Local traders - the cheapest advertising offer EVER!

[wmrcomputers]

Ok, I started a discussion about this once before several months ago but I have started this as a new thread anyway as there are some big changes.

This is the general idea... please read on.

The idea - The "Stafford Tradesmen Guide". It would be an A4 tri-folded guide, professionally litho printed on 130gsm gloss artwork paper.
Presented in a way that should encourage many homes to "keep safe for future reference", the guide will be distributed across a 20 week period (maximum) to 20,000 homes in Stafford town (ST16 and ST17 postcode area's). It is expected that this quantity would cover the majority of Stafford homes.

All distribution would be done by my own family, with GPS tracker maps proving where distribution has taken place.

The inside of the guide would have categorized listings, and ideally would need to offer at least one of every imaginable service - from Electricians to Plumbers, Cake bakers to hair stylists etc. If you know someone, please point this thread out to them!
Your business title could be listed along with a basic statement of services offered (or if you preferred an offer of discount), Telephone number, website and email address.

The cost? Here is the part that may surprise you. To hit 20,000 doormats would be just £100 per business. That's just half a penny per home!

Of course this all depends on the level of interest, but as a guide I would need a minimum of 10 businesses to be featured. So far I know of 2 definites. If you are VERY SERIOUSLY interested, please PM me or post here if you don't mind it being public. If I then get enough businesses on board I'll contact everyone to make further arrangements.

If it goes ahead, there will be a small advert for Stafford Forum too Thanks for reading

 

[highguyuk]

So to clarify, £100 would be for a ? sized advert?

 

[wmrcomputers]

It's not about the size of an advert as such - rather a listing. Everyone's listing will be of an equal font size, which overall depends on the level of interest (number of listings to be included).
Hope this helps?

 

[AA Silencers]

where else are you looking for businesses to join the directory? Can this benefit from or to the forums business directory? you know I'm always up for promoting local businesses so you can pencil me in. I do think some sort of minimum space allocation guideline would help though, for example a credit card sized area. Obviously as interest builds you could just add more pages.

 

[wmrcomputers]

Hi AA.

It's only a single paged guide which is tri-folded... hence the low price. If it needed expanding across more pages, the printing cost would become massive due to "stitching and bonding" costs etc. £100 for 20,000 homes is ridiculously cheap, and the only guideline I can therefore give is that it could list between 10 and 20 businesses. Essentially, you'd need to imagine a DL (third of A4) held vertically.. with between 4 and 6 businesses listed on it - that's the kind of space you'd be looking at.

In addition to massively increasing the cost of production, additional pages would also make huge weight increases meaning only half of the amount could be carried and distributed in one go, so then I would also need to increase the cost further to allow for the extra work in distribution - not that i would be making huge profits from it anyway (it will take around 160 hours to deliver)

The aim of this guide is to provide a way of small businesses advertising their service at a very minimal cost compared to (for example) printing and distribution of their own flyer - which even via my service is £40 per 1,000 (or £800 for the same 20,000 to put it into realistic terms)

I'm not trying to convince anyone that this would work for their business or anything like that. It's something I am prepared to organise if businesses choose to be part of it and are prepared to risk the £100 spend. I personally can't see that £100 is a huge risk for being listed in a guide hitting 20,000 homes - but that's something that only each individual business can decide.

Later today I will put together an example of what the inside might appear like - just to give people a bit more insight

 

[wmrcomputers]

Okay, here's how it might look inside. The white lines won't appear but are to show where it would unfold.
This is based on it being pretty much about maxed out (18 business listings), but if there were only 10 or 12 obviously the font size would be increased.
Note: - quality has been reduced for displaying here

 

[Admin]

This would definitely tie-in nicely with the Forum Business Directory, as AA Silencers says!

I am working hard to get it back up and running; hopefully it will be before you go to press, and we can get involved too by printing something like "All this and more in the Stafford Forum Local Business Listings, found at http://www.staffordforum.com," or similar.

 

[AA Silencers]

I think it will work if you can make it a local small business trader discount booklet. people will be more likely to keep it then. I'm still up for it, and we'd be offering the usual 10% discount we offer to our regular customers to new customers. I'm just bouncing idea's but if you can get other small businesses to appreciate the importance of attracting new customers then the booklet could be a keeper rather than heading straight for the bin.

 

[wmrcomputers]

Sounds good guys. I'm thinking the discount booklet is the way to go to. I'd happily offer a discount in my own listing entry.
The only slight negative I can see about the mention of Stafford Forum's business listings is that the guide would then essentially be advertising indirectly for free. For example, assuming AA Silencers pays £100 for the printed listing, then a recipient goes online and decides to book "Dodgy Bob's Autos" instead as he's currently offering a 20% discount. In this scenario, the contributing AA Silencers doesn't get the income whereas Dodgy Bob does - yet hasn't contributed to the cost of the publication.
I'm assuming businesses currently don't pay anything to be listed in the traders part of the forum?

My initial intention was to create a dedicated website for the "discount booklet". All advertisers would be displayed on the site (obviously in far more detail) and would then be included in the printed booklet annually. Any thoughts on another way?

 

[AA Silencers]

To be fair mate, what goes around comes around. For £100 quid you'll be taking my business to the customer not waiting for them to do a search and find my business. That's what I'm paying for. If they then carry on and do a search then I agree they might find Dodgy Bob's Autos. I'm happy with the service my garage offers and the price we work at. If another garage provides a good service to their customers at a fair price then they deserve to keep their customers. If not they'll be shopping around, and thanks to your flier drop they'll find us. They might find Dodgy Bob too, but if his service is no good they'll move on. If his service is good then fair play to him, he has a family to feed too. Maybe he should change his business name though!

 

[wmrcomputers]

Good perspective there. Hadn't looked at it like that. Thanks AA