[tallpoppy]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could please provide me with some marketing suggestions/thoughts/ideas, help?

I started working at a small advertising & design firm in Toronto last October, and I am responsible for their business development. I have made many contacts, but seem to have difficulty getting jobs. I understand that I am fairly new to the industry and so it will take a while to build up my clientele, but I was wondering if there was a faster way? I've tried cold calling by phone (really fun, haha!), cold calling by walking door to door of businesses (which seems to work the best), networking events (meet up groups, etc..), online job sites, postings, & forums. What else am I missing?

Thanks,
Paulo

[akula]

Originally Posted by tallpoppy

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could please provide me with some marketing suggestions/thoughts/ideas, help?

I started working at a small advertising & design firm in Toronto last October, and I am responsible for their business development. I have made many contacts, but seem to have difficulty getting jobs. I understand that I am fairly new to the industry and so it will take a while to build up my clientele, but I was wondering if there was a faster way? I've tried cold calling by phone (really fun, haha!), cold calling by walking door to door of businesses (which seems to work the best), networking events (meet up groups, etc..), online job sites, postings, & forums. What else am I missing?

Thanks,
Paulo

wait, let me just understand your business.

you ask people if you can design advertising material for them? is that what you do?

[pentupentropy]

here's an idea... rather than just getting together in a group, what are you doing about promoting the idea of the group meeting in advance?

Why not find an idea, and then sell it to someone.

"We have this opportunity, and we can only work with a select few, but we'd like your feedback on this...blah blah blah" not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

Promote yourself, be your own client. You're in the marketing business, and if you can't market yourself, you're going to be dead in the water.

Is there a niche your company focuses on? is there one you have a specialty idea for? who has your company worked with in the past? would they be interested in cobranding or cross-marekting?

What about viral marketing? There are so many companies out there who could do amazing things with a $10,000 budget, but small business thinks it's too much and big business too little. If you have the right connections, you can get a hell of a campaign going for $3500. I know because I did it for a jewelry store and it went over nicely.

There is a problem with your question though, being it is a little generic. Perhaps we could help you generate ideas a little better if we knew more about what you wanted to do, specifically thinking about market, demographic, your budget, availability, locale, etc.

[tallpoppy]

Akula & Pentupentropy, thank you both for the quick responses and suggestions. To be more specific we are an advertising & design agency, in which we design graphics, print & websites. So yes, we design advertising material for clients. We don’t advertise for clients or find advertising space.

More specifically what I want to do is increase my sales; I have been working at Tall Poppy for about 3 months now and have created a fairly large network of contacts. My first marketing strategy was to cold call other advertising/marketing agencies and see if they ever have overflow and if they subcontract work out. This strategy was fairly successful, out of about 400, I’ve connected with just under 100 agencies that subcontract out when they have overflow. We have received work from a few of them; since it is for overflow work it only occurs once and a while. I have also, cold called local businesses and introduced myself to them face to face, this helps create a personal relationship right away; this method seems to work ok too. I am using online job sites, of which I have secured a few jobs from. I also am a part of online forums like this one, and I am trying to increase my network this way. I am just starting to try out networking events; I’m going to my first one tonight, so I will see how that works.

I am going to look into co branding & cross marketing, as that sounds like it could help out a lot. One of our biggest clients is Scotia Capital, so I could try to maybe work something there.

Our niche would be that we specialize in corporate identity. Helping create a brand for company’s; by creating logos, letterhead, cards, websites and making them all unite to project an image to the consumer. We have a really small budget, actually not much of one at all, until things start to pick up. Our target market is entrepreneurs because we specialize in branding.

I guess I’m just expecting things to explode right away, but these things take time. I am seeing an improvement over time. Being here for only 3 months is still a short amount of time; I want to achieve higher sales quicker. Any suggestions or comments would be much appreciated.



Thanks again,

Paulo

[dre]

One thing I would say is get a business name that actually tells people what you do. I would be embarassed to go up to someone at a networking event and say I work for TallPoppy .

