Page 6 - wedohelpforbusinessstartups1

What you may find is that one or even a few companies are absolutely crushing it—but that doesn't mean you have no room to

start. For example, as a consumer, you know that people in need of a service tend to go with whoever responds to them

quickest. So, if the big players in your area are booked up, you can offer same-day appointments and start to build your

customer base that way. This is what I did, and it worked great.

Identify competitors' advertising.

Now you know your competitors pretty well. The next step is to determine where they're advertising, and to whom. That will

help you figure out who your customer base may be and where you can stand out in the short term.

Where your small business can immediately make a splash is with small-scale, low-tech efforts to get the word out in your

immediate area. You'll probably feel silly posting flyers on telephone poles in your area. I know I did. But our first 5,000 in

revenue was driven almost exclusively by flyers and word-of-mouth referrals from customers who saw them. People really do

care about supporting local businesses and building a strong community presence will do wonders for your local reputation.

Another thing we did is use local advertising sources like local newsletters, papers, banners at events. Those banners and prints

represent hundreds of families seeing our company logo and phone number every week. While we've since started running

Google and Facebook Ads with an allocated advertising budget, we never, ever would have gotten there without the smaller-

scale marketing first.