Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

Corndog · May 30, 2013

McCheese_sl said:
I think the sign waver thing is an awful idea. Maybe it's different where you're located, but the only places around here that use them are ghetto pawn shops and failing, flash-in-the-pan furniture stores, both of which are places I have no desire to be. In general I actively avoid places advertising that way and in my opinion it just makes them look either a) shady as fuck or b) desperate and failing.

I also think the mailer idea is terrible. It doesn't seem like a good idea to have you place associated with junk mail, and traditional "coupons" just seem cheap and tacky.

As for the movie advertising, I think that is a great idea. Every theater in my area has advertisements for a variety of small businesses before the showings and it's hard not to notice them when they're 30 feet tall in front of your face. I'm pretty sure the advertising isn't handled through the theaters themselves, but rather specific advertising companies that specialize in movie theater advertisements. Your best bet is probably to find whatever big chain theater you have nearby (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) and check out their website. I'm sure they all have advertising information.

Yeah I looked on the big chain websites and didn't find the info I was looking for.

While generally I'd agree with the sign waver comments. I believe that most fish keepers will check out EVERY store they are aware of that exists. You might also say posting on craigslist would only bring lowlifes looking for bargains. Except it's translated into thousands of dollars every month. In our area, the sign wavers tend to be for new real estate developments and mattress places. In fact I haven't seen any others before.

Shonuff · May 30, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
I've been researching some promotion things today. As I want to keep growing business. This month isn't over yet. But Sales were up 25% basically. If I want to try and keep that momentum I need to find more new customers.

I just created a facebook offer that is giving away free fish food with a $5 purchase. I get the food for free from a vendor. Cost to run the deal is $60 to put it in front of 11,000 eyes supposedly, or "reach" as they call it. I'm interested to see how many are redeemed. In theory the person clicks redeem offer, they get an email, they print that out or show it on their phone to redeem it.

Has anyone advertised on Yelp? I'm not sure I'm into offering the gift certificate thing. The pay $20 and get a $40 gift certificate. But I did notice you can pay to advertise on your competitors yelp pages. I'm wondering how much traffic I can get by being on my competition's pages. Even if they're leaving that place good feedback, I'd be in front of their eyes. Supposedly it's cost per click. In my category of pet stores, it's saying it'll be like $2.89 per click. I want to look into this more.
so
Brainstorming other ideas... I had a sign waver sign made. Like stand on the busy corner and direct people to my business. I had thought for sure I could get people to do this for $10 store credit an hour, but so far only 1 person has done it for 1 hour.... I'm getting lots of, wish I was in town this weekend I'd do it etc.. But no one actually showing up to do it. Might have to offer up cash? But it seems like a high school kid should be loving the store credit.

Other Ideas I read/thought off today while trying to think of things to advertise.
2 different Mailer coupon companies. Both have been in to my store to get me to sign up. Problem is they want like $300 for each mailer and they mail out like every 2 months, minimum signup of 3 mailings. I have a feeling that if it worked that well, you wouldnt have to force people to sign up for 3 mailings. One business in my shopping center advertises with them and says it's great. But I swear they aren't doing that well and look like they're going out of business, hardly anyone there eating at the restaurant.

Years ago, when I still went to movie theaters. Small business would have basically a screenshot ad that sat on the screen for 30 seconds or so while people were being seated. Local restaurants and such. I tried to look into that today, and I can't seem to find any theaters doing it, or at least any mention of it.

Car advertising. Ruled out license plate frame. Side magnets seem cheap. Considering professional vinyl logo on back window of our 2 cars.

Sent an email to find out the rates of advertising on local bus transportation and benches. I'm guessing this will be way out of my price range, but who knows?!

Lastly, I want to figure out how to do a successful facebook like contest thing. I'm going to research it tonight. The goal is to go viral and get in front of lots of eyes... 1 in 10 people own an aquarium, but the target group is so wide, it's hard to advertise to aquarium owners. I'm thinking that just being in front of the most eyes for the money is best. I don't know if it's better to have a "share this post" and a name will be picked at random or if post a picture and the most likes wins etc is the most effective.

None of these will bring you more money than focusing on the Internet. Every time someone types in specialty fish, I'd have your store name pop up. You are selling a niche product, so what better way to get to people in that niche? You've had success getting people from CL, I'd look at other online venues first, before some of the stuff you mentioned.

It makes no sense trying to advertise to the masses, when you are selling a specialty product.

Corndog · May 30, 2013

Lyrical_sl said:
None of these will bring you more money than focusing on the Internet. Every time someone types in specialty fish, I'd have your store name pop up. You are selling a niche product, so what better way to get to people in that niche? You've had success getting people from CL, I'd look at other online venues first, before some of the stuff you mentioned.

