thefed
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2005
- Messages
- 2,203
Well, for those paying attention, Thefeds started an inflatable bounce house business last year on a whim and it performed remarkably well...25k invested, 45k gross over 6 months.
This year, we want to double our gross while keeping margins the same. SO...this is what we've done.
First, I redesigned the website to make it more fluid.
We have a 3 faceted concept for growth - 1)concentrate on getting our satisfied customers to return 2) Up the ticket for each customer we sign, thus maximizing the cost effectiveness of our advertising used to secure that customer 3)Find new customers
1) We sent out a customer appreciation mailing a few weeks ago with codes for discounts and pictures of our products...website traffic jumped pretty good a few days later. We also emailed ALL email addresses that came through on our online quote system (approx 500). We will be sending our customer list a postcard next (to keep costs down) month, for 3 straight months.
2) We added many new products....obstacle course, tents/tables/chairs, cotton candy machine, snow cone machine. Now we just need to 'upsell' these other items. If we are already there for a delivery...it doesnt take much to set up another bouncer or a concession
3) We will continue our very successful online campaign. We are now ranking in the top 3 for almost all keywords in google organic search.
We have also started 3 landing pages that are already ranking well. We bought 3 other domain names and created 'landing pages'....websites that will rank high in google for certain keywords and 'funnel' customers to our main site
We also decided to expand our delivery area a bit to tap into that market. To do this, we created a new company with the new city in its name and domain name.
We have compiled our own mailing list of churches for direct mail (many, many rentals are churches) and addressed them to the youth ministry. We have decided to send 30/week for about 10 weeks...then follow up 2 more times with postcards.
Finally we are going to try direct mail...got a list of 1000 people in a very well-off area...women with kids in the household...list only cost us $50 and we will likely only mail 500 of that list 3 times this spring.
what am I missing?
This year, we want to double our gross while keeping margins the same. SO...this is what we've done.
First, I redesigned the website to make it more fluid.
We have a 3 faceted concept for growth - 1)concentrate on getting our satisfied customers to return 2) Up the ticket for each customer we sign, thus maximizing the cost effectiveness of our advertising used to secure that customer 3)Find new customers
1) We sent out a customer appreciation mailing a few weeks ago with codes for discounts and pictures of our products...website traffic jumped pretty good a few days later. We also emailed ALL email addresses that came through on our online quote system (approx 500). We will be sending our customer list a postcard next (to keep costs down) month, for 3 straight months.
2) We added many new products....obstacle course, tents/tables/chairs, cotton candy machine, snow cone machine. Now we just need to 'upsell' these other items. If we are already there for a delivery...it doesnt take much to set up another bouncer or a concession
3) We will continue our very successful online campaign. We are now ranking in the top 3 for almost all keywords in google organic search.
We have also started 3 landing pages that are already ranking well. We bought 3 other domain names and created 'landing pages'....websites that will rank high in google for certain keywords and 'funnel' customers to our main site
We also decided to expand our delivery area a bit to tap into that market. To do this, we created a new company with the new city in its name and domain name.
We have compiled our own mailing list of churches for direct mail (many, many rentals are churches) and addressed them to the youth ministry. We have decided to send 30/week for about 10 weeks...then follow up 2 more times with postcards.
Finally we are going to try direct mail...got a list of 1000 people in a very well-off area...women with kids in the household...list only cost us $50 and we will likely only mail 500 of that list 3 times this spring.
what am I missing?