Update on Girlie Girl Parties:
There is a local monthly publication here for kids and families. All of the moms pick it up and use it to find new things to spend money on.
Well, after about 2 months of Kerry passing out her Girlie Girl Parties business cards around town there’s suddenly advertisements for two similar businesses in this publication. It’s possible that we just never noticed them, but I doubt it. We looked it over pretty good before starting the business. More likely, they got whiff of our business and wanted to get a jump on advertising. In fact, in one case it appears that the competition actually copied the names of the themes we were planning to use.
Instances like this are what separates action and implementation from theory and text books. How should we respond?
More importantly, 2 months and 500 business promotional cards (post card size) later, we have not received any calls about the service. Part of this may be inherent in that it is a Birthday business so obviously people wouldn’t call until near when the birthday is… but with 500 cards chances are someone would have a recent birthday. More likely, the primary issue is that the cards are not doing their job, which, as a marketing tool (not just contact info), is to bring in business.
Here are the primary issues with the cards:
- Issue #1: The cards didn’t clearly explain what the business was.
- Issue #2: People’s concerns/objections weren’t addressed.
- Issue #3: Our website wasn’t listed for people to get more information.
- Issue #4: The cards were boring and cluttered.
Although we paid to have the cards printed, the design was done for free by a friend who is