It makes no sense trying to advertise to the masses, when you are selling a specialty product.

Your right. I need to buckle down and figure out an adwords campaign etc. For some reason I'm having a hard time believing it's going to generate me money.

What I'm thinking is that lets say someone is looking for a stingray and type it in to google. They might land on my site, problem is they might live in another state etc.

I suppose I just need to hammer on local keywords. I'd love to hear input from others on good tips for this sort of thing. I'll be researching it a ton more before I put it to action and start paying for clicks etc.

I'm guessing I should target words like:
xxMy statexx Fish store
xxmy cityxx Fish store
xxmycityxx Tropical Fish

Should I be trying to rank on like:
xxmycityxx Petsmart searches? Or i'll just be outgunned for cash by petsmart etc?
What about a competing fish stores name? Like pay money to rank high/shove my add onto the search page when xxcompetitorxx is searched in google.

I'm Thinking about setting a budget aside for marketing. I have no idea where I should be starting. I've read numbers anywhere from 3% of sales to 20% of sales etc. I was thinking about starting at $300 a month for marketing. As I find ideas that work increase it. That way I'm not throwing $750 a month at stuff that isn't working?

opiate82 · May 30, 2013

I just created a facebook offer that is giving away free fish food with a $5 purchase. I get the food for free from a vendor. Cost to run the deal is $60 to put it in front of 11,000 eyes supposedly, or "reach" as they call it. I'm interested to see how many are redeemed. In theory the person clicks redeem offer, they get an email, they print that out or show it on their phone to redeem it.

I have ran Facebook Offers, although I have not paid for further reach. Only going to my fans (and whoever they shared it with) and the redemptions were meh. But since it was free for me no skin off my back, plus I got a few new likes out of it.

I'm not sure I'm into offering the gift certificate thing. The pay $20 and get a $40 gift certificate

I would not recommend this either. Yelp keeps a cut of that $20 as well so you end up with an astronomical cost-per-redemption. Plus people redeeming these are often just discount seekers who won't come back w/o the offer.

I had a sign waver sign made. Like stand on the busy corner and direct people to my business. I had thought for sure I could get people to do this for $10 store credit an hour, but so far only 1 person has done it for 1 hour.... I'm getting lots of, wish I was in town this weekend I'd do it etc.. But no one actually showing up to do it. Might have to offer up cash? But it seems like a high school kid should be loving the store credit.

Careful, you can get into legal trouble for paying in store credit. I think if you want a shaker-sign kid out there, you are going to have to pay him an actual wage. I worked for a paintball field over a summer where the owner tried to pay everyone with store credit (not me, I demanded cash). The help was unreliable at best and we often had the issue of people showing up for one day then never again.

Something else you could consider is a feather-sign. Something you can also put out by the street but don't need someone to man it. Check with your landlord to ensure they are allowed first.

2 different Mailer coupon companies. Both have been in to my store to get me to sign up. Problem is they want like $300 for each mailer and they mail out like every 2 months, minimum signup of 3 mailings.

How many households do you get into for $300? I personally haven't had much success with mailings. For the restaurant business mailings basically have to include coupons in order to get any traction, and for the last round I did my overall cost for the promotion (mailers+discount+food cost+labor) resulted in my bottom line being $7,000 less than if I would have done nothing at all over a 3 month span. But the big problem for me is that since my business is already established, most of my redemptions are just cannibalizing my own sales. You might have more success being a new business. The sign up for multiple drops thing is pretty standard.

Lastly, I want to figure out how to do a successful facebook like contest thing. I'm going to research it tonight. The goal is to go viral and get in front of lots of eyes

I have had success with Facebook Contests when the contest forces people to like my page in order to enter. I believe I already PM'd you with some info on Facebook contests, but feel free to PM me if you have more questions about what I sent you.

Lastly, you need to be on Google Adwords. If you are having success with Craigslist ads than Google Adwords should be awesome for you. I know several of us have told you this already, not sure if you have started them or not, but if you haven't, that should be the very first thing you do. Will take you less than 15 minutes to set up. That has far-and-away been my most cost effective form of (paid) advertising.

Onoes · May 30, 2013

McCheese_sl said:
I think the sign waver thing is an awful idea. Maybe it's different where you're located, but the only places around here that use them are ghetto pawn shops and failing, flash-in-the-pan furniture stores, both of which are places I have no desire to be. In general I actively avoid places advertising that way and in my opinion it just makes them look either a) shady as fuck or b) desperate and failing.

I also think the mailer idea is terrible. It doesn't seem like a good idea to have you place associated with junk mail, and traditional "coupons" just seem cheap and tacky.

