Category — Marketing

All the internet marketing you are doing will really pay off when you combine it with the one thing it’s missing… YOU!

Become involved in your local  Chamber of Commerce to come in contact with your potential customers.

As a member, you have access to other businesses who will give you referrals when they know what you do.

Service organizations are always looking for programs for their meetings. A slide show presentation of your work gives them a different view of concrete as well as a note about your business.

Offer to engrave the entry or lobby of your Chamber’s office as a donation to the group. That beats a wall covered with business cards vying for everyone’s attention any day.

If engraving for the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t work for you, look into offering your engraving gift to another service group. You’ll have an example of your work right in front of people in the community you hadn’t thought of calling; people who may have cracked patios in need of your special engraving process.

Personal face time with your potential customers is very compatible with social media marketing online, you’re incorporating a double layer of advertising with very little cash spent.

Your satisfied customers — the ones who are so impressed with the way you transformed their old, ugly patio into a pleasant spot for their property; these people are the best advertising tool you can possibly have.

Do they realize you are looking for new work after their work has been completed? There can be no doubt that they will be telling people about their new patio and mentioning who did the work. Their intent for that conversation can be completely different and more beneficial to you if they know that you are looking for more work.

It’s not being aggressive and pushy to ask people to help you connect with others who need your engraving services. You’re helping them help others with an ugly concrete problem. Remember this social axiom: People like to help.

When you deliver your final invoice, ask for a written testimonial that you can show new customers. Have something pre-written so that it feeds their imagination. It’s okay to let them mail it to you. (Include a stamped envelope to make it even easier for them)

When you receive your final payment, give them a thank you call and ask if they know anyone who might like to have engraving done at their place. Ask them to remember you when they hear about someone looking for decorative concrete in the future.

First of all, DO excellent work and provide over-the-top customer service.

When customers do send someone your way, remember them with  a thank you card in which you have written a personal message and signed your name.

It is a small thing that will come back to you over and over again.

According to a blog post at the Twitter Blog the microblogging site is going to make life for users easier than ever before.

They will be adding a link shortening feature for your tweets.

Link shorteners became popular as a way to shorten long and impossible-to-remember URLs, but became essential for use on Twitter because of the 140 character limit on Tweets (posts to Twitter).

There are MANY services available to create a link using fewer than 20 characters. Each one looks like a bit of gobbledy-gook, but some can be recognized as coming from ow.ly (Hootsuite) dld.bz (SocialOomph) bit.ly (Bitly).

At present and historically, if you wanted to shorten a URL for use on Twitter, you had to do so outside of Twitter in one of the 3rd party applications. Twitter says that later this summer, users will be able to shorten the URL as they make their TWEET update.

Some URL shorteners offer additional tools: Bit.ly and Hootsuite can track the hits on your shortened link.  Hootsuite (Ow.ly) and SocialOomph (dld.bz) have many elements for managing Twitter, such as the ability to schedule tweets ahead of time. This frees-up users to take care of other Twitter activities such as retweeting, replying and making more of the social aspect that makes Twitter work so well.

The folks at Twitter have been steadily developing new options for their microblogging site.

Please take advantage of Twitter, and other social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, and use them to promote your business and the individual decorative concrete jobs you complete.

Facebook has had a lot of ‘face time’ in the media in the past few weeks.

Some naysayers have even campaigned for a “Quit Facebook Day”.

But, as a business, quitting would be self-defeating when you look at the real purpose of social media.

Facebook has changed steadily since its beginning in 2004. As it matures, it should become more stable, better, and useful for the small business, or organization to get more loyal customers more consistently.

Let’s say you’re a Boston Red Sox fan, and you have a choice of doing business with two different businesses who both offer nearly identical services at similar prices.

Now let’s say one of those businesses is a Yankees fan, and one is a Red Sox fan, and the only way you know this is because of their Facebook page.

Who are you more likely to do business with?

Or, maybe you need some lawn work done, and you can’t do it yourself, and you notice that 10 of your Facebook friends have “liked” a particular lawn care service in your town.

Wouldn’t you be more likely to hire that lawn care company over all of the other choices you have?

Are you starting to glimpse how valuable social media sites like Facebook can be to your decorative concrete business?

Best of all, you can do this for FREE.

Don’t be influenced by the complainers and let them cheat you out of an economical and effective marketing resource that works 24/7 while you are out transforming concrete.

Set up a Facebook page for your decorative concrete business today.

The marketing department at Engrave-A-Crete has developed a new set of three designs for a tri-fold brochure that can be modified for your decorative concrete engraving business. The design that you choose will have your business name, tagline, logo, and contact information — essentially your BRAND. Each new brochure option has been designed by our graphics artist, using professionally developed photos that show the possibilities of engraving . She is ready to work with you to get your information arranged the way you want it.

If you need a custom logo, we offer that to you as an add-on design service.

Brochures give your customers, presentation and potential, a tangible way to remember your business. People just naturally want something to carry away with them. When you give prospects one of these professionally prepared brochures, they have pictorial and text information about you. That hands-on connection makes remembering you for their engraving projects very easy. When you leave a brochure with a satisfied customer, it’s just a breeze for them to use the brochures when talking about you with other people.

We’ve put a package together that includes exceptional value pricing for  the prep work on the photos and copy (ready for professional printing), the glossy printing and shipping.

When you’ve chosen a design, submitted your branding information and committed to make your order, the brochures are printed and sent right to you.

If you have questions, call us at the office (1-800-884-2114). These brochures will be one of the most useful tools in your marketing strategy.