[tallpoppy]

Dre.

Thanks for your input, but there is a reason we chose Tall Poppy.

Tall Poppy is about helping everybody grow and stand out to help decrease Tall Poppy Syndrome; which occurs when someone is envious, defamatory, or excessively critical of a person or persons due to their nationally higher social, economic, or political stance. So, helping everybody grow into a Tall Poppy, would help to decrease Tall Poppy Syndrome.

The name actually seems to work quite well, as it is a good conversation starter to use when meeting with potential clients; as they are always interested in how we came up with our name.

In short, we would like to help everybody grow and stand out; where's the embarrassment in that?

Paulo

[rita4u]

From Miss Rita Bella.

Email:ritabella121@yahoo.com



Abidjan Cote D'Ivoire in West Africa.

Dearest One,

I am happy to request for your assistance and also to go into business partnership with you,after going through your profile I believe that you will not betrayed my trust which I am going to impose on you.

I am Miss.Rita Bella,21 years old and the only daughter of my late parents Mr.and Mrs Bella Bamba. My father was a highly reputable business man-(cocoa merchant)who operated in the capital of Ivory Coast (Abidjan) during his days. It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously here in Abidjan.

My mother died when I was just 4 years old, and since then my father took me so special. Before his death on Febuary 12th 2005 he called me secretly beside his bed in the hospital that he deposited the sum of Three Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars.(USD$3.5million). in a Local Bank here in Ivory Coast.


I am just 21 years old and I wanted to further my education, This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant political crisis here in Ivory coast. The death of my father actually brought sorrow to my life. Sir,I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards. My late father family relative are treating to kill me and take over all my inheritance,I sincerely want this fund to be transfer into your account in order to invest it in your country into a lucritive venture that will benefit the both of us.Moreso, to start up a seriouse realtionship with you personal,I will be very graetful for your assisntace in this matter.Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded. Now permit me to ask these few questions:-

1. Can I completely trust you?

2. What percentage of the total amount in question will be good for you?
Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible.

Looking forward to read from you soon.

Thank you so much.
My sincere regards,
Miss.Rita Bella Bamba.

[joshw]

While I like the idea behind the name, I think your problem is that most of the public will have no idea what it means until you are able to tell them. This means that potential clients could possibly avoid you solely due to your name. However, you might find it useful to exploit your weird name in advertising. Perhaps you could run a ton of ads that say something like "Funny Name, Serious Business" or "Tall Poppy -- Ask us why our name is so weird".

[dre]

The reason I said I would be embarassed is because I didn't know what it meant, but now I do.

[Jamie 456]

Paulo,

I started my outdoor advertising business about 3 months ago and it is going quite slow as well. I have put some excellent ideas into motion and am now hitting the street and cold calling each day after work. I have come close to some great sales but companies and small businesses have decided to go with print or radio ads. I think that you might have a good product and now you are building on a great network, things should start to happen but you must persist.

It used to baffle me and still does when people continue to buy ads in newspapers or radio for roughly the same price as my ads and I would give them 5-20 times the exposure.

But, if you keep working and you have a sound foundation and are good with people things will pick up.

Are you keeping a network of when to call people back? Also, the advertising business has some serious competition. This will be hard to penetrate for a young company as well. As much as its hard to penetrate it wont be inpenetrable in the long run.

You are designing the ads, maybe you also need some space to put the ads? has this ever been a deterent? If it has, my business can help you get the space you need and I know how to get around all the by-laws that are involved in open space and public/private space.

Hope this helps,

Jamie

[TML]

It sounds like you are doing everything right. It is important to keep track of what sales activities are working and what isn't. Create an excel spreadsheet and list all the activities you do to generate business, then note how many leads it generated and how many of those leads became clients. The services you provide is needed by any business in any industry, you can't be all things to all people; so identify a niche industry you can target then create your USP (unique selling position).

Hope that helps!