Computer Service Start-up Needs Advice

The following is a transcript of a series of e-mails from a gentleman wishing to start his own business and needing marketing and advertising advice.

Q: I plan on starting an on-site computer repair business from my house. For advertising I will use direct mail, BNI, pass out flyers, yellow pages, and local paper. Which one do you think will bring the best results for my type of business? Also, if I send out 5000 postcards to businesses, what range of returns do you think I could expect.


A: The short answer to your question is that any of the media you���ve mentioned can be successful for you depending on what you���re hoping to achieve.

Direct mail ��� The common thinking is that 1% is a good response rate (people contacting you , not necessarily doing business). The more targeted your message and the more targeted the mailing list, the better your response rate will be. We know of businesses that regularly achieve as much as 10% but this is usually reserved for those who direct mail a list of their existing and previous customers.

Before we dispense any advice for your particular situation, Can you tell me a few more things about your business?


1) Where are you located��� City/State

2) What is going to be your competitive advantage? What about your business is going to be different/ better than what consumers already have available to them? In other words, why would someone choose your service?

3) Who is your target market? Business Computers? Home Computers? Both? Maybe even more specific. Small business computers, single Mom���s Computers at home.

4) Is there anything preventing you from considering other advertising media?

5) How much funding do you have for your promotional campaign

6) What is your time frame for launching this business.

7) How many local competitors do you have

8) What sort of promotion and advertising are your competitors using?

Q: 1. (omitted location)

2.Not sure yet, maybe fast response to start out with since I will have plenty of time to start out.

3.I will target both, pass out fliers and advertise in the local papers for residential and for business users I will stop in personally and also by direct mail. If I got half of 1% return (paying customers) I would be very happy. I would send out 10,000 peices a week which would cost $800, if I got 50 paying customers at 60$ per hour and one hour minimum would return $3000 for a profit of $2200. Does that seem possible? If I got just 25 paying customers I would still make a very nice profit and hopefully have repeat business.

4.I will consider anything that is cost effective.

5.probabyl 2-3 thousand to get started, I expect to pay 2 thousand a month for advertising.

6. I plan to start advertising anywhere from 2-4 months from now

7 in a five mile radius there are probably hundreds of competitors

8. the only thing I have seen is the yellow pages, now that I think of it, do you think that would be a good thing to spend alot of money on? I am not sure if a buiness person would go there to find a computer repair tech.It would prob be good for residential business. What do you think?

A: Before we get to far along on ���advertising��� I think you should spend some more time nailing down your marketing��� I know most people use advertising and marketing interchangeably, but Advertising is really just a tool under the promotion category. You probably remember from school (or not possibly) that marketing encompasses all of the business activities related to putting customers together with products(or services). You���ve probably heard the term the 4 P���s of marketing��� Product, Price, Placement and Promotion

Based solely on what you���ve told me so far, I���d like for you to have a better idea of what your product is and how it fits in (or it���s position) within the marketing area that you���re in. You���ve said that within a 5-mile radius you���ve got a couple hundred competitors��� That���s a lot of competition. Are you sure your business is even viable with that much competition. If so, what makes it viable? What is it that your company can do better than every other competitor?

Now to answer some of your questions thus far���

Direct Mail ��� did I understand that you���ve found a deal to send out 10,000 pieces for $800? Is this by doing it yourself or have you talked to a marketing company already? I���d like to learn more about what you meant as it seems too good to be true since postage is 39 Cents.

Yellow Pages ��� I���d like to know how many competitors are already advertising 1/8 page or more and also the number that just have listings. It sounds as if you may have plenty of competition already using the phonebook so if you were to go down this road you���d need to have a pretty special (differentiated) offer. Again this harkens back to defining your product better. Things to consider about the yellow pages is that it only comes out once a year, which means a) you���re not going to be able to start until the next time they deliver (every area is on a different schedule, without investigating the options in your area, I can���t tell you for sure the next time their coming out) B) You���re locked into an annual contract which means you need to pay the bill every month for a year regardless of changes in your business (like say for some reason you go out of business,,, the bill still comes) and you can���t change your message for a year which means you���ll be stuck with whatever offer you���ve got in print.

Networking Groups i.e. Chambers of Commerce, BNI Etc. These will be a fantastic place for you to hone your message early on��� to see what���s going be a good offer, what���s not, and to get involved with the local business community. You may need to do no other B2B advertising if you are good at networking.

Also, I notice that your writing me from a netzero account. Businesses are going to expect you to have a website and an e-mail address with your own domain name. A computer company without a website is like a printer without business cards.