Angie's List advertising

[Mr. Sir]

I just renewed our Angie's List advertising for another year. What royal pain in the neck that was! I've been negotiating with them for the last month because the renewal price was going to be an increase of 250%!!! over last year's rate, for the same service. WTH! I finally managed to get by with just an 8% increase; thanks Dave Ramsey!

 

[sotc]

They are bugging me to advertise but I have only 2 reviews, not enough traffic fir me to spend $

 

[Bodean]

I bought in to something like that, well, actually it was the " Pink Pages "
but...............even though. Not a call all year. I don't trust "The books"
don't seem to pan out.

 

[Rborist1]

I have to meet with our Yellowpage rep next week and discuss our ad for next year. We still get enough biz from it but Google is quickly catching up.

 

[Mr. Sir]

I still get a lot of calls (and jobs) from the Yellow pages print ad. Enough to justify the $3K per month cost. We'd be dead in the water without it.

 

[Rborist1]

Same with us, I think our's is closer to 4k/month though.

 

[Bodean]

Mine is $40.00/month...... Just for scale.

Google is pretty zipcode specific. I get plenty of calls from my neighborhood.
Works well for small potatoes like me.

 

[sotc]

Wow, guess I better quit whining about $500a month they want me to go too!

 

[Rborist1]

Our's is a full page, full color ad. I might scale back this year because of Google. It's a tough bill to pay in Dec-Feb when the phones slow down.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Color is over rated... most people only see in black and white anyway

 

[lumberjack]

Holy Moly! That's a big advertising budget! I spend about 36 bucks a month for the local little paper. The big paper can't seem to remember to run my ad.

 

[Mr. Sir]

It's all relative.

 

[lumberjack]

Perhaps I should advertise more, although the diminishing returns happens really really quick.

 

[Mr. Sir]

If you're comfortable where you are, there's no need to advertise more. I have to make $1k a day to break even, and that won't happen without a good bit of advertising.

 

[SkwerI]

Seeing numbers like that makes me happy that I've kept my business lean and compact. As a one man show I make good money at $500 per day. I couldn't imagine having to generate twice that every day forever just to break even.

 

[Bodean]

Perhaps I should advertise more, although the diminishing returns happens really really quick.

It's still a write off. Business Expense.

 

[SkwerI]

Yeah, which means exactly what? Besides that you don't have to pay taxes on those wasted dollars? It's still money taken out of your pocket with nothing to show for it.

 

[Bodean]

It's better than not being a write off.

That would be an absolute waste..

 

[Rborist1]

I employ anywhere from 10-15 people at a time and in order to keep the machine going we have to advertise in a big way. Yellowpage advertising is only one of the forms of advertising that we use. In order to reach interested clients we have to spread the money around in lots of places. Used to be much easier a couple of years ago before the rise of social media, Google and the like. I too have a high daily overhead and effective advertising is absolutely necessay for our success.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Isn't pretty much the general rule that advertising should stay at about 10% of gross receipts on the high end?

 

[Rborist1]

I don't spend that much.

 

[sotc]

More like 6% I think

 

[okietreedude]

I spend about 350/month on phone books but its two diff books (about 175 ea), plus a newspaper service directory. A guy a few yrs ago told me the paper was worthless but i get a lot of calls from it.

as for angies list, i had a guy put up a note about 2 yrs ago, dont know if ive had any others since. If so, ive not gotten notice of it. maybe ill have to go check...

 

[CurSedVoyce]

More like a cut off point is how I am thinking ..... By that "old school" number.

 

[lumberjack]

My advertising is at less than 40% of 1% of my gross receipts. Certainly need to syep it up a touch!