be looking for a handyman. ;-) Agree with the others though - intently annoying.
Interestingly the only place I have ever found anyone - a plumber in this case - was the parish magazine, and more likely to be read by the older population which as others have said is a good target market.
This is dangerous territory unless you really know what you're doing. I'm not saying you can't learn - you can, but it takes time.
Adwords can work very well, but generally you need a reasonable budget, and you need to target your search terms very carefully. I'll illustrate this with an example.
Let's take "handyman" as a search term, and limit our audience to the UK only. You're looking to pay roughly 60p per click, and you'll get an estimated 10 clicks/day. That's a £6/day payout. However - these are clicks from *all over* the UK, most of which is outside your coverage area. This means a significant proportion of your payout would be paying for clicks from people who you can't sell to in the first place.
There are very few situations where highly localised services can make good use of adwords. The main exception is big cities (especially London), where you have a huge population in a small area.
I think you're missing the point - you can target specific locations with your adwords, for instance instead of "handyman" you can target "handyman maidstone" - but the estimated clickthrough for that is less than 0.1/day, because hardly anyone is searching for it.
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