Local Advertising

Google AdWords has some great options for narrowing down your target audience, but it really depends on who you are targeting and which types of media they tend to consume.

I get that quite a bit, myself. It hurts a little, lol. Ill be interested to see some valid suggestions.

Well, one of the cupcake shows had this same issue at a new branch location.  Their answer was to get outside and hand out free cupcake samples with flyers.  They used a gimmick (ice cream bicycle cart) because their primary visible competition was an ice cream stand.

 

So you might have to spend  Saturdays handing out free minis with flyers until your traffic picks up. 

I actually did a groupon for advertisement purposes. I would say it worked fairly well because not a single person who bought one had ever heard of me, lol. I signed up to only sell 50, and they sold 111, and i had to get nasty with them to make them stop, so you gotta watch them. But i got a regular customer that orders big cakes from it, and she didn't even buy the groupon! Of course i got some real.tools that ordered but it got my name out there some.more. If you decide to do It, you need to think of a good way to word it, and what to offer so you don't lose money. I can't say i made money, but i didn't really have out of pocket expenses for my advertisement.

Putting together a groupon deal can work well, or it can seriously damage your business. As the previous poster said, you need to pay very close attention to the terms of the deal and make sure you have an expected ROI that makes sense and compares favorably with other advertising channels.

You also need to look at the type of customer you are reaching out to with a groupon-style discount. For the most part they are very price-oriented, and if your plan is to focus on people willing to pay more for quality then you will end up attracting the kind of people you don't want in your shop. As seen in the post above, your best customers probably won't be buying groupon deals.

Take a picture from across the road and post it here. You might need some fresh eyes. Have you got a very large banner saying "now open Friday and Saturday" inside your window. Have you got a simple sandwich board with OPEN across its full width to set at the entrance facing the street.

 

You may have noticed that some online businesses ask "how did you hear of us" with a list of their advertising campaigns to click on.  That would give you useful feedback if people choose to use it.

RThanks for the instant replay and your two cents, but the lady who ordered the $450 cake and then a $200 one would never have heard of my business if I hadn't done the groupon, considering I've been in business 2 years, and she lives less than 1 mile from me. I really think that is worth considering, whether she bought it or not. Groupon paid me $912 for $3,648 worth of product (retail) and I had 'upsales and add ons' of $1248, and about $1100 in additional cakes sold just because they SAW the Groupon.

Then there are the 7 people who bought and ordered cupcakes and didn't pick them up. Their Groupon was still redeemed, and I sold the cupcakes they didn't pick up, for full price for an additional $168. That's $30 for a dozen cupcakes I would generally sell for $24.

And there have been at least 6 people who got cupcakes and came back for cakes, and one small wedding cake.

Not to mention the account Rep who.came out to discuss the agroupon and get me signed up gets cupcakes everytime she is in the area, about 5 times, s dozen each time, and ordered both her mom's and sister's cakes from me, totaling. $210. And she tips 15%.

Considering i dont have any money laying around for advertisement and i dont have walk in customers and have been going on word of mouth, i am quite satisfied with how it has turned out so far. So, please stop making an example out of me, and please stop referring to my posts, and please stop noticing my existence. I know you do it to everyone, and I'm not special, but it's infurating to have my posts disected and picked at. If you could just ignore me, I'd love it.

I'm glad it worked out for you! When judging the success of an advertising campaign I find it's helpful to compare the ROI with other forms of advertising. For example, now that you know your groupon deal cost $2736 (less your markup of course) and generated $2757 in additional income, you can try different advertising options and see if they are more or less profitable than groupon.

This is critical if you want to have a good handle on which ad campaigns are working for you, if you have face-to-face or telephone contacts with customers (and even just potential customers) you should always ask how they heard about you.

Have you got one of those menu board things they have outside cafe's?

Tons of people around here send someone out with just a sign or dressed in a costume to wave at the traffic.

 

Would be cute to have someone dressed in a cupcake costume.

 

If you could find a safe way to do it--hand out little bags of popcorn to cars at a stop light with your info printed on the bag.

 

Without any additional effort at all you will find out the local ordinances real fast and how friendly your neighboring businesses are too.

I took a saturday and sunday and my kids went and stuffed mailboxes.I have no clue what laws are in the States but here in canada that worked great for us.It was cheap in printing too (except I had to promise my kids something for their time lol)

This is illegal in the USA... probably would get you a lot of attention though....