What are some effective means of advertising with minimal costs?

Question

My father and I have a shipping store called Pak-Mail. It's located in the plaza of a major grocery store, but doesn't receive a lot of business. What are some strategic, cost-effective ways to promote ourselves? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

What youre doing is advertising.

when you advertise you start with teh cheapest form and work your way up

word of mouth free
biz cards 10
flyers15
brochures20
ads newspaper 25
color brochures 30

you get the idea flood your entire area with cheap biz cards
then go at it again with the flyers

as you advertise you gradually increase the cost to get the desired result
A huge portion of your clients are other business owners so its important that you impress them and network with them.

Answer 2

There was this guy near here that had a news stand in a small shopping plaza next to a big grocery store , and everyday for weeks he would stand out by the road waving to people with a small sign and arrow pointing to his business , He cant get the papers are magazines in there fast enough he has so much business , Probably embarrassing in the beginning but he held on ,Good Luck and God Bless

Answer 3

a few ways are:
poster making
find a call center to promote you
advertise in something like a smart shopper(place an add for free www.smartshopper.ca)
your local news paper
talk to ppl about it
make stickers for vehicals and place them on your means of transportation
pay a taxi co. or something to advertise on thier vehicals.
make little leters(short and to the point) about your bussiness and place them in mail boxes
go to local high schools and elemntry schools and see if the principals would take a donation of 50$ to put out a copy of your letter in news letetrs or something
bussiness cards put a stack in banks,stores,etc
thats all i can think of, hope some of my ideas are effective... good luck

Answer 4

Consider selling out before a UPS Store opens next door... Most people hear of shippers at work, so when they need to ship something for themselves, they look for shippers by name, such as FedEx (which now owns Kinko's) or UPS (which acquired Mailboxes, Etc. a few years back)... You don't have your guy coming to everyone's workplace every day, FedEx and UPS do...

Answer 5

spam mail. but the best way is to set up a web site i ahve seen lots of business coming from online. well mouth of word is the best way of advertisement make sure ur customers are very happy.

Answer 6

You could go see a good tattooist and get a cover up. But if you don't want a tattoo there at all you need to laser it off. until then you're kinda stuck with it, you could just wear clothes that hide it.