I wanted to start running some tv commercials, locally of course. Anyone have any luck with this? Any suggestions?

We do this on our local station, because we swap out with the owner on part of the cost. To keep your name out there is expensive. $500 to make a 30 second spot video and $500 a month to run it 5 times a day. We don't run every month, but it does bring in enough to make it worthwhile. I can assure you that most every one in our county, knows who we are and so do our competitors. We have positioned ourselves more toward the high end customers. We also have a sister company, Original Steamers, who handles our low end. This seems to work well for us and does not confuse the our customer. My hope is that you all our buzy enough to keep all the bills paid. This is the slowest I have seen it in 22 years, but we are debt free, so we are all right. We see more and more CCers going out of business each month. That is what happens when a market gets saturated with more cleaners then needed to serve the public. When I started 22 years ago in my County there was only two of us, and at last count we have over 38 companies servicing this County (pop. 160000) Only 6 live in the County. I expect by this time next year that number will be cut in half. Somthing had to give, we have been living in excess too long, Too many drug stores, too many strip centers, too many electronic stores, too many CCers, well you get the idea. Our profit margins are not what they used to be, but I am still optimistic about the future.

Ray is possibly one of the wisest "ol" carpet cleaners you may have the good fortune to learn from. Pay attention to his fine advice






Rick Gelinas

As for commercials, we did it (local PBS affiliate) and it got us literally one Look At and no work. Our spots ran for 3 months I think it was, maybe it takes longer. Maybe I didnt use the best judgment going with a PBS station but I figured that market is into and supports the Arts and are relatively wealthy.
One of our students that came to our first Stone Restoration Class has also used TV again, very poor return for his investment in TV. I just asked him last week about his results and he said he wasnt happy with it but he wants to change it some and continue to run it.
Rays done well with it; it could be he has a very good spot.
For me it was not as fruitful as I would have liked to say the least.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

Try TIME WARNER MEDIA SALES if they are in your area. They also have business meetings to help local businesses.

Also YELLOWPAGES.COM makes videos for your business to put online. Here is a sample of one. This one is ok but the first one I saw showed the guy's van driving into the driveway and talking about him.

http://www.yellowpages.com/info-IY248187433/ServiceMaster-Clean

As a friend who does a lot of TV advertising told me when i was asking him./
6 months into it you will want to shoot me, 6 to 8 months later you will wanting to kiss my _________.

You do of course need a good at and spot.