As for the movie advertising, I think that is a great idea. Every theater in my area has advertisements for a variety of small businesses before the showings and it's hard not to notice them when they're 30 feet tall in front of your face. I'm pretty sure the advertising isn't handled through the theaters themselves, but rather specific advertising companies that specialize in movie theater advertisements. Your best bet is probably to find whatever big chain theater you have nearby (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) and check out their website. I'm sure they all have advertising information.

I used to manage a theater, and while the pre-show ads were a corporate thing, we managed them at a local level. Just go to whatever the biggest nearby theater is (the one with the most traffic if you can eyeball that) and ask a manager about it. Go in between movies if you can, as the manager has almost nothing to do while films are actually playing.

That being said, I worked at a pretty low budget theater, and even there, I was to say ad's were something like $215 a month or $1500 a year, something like that. Yearly was definitely the way to go, but I always wondered why on earth some of the businesses would pay that, seemed impossible the profit would even pay for the ad. High cost things sure, but we would have the local hobby store buy a year ad, and that place was a ghost town.

Anyway, thats just one example from a small town in AZ, for all I know you could get a great ad for a year for $500 or something, just stop by and ask.

opiate82 · May 30, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
I'm Thinking about setting a budget aside for marketing. I have no idea where I should be starting. I've read numbers anywhere from 3% of sales to 20% of sales etc. I was thinking about starting at $300 a month for marketing. As I find ideas that work increase it. That way I'm not throwing $750 a month at stuff that isn't working?

You should set aside a budget for sure. I am not sure on the appropriate numbers for a retail location such as yourself. I know I spend about 4% of net sales on ad-fund plus my discount (which I consider a part of advertising) which runs around 8% (which is average for an ad budget and low for a discount rate for my industry). I probably have much more overhead in labor than you do, but less inventory. Regardless, especially starting out getting traffic should be a goal so I would be aggressive if I were you. Key is to find a way to track your different promotions so you have an idea of what is working and what is not. I would develope a unique promotion for each avenue you pursue. It will take you some trial-and-error to figure out which methods and promotions are working for you, but as long as you track it you can figure out the cost-effective combos relatively quickly.

Tmac · May 30, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
Your right. I need to buckle down and figure out an adwords campaign etc.

Send a message to checkyeah. He can help you out.

Put him on your payroll and profit.

Corndog · May 30, 2013

I just wanted to drop a quick note as I'm out the door. I got an email back about advertising on local transit bus system.

Pricing is per bus per 4 weeks:

Kings - $455

Queens - $385 (very limited space)

Tails - $355

11x17 Interiors - $17

11x34 Interiors - $34

** we will do a buy 1 get 1 on the above products**

Corndog · May 31, 2013

So an update on the facebook offer.

The "promotion" part of it on facebook's end is over. It used $28 bucks. and reached 4600 people... That got me 2 likes, and a total of 9 people who have claimed the offer. I'd say a total bust as far as facebook promoting goes.

Now that I'm home I can start on adwords.

Shonuff · May 31, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
Your right. I need to buckle down and figure out an adwords campaign etc. For some reason I'm having a hard time believing it's going to generate me money.

What I'm thinking is that lets say someone is looking for a stingray and type it in to google. They might land on my site, problem is they might live in another state etc.

I suppose I just need to hammer on local keywords. I'd love to hear input from others on good tips for this sort of thing. I'll be researching it a ton more before I put it to action and start paying for clicks etc.

I'm guessing I should target words like:
xxMy statexx Fish store
xxmy cityxx Fish store
xxmycityxx Tropical Fish

Should I be trying to rank on like:
xxmycityxx Petsmart searches? Or i'll just be outgunned for cash by petsmart etc?
What about a competing fish stores name? Like pay money to rank high/shove my add onto the search page when xxcompetitorxx is searched in google.

I'm Thinking about setting a budget aside for marketing. I have no idea where I should be starting. I've read numbers anywhere from 3% of sales to 20% of sales etc. I was thinking about starting at $300 a month for marketing. As I find ideas that work increase it. That way I'm not throwing $750 a month at stuff that isn't working?

Try $300 a month, and see where your placement is. A few years back, $150 a month used to guarantee me a #1 spot, because no competitors were on. Now I spend almost $1k a month to get the same placement, and I hit my daily budget too early.

Try a few hundred, and see what the results are. Measure where your customers are coming from. I started increasing my budget so that we'd never have down time (which is a killer) and years later, we've gotten busier and busier. I wanted it to be that we'd always be talking to a customer on their bid, and low and behold, I've got a guy doing it full time and I do it part time now. We used to only have one guy bidding jobs two days a week.

