advertise

[bigwill50]

I never really tried to advertise my laundromat. Now i'm thinging about it. Whats do you guys think a waste of money or its helpful.

[bodman]

first make a plan decide how much you are willing to invest. 2ND decide on a USP unique selling position. something you do better than any one else. commit your plan for minimum 6 months. NOW what form of advertising ? signs at the street has worked well for me (sidewalk sign, sign on back of my pickup parked out front with special. 1/2 page add in the money pages magazine delivered to homes .in Feb. i will do radio advertising I will be opening a 4th store I will be on an ethnic station, I offer time of dAY pricing it seems to working for me. Do not expect immediate growth this is a long term commitment. remember the rabbit and the turtle race. Yellow pages never got me a good return on my investment I had 3/4 page add and i had a free line listing and my business had the same 8% growth over a 11 year period. WORD of mouth is the best form of adv. BUT YOU MUST OVER DELIVER YOUR PRODUCT.

[soapopera]

I think most mat owners will tell you some advertising is a must. Your customer base is constantly on the move, both moving into the area and moving out.
A good yellow pages listing is a no brainer, I also buy ad space in the local Catholic church bulletins especially since a good part of my base is Hispanic. I buy ad space on a free local calendar that the Chamber of Commerce mails to local households.
Any local sports team you can sponsor is another good idea.

I think the key is making it as "local" as possible, rather than the shotgun method of doing something city/county wide.
My stores are the only ones in the towns they are located in, so I don't have much competition, more of a getting the message out thing.

[bodman]

WOW Stephen no competition. You are my hero !!! way to go buddy. Next year I will have a billboard at baseball field. Forgot about church bulletins.

[bo]

First and most important should be your building sign. It should be big, back lit, stand out against neighboring signs and simple to understand. The biggest word in letters should be LAUNDRY, not the pet name you call your store or the town or street you are on. The logo you paid someone to design can go on your business card. Your sign will last many years and if you sell your store it may be worth more if the sign is designed to be good advertisement for a different owner.

[hobbes4star]

my wife and i spend 15dollars on bright yellow fliers usually gets us about 200 filers or so. Then we walk door to door in the neighborhoods around the mat and put them in the mail boxes.
i also hit all of the store parking lots in the area as well.

it usually takes us about 2 hours to do it. the first weekend that we did this my business was up almost 25% for that week. this is the only form of advertisement that i do, and i have seen the mats around me going downhill more and more since i came around.

[wdbgelaundromat]

Be very careful putting things in mail boxes, you can get in big trouble with the Postmaster.

We spend $150 a year on our website. We submit it to the major search engines and we get about 500 hits a month. I didnt know how many people it was actually bringing in the door so I added a coupon to the website. We had a ton of different people bring them in.

Flyers work very well but the no solicing signs are every where so you have to roll the dice on that. I did have an HOA come after me for putting fliers out.

[soapopera]

" WOW Stephen no competition. You are my hero !!! way to go buddy. Next year I will have a billboard at baseball field. Forgot about church bulletins."

Well what I meant was I have no competition within a short drive. Both stores are aprox 5 miles from the nearest competitor. And both stores use the town name which they are located in so people can distinguish them fairly easy from the rest of the pack.

I have the same problem as most regarding the fliers. Most of the apt buildings in my area do not allow handouts and everybody knows you can not use the mailboxes.
One more issue is the fact both stores are generally unattended, so coupons are not feasible.
I have asked customers how they found my stores and got some good feedback.
They are also quick to tell me about my competition and why they come to my stores instead.
Not being in the phone book for the first 6 months was a bigger deal than I thought it would be.

I have thought about spending money to focus on the people who are in the lower income brackets, such as bus benches or check-cashing stores, etc. Some of those people do not have a phone so the phone books probably don't work for them.
Also thought about the stores that cater to the Hispanic population which makes up half of my customer base.
Maybe even trying to advertise in the local Hispanic newspaper if I can figure out where the home office is.

The biggest issue I have with advertising is trying to figure out what the percentage of possible traffic is I already have. This comes with buying stores that were closed and not having a solid history to draw information from.

[bigwill50]

What type promotion do you guys offer.

[DuboisLaundry]

no competition?
I'm 80 miles from the nearest laundromat, but the campgrounds all have a few coin op machines