Best place to advertise?
 

I am in the process of starting my own finish carpentry business to subsidize income between projects for my current employer. I have been pretty busy just through word of mouth but I am wanting to advertise.

My question is this...If you were looking for a finish carpenter where would you look? I don't have a website yet but that may be in the works down the road. I know I use surerpages.com from time to time, but where would you look? I am on a budget since I am getting this going out of my pocket so cost might be a determining factor. Also, I am in North Idaho if that helps.

Thanks for any constructive input.

Best thing to do, copy what your competitors are doing, because it's probably working. Unfortunately I can't imagine business booming up there in your industry (forgive me if I'm wrong), so you probably need to be pretty aggressive to get even sustainable part time work. If you spend money on any sort of advertising, spend some time figuring out a way to track your returns so that you can rinse and repeat for next year/month/whatever. For example, if you're paying for a superpages listing, find a number forwarding service (there's a ton of cheap ones online), use a custom number for each ad, monitor where your best business generating calls are coming from.

I am not sure what type of budget you are working with, but you might want to begin with placing ads on bulletin boards at your local Home Depot or Lowe's stores.

You might also try a direct mail campaign. You could save costs by creating your own flyer on your home computer.

If you want to advertise on television, then you should contact the local Comcast Spotlight operator in Coeur D'Alene. I would place ads on networks such as the DIY network and HGTV. If you pay more than $5 for a :30 second ad on either of these networks then you are paying to much. The local Comcast operator has editors on staff that can help you with your creative.

Whatever you decide to do, I agree with the post above about having separate phone numbers for each medium so that you can track your results in order to fine tune your future marketing efforts.

my Dad owns his own remodeling business. Between yard signs ("Remodeling Projects by Custom Woodworking, PHONE#") and a big sign on his tool trailer he gets more business than he can handle. I would start there. He also leaves 5 business cards with each client to hand out to their neighbors. Just a thought.

ALSO I design business cards, logos, websites, etc if you need anything!

Never used it but Angieslist.com seems to be gettting popular. Its a cool idea. You can get great references which speak for themselves and it simple to search.

Yard signs work very well and can be very inexpensive. I use Stingray signs for mine. 828-298-4340
Nobody local could even come close to his price and quality. He is in North Carolina. I am in colorado. Even with shipping, he was absurdly cheap and the product is top notch. Plaster neighborhoods with the things. Street corners, Medians by stop signs, stop lights, anywhere trafic stops. Good luck. I use them all the time in my business and they work well .

Any local lumber or building supply places around? Go in there and leave some cards and make friends with the people that work there. Find a way to show them samples of your work (pictures?) If you can convince them you do good work at a fair price, they will recommend you to customers when they are asked.