Getting Men To Dance

Q: We've opened up a dance studio teaching Latin dances. Our biggest dilemma is how to advertise/promote effectively to attract men to our studio. We have plenty of women, but men are reluctant about learning how to dance, and women have no partners to dance with. What would your suggestion be?

A:The first thing you want to do is figure out what your message to the men should be. Ask yourself, and maybe some men in your life as an informal focus group, what would make a man want to learn to dance at your studio. What would motivate them? If the women are single, this could be easy, your message could be that it's a good way to meet women. If the women in your group are largely married, perhaps there could be some incentive to bring their husbands. Maybe Husbands dance free.

For examples sake let explore both avenues.

Ex. 1. Mostly Single Ladies: Thus advertising to single men. For this, you're going to need to use a persuasive type medium. Direct-Mail, Yellow Pages and Newspaper is out for persuading, you need an intrusive medium that is going to expose them to your message of "It's a great place to meet women" without them actively seeking it out since they're not already inclined to. For this you're going to need either radio or TV (Broadcast or Cable. The choice here is going to depend on what market you're in. If you're in a big market like DC, Miami, or NY, Broadcast Television and Radio are pretty much going to be unaffordable for you, but Cable TV should be affordable just about anywhere in the country. Radio might be a better bet in a smaller market, such as Pittsburg, or Charleston or Talahassee. Now you're going to want to pick radio or tv stations (and shows) that have a predominantly male audience, and your commercial should address why men would want to learn to dance. Don't worry about alienating the women as they are already actively seeking you out. KEEP YOUR MESSAGE TARGETED

Ex. 2 Mostly Married or Coupled Females. For this you need to make an incentive, like Husbands Dance free, or 2 for 1 for couples for the first month etc. For this you're going to want to use in-store signage, Flyers handed out directly to students and Direct mailed to existing customers, previous customers and lookers that are in the database you've hopefully created(if not create one right now).

Now without knowing what exactly your situation is, I'm guessing that you've probably got a mixed bag of single and coupled ladies as customers. No problem. Depending on your budget, either adopt both strategies or pick one and as your business grows then adopt the other strategy as well. If it were me in this situation I'd probably start with the direct mail / couples incentive program.

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.

A Retail website needs "Free Advertising" Advice

I am an advocate of business owners using outside marketing people to aid them in presenting their businesses to the market. It's important to have a trusted un-biased "fresh" set of eyes to review what it is you're saying and how you're saying it so it makes sense to "Joe public" thus whether these marketing people are high paid consultants or their "brother in-law" is irrelevant. The reasoning behind this is that it's difficult to read the label from inside the bottle.

I'm bringing this up because I am guilty of this myself in the case of this website. My concept for the site is to give "free advice about advertising" as opposed to "advice about free advertising". But, now that I think about it and thanks to a fellow that wrote in, I now see where the name of the site could be confusing. Happily I am more than happy to also provide free advice about free advertising. However, as you read on, by definition there's no such thing as Free Advertising (despite what many websites would have you believe.)


Q: "I have recently started a (omitted)retail website and finding it extremely difficult to bring traffic at a low cost. Is there a way to bring in at least 1000 unique visitors per day with 0$ investment?"

A: The answer is yes and no... Let me explain.

"Advertising" costs Money... Period! The definition of advertising is :
The paid use of media for non personal selling to targeted prospects.

Now I think what your asking, is there any way to PROMOTE your website to bring 1000 Visitors per day. "Promotion" is one category of Marketing (4P's Product Placement Price and Promotion) of Which advertising is merely one tool.

The free tools are PR and this is the avenue you'll need to pursue. Blogging, Cause Marketing and Creating Viral Marketing for yourself is how you'll need to do it. The good news is this is free. The bad news is that the price you pay instead of $ is Time. Your time to create the PR and time for the PR to work.

Read http://www.searchengineguide.com/ebooks/30DayBook.pdf

It's a great example of starting an online business with 0$

Getting Started

I've debated back and forth on how to best to publish and respond to the advertising questions you've sent to me. Should I post the Q&A directly to the site each time someone asks a question and ultimately end up creating pages and pages of Q&A or should I format it as a Blog? Clearly as you're reading this it's obvious I've decided to go the Blog route. My thinking is that it's a much better way to organize it, it'll be easier to search and ultimately easier to publish on a regular basis. Also, it allows the opportunity for others to make comments or follow up questions which is a huge benefit. Though I surely know much more about advertising than most, I'll freely admit I don't know everything and perhaps this more "open" format will encourage outside participation and we'll all learn something.

I hereby declare this blog open for business and invite you to read, learn, ask questions and share your thoughts.