advertising for embroidery

[Liz Adler Designs]

Hey everyone. I was hoping to find some help with coming up with flyers to advertise my embroidery. I have just started out and not to many people know about me. I would like to print some sort of a flyer up and drop off some at offices etc.

Has anyone tried this? What all should I put on there? What should I not put on there? Do you guys think this is a good idea?

I only have one other competitor in the area and they are so inflated with pricing. I just need a way to tell all the companies about me! I think this is probably the most cost effective. I do not mind going to businesses and dropping off flyers.

Has anyone ever tried calling businesses to let them know about you? I always kinda feel weird just showing up without an appointment. I know people are busy. That is why I think the flyers would work. That way they could call me if/when they were interested and I could also follow up with a phone call.

Any help on this would be great. Also if anyone has done this I would love to see your flyers for ideas. I will not copy [img]smile.gif[/img] . Thanks.

Also feel free to email me at [email protected]

Thanks!

[signman]

This topic has come up every so often, so a search of the archives should bring up some 'examples' that were posted you can look at. My suggestion is to contact and join your local Chamber of Commerce (if it is affordable-some have high rates to join!) and ask about including a flyer with their monthly newsletter, OR if they can DO a mailing for you on the Chamber stamp rate and their mailing list. I do both during the year-to include 300 flyers in the monthly 'newsletter' is only $25 here, to have them 'mail' a flyer or samples, etc. for me using their postal rate and mailing list is a fraction of doing it myself-and I know it goes directly to local businesses-and has resulted in sales every time. It isn't the type of 'mail the flyer, get orders next day' but more of a 'I saw your flyer every month (or last month, or earlier this year) and finally had a need for something you do' later in the year. So overall, it does pay off. I discontinued all yellow page ads, newspaper ads, etc. over 10 years ago and haven't regretted it since. Because I was the one that instituted the 'chamber mailing' idea-they let me place 'buckets' of free samples in the office now and at the monthly meetings-I supply several hundred different samples during the year to go along with flyers-and the chamber also calls me first if they need something done. They went from just barely being able to produce a newsletter every other month to actually making a profit now-since other companies jumped in after I started it-so the postage is covered and then some!

[Steve]

Cold calling wont work. I get about 5 cold calls a day from people trying to sell me crap. As soon as I hear "Can I speak to the owner" I know it's a cold call and tell them NO. If they push on, I just tell them we don't buy over the phone and to mail us a catalog and we will keep them in mind. They never ask for a mailing address. If you want to go the flyer route, some distributors have flyers you can print from thier website so you won't have to design anything. Or you can have a printer print them on heavyweight paper.

[Liz Adler Designs]

okay i did the search and not finding any examples. Maybe I am searching the wrong thing? I dunno.

I searched for advertising and advertising flyers in all of the forums..when I clicked on some it said they were no longer there?

[Steve]

search for custom printed brochures
I got a lot of hits for that

[TinaK]

Liz~

What you are looking for is under the Tips and Tricks section on the left menu and you will need to scroll all the way down to find the zip file for the flyers...

Good Luck!

[Ray]

The quickest and easiest way to advertise your new embroidery business is to build a one page website using a template and submit it to Google and Yahoo Local.

While that is working for you, you can work on a site that is a little more sophisticated.