Don't look at advertising as an expense if it brings results. Once it does, it is necessary.

opiate82 · May 31, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
So an update on the facebook offer.

The "promotion" part of it on facebook's end is over. It used $28 bucks. and reached 4600 people... That got me 2 likes, and a total of 9 people who have claimed the offer. I'd say a total bust as far as facebook promoting goes.

Now that I'm home I can start on adwords.

If all 9 of those people actually redeem their offers, $3 per redemption actually isn't that bad... at least in my experience it isn't. Although in my experience not all claimed offers are redeemed... so we'll see.

Corndog · Jun 1, 2013

Setup adwords. After doing research, it seems like google's CPC estimates are kind of a scam. I'm starting with my CPC low and will work upwords to get the clicks I want. It seems that it's setup that if you overshoot the going rate, you're just paying more than you need too?

In the estimator, if I pay $1 per click or $100 per click, it says there will only be 4-7 clicks a day. On the page it says all my bids are below first page ranking... However after doing some research people say it says that a lot to get you to bid more etc.

There are articles that say bid what a customer is worth to you. The problem is, a customer could be worth thousands to me. But if I can get them for $1 why should I bid $100 etc? If my competitors aren't bidding for the ads, why over bid?

Corndog · Jun 2, 2013

Still no one sign waving for me yet. But someone saw my sandwich board on the street. They literally live 30 seconds away from my shop. They had no idea I was there, saw the sandwhich board and spent $400 over two trips yesterday. This is why I think the sign waver will work. I have a really high sales conversion rate once they walk into my store. It's just letting them know I am there.

BTW last month is in the books. $13k sales. Up from 10k. Hopefully with the adwords campaign etc. I can break 15k this month!

Tmac · Jun 3, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
This is why I think the sign waver will work. I have a really high sales conversion rate once they walk into my store. It's just letting them know I am there.

Make sure the sign they're waving looks like a fish!

Corndog_sl said:
BTW last month is in the books. $13k sales. Up from 10k. Hopefully with the adwords campaign etc. I can break 15k this month!

Awesome man! Pumped for you.

Echuta · Jun 3, 2013

Came across this thread today on my day off and read every single page. Wanted to offer congrats to you, Corndog. Nice to see someone workin their dream. Keep us posted.

splok_sl · Jun 3, 2013

Corndog_sl said:
In the estimator, if I pay $1 per click or $100 per click, it says there will only be 4-7 clicks a day.

There may only be 7 clicks per day to buy, depending on how popular your search term is. However, low volume keywords are actually good since you can (often) get them cheaper. Just bid onlotsof very long tail keywords.

Corndog · Jun 4, 2013

So when my keyword is ranking lets say 1.8. What is that telling me? I have adblock on so it makes it hard to see how google is displaying these.

But when I looked on another computer it seems the the adsense add is on the bottom of the page. Would 1.8 put me on page 2 of the search at the bottom then?

Jalynfane · Jun 4, 2013

We tried Bus Advertising a few years back, the back of the bus exterior, whole thing covered with our ad. It cost around $1k a month and was a 1 year commitment. Set up a special tracking phone number for it. In one year we got 0 calls. Of course, Insurance is a commodity now and very competitive but there you go.

Corndog · Jun 4, 2013

Jalynfane_sl said:
We tried Bus Advertising a few years back, the back of the bus exterior, whole thing covered with our ad. It cost around $1k a month and was a 1 year commitment. Set up a special tracking phone number for it. In one year we got 0 calls. Of course, Insurance is a commodity now and very competitive but there you go.

Yeah I can see that. Especially since while I'm driving I'm never going to write down a phone number. If I was to advertise on a bus, it's purely to let people know this fish store exists. Brand awareness instead of lead generation.

Shonuff · Jun 4, 2013

Jalynfane_sl said:
We tried Bus Advertising a few years back, the back of the bus exterior, whole thing covered with our ad. It cost around $1k a month and was a 1 year commitment. Set up a special tracking phone number for it. In one year we got 0 calls. Of course, Insurance is a commodity now and very competitive but there you go.

Of all the things I could do, bus wrapping would be last. Of course, tracking numbers mean jackshit. Customers have an awareness of you, and then they go to the Internet or yellow pages to call. Like for my TV commercials, people say they call from something else (which is the last thing they see). But, if I ask them, 70% of my calls are coming from TV, even though they attribute their call to another source.

Anyway, screw bus advertising. Around here, it's $3k to wrap a bus and 2k a month. I could get more bang for my buck elsewhere. For that much, around here, I could run a strong TV or radio run at a targeted audience.

Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

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