I am ready to bid 2009 farewell and storm into 2010. This past year, I launched my own business and it had a successful start. Considering that the only real promotion I did was putting vehicle magnets on our cars, printing up business cards (with my own laser printer no less) and buying self inking stamps for use on invoices, I did a decent job of getting the word out that I was in business. I’m still waiting for the final numbers from my accountant, but I definitely turned a profit this year, which is a lot more than many small businesses can say about their startup year.
However, I want to grow tenfold it in 2010. Profit is great, but I also want it to provide a living. So, I hired a marketing consultant who spent the better part of a day reviewing my operation and preparing a list of suggestions for measures I can take to grow my client base in the coming year.
While I’d spent much of my time focusing on my website, including making certain my landing page was search engine optimized, she encouraged me to put more effort into trying to attract potential local customers. While vehicle magnets are definitely a good start when trying to attract the attention of people in my own city, she suggested I go further with architectural signage.
This made a lot of sense, since I live and work out of a big old Victorian house and it’s not immediately obvious that there’s a company housed inside. I suspect that this will help with courier deliveries, as well, and the architectural signage, when done right, adds a real touch of professionalism to the premises. It instills confidence in customers or potential customers.
At the consultant’s suggestion, I turned to the web and chose signsoveramerica.com to order my promotional material for the coming year. Their pricing was hard to beat and I found it very easy to upload the graphic files I wanted them to use as artwork. By the time all was said and done, I had also ordered outdoor banners (to catch the attention of people driving by the house), reordered new self inking stamps with my signature, for giving that “personal” touch to mass-mailing correspondence, and I also ordered some more vehicle magnets – bigger this time, and much more visible.
Even though the 2010 business year has just begun, I’ve already been working with the marketing guru for where I take things in 2011. Now that I have the architectural signage and outdoor banners taken care of, the next step is to move beyond passive advertising and start participating in trade shows. Fortunately, signsoveramerica.com has me covered there too, with trade show displays and, of course, I can use volume pricing to order plenty of vehicle magnets to use as giveaways.
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