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Aggressive Small Business Marketing & Advertising
Showing archives from 09/2004.
Marketing a Personal Chef Business or Delivery Meal Service
Posted by Michael Cage on Thursday, September 30, 2004I've been doing research into hiring a personal chef or a meal service that'd deliver a day's worth of food each day.
These guys and gals are way behind the times.
After 3 years, bread companies and some restaurants have finally caught up to the "Low Carb" craze. Not most personal chefs. A "marketing smart" personal chef or service would have pre-made, custom menus (or sample menus) that prospective clients could look at based on the most popular diets... then customize from that point, if necessary.
Further, this would be a great basis for a kick-ass advertising campaign in any regional or metro-area, affluent-targeted lifestyle magazine.
12/20/2004 UPDATE:
Wow -- I didn't realize what I got myself into with this post. Turns out the personal chef business is thriving. There are amazing personal chefs out there who, unfortunately, are struggling and suffering with the marketing side of the business. I had a chance to work with one recently. We put a simple referral strategy to work in an affluent community that literally tripled her business in one weekend. I'll write about it in a post sometime, if she's ok with it.
There are 13 comments, add your own!The Danger of Being a Struggling Entrepreneur
Posted by Michael Cage on Tuesday, September 14, 2004Great public speakers and people scared to death of talking to a group experience the same physiological responses when going before a group ... nervousness, build-up of energy, butterflies in the stomach. The great speakers take those signs as proof they are about to deliver a great speech, while others take them as signs of impending doom.
We filter information, opportunities, and decisions by the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how we know ourselves to be living out those stories. The danger of being a struggling entrepreneur is... that it is far too easy, in some cases too comforting, to remain stuck in the box you have placed yourself in.
There are 1 comments, add your own!Yellow Pages Advertising for Small Businesses
Posted by Michael Cage on Tuesday, September 14, 2004For longer than I've been alive, the Yellow Pages has been stop one for many small businesses wanting to promote their "stuff" to potential shoppers. Recently, much ado has been made about Internet-based alternatives to Yellow Pages advertising: things like the local search program on Google, and assorted Internet directories like BigYellow.com.
The argument usually goes something like this: the print Yellow Pages are too expensive, and now that alternatives are popping up small businesses don't have to stick with them any longer.
There are a few things wrong with this kind of thinking, today I'll highlight two.
First, the whole "either/or" proposition is way off. Smart small business owners are thinking: "How many ways can I buy a new customer relationship?" They dollar-cost-average customer aquisition costs, and structure their businesses to make the economics work. Loser thinking is: "What is the cheapest way I can buy a customer?" The Yellow Pages, when used properly, are a very effective ad media for many different kinds of local businesses. Predicating a marketing strategy on being cheap is rarely effective, and should only be used as a stop-gap measure to get to a point where a real customer aquisition plan can be run.
Second, I've done more than my fair share of yellow pages ad consulting. And I can state, for the record, that less than 1% of all yellow pages advertisers actually understand how to use the media. Far less. Even worse, most ads in the yellow pages are designed with heavy input from... THE YELLOW PAGES AD SALESPERSON. Lemme put this in plain English: if the guy selling the ad understood how to make advertising pay, he'd be doing ads for a living, not selling them. Basing the effectiveness of yellow page advertising on the mass of advertisers is laughable. Fact is, most businesses advertising in the yellow pages, aside from doing it wrong, aren't tracking response so they have no idea what results are being generated.
Sometime next week I'll talk about how to make yellow pages advertising pay. I just ran a class on it, so much of the yummy stuff is top-of-mind and ready to come out.
P.S. My posting has been non-existant for a bit, and will get back to normal in the next 10 days. Thanks for sticking around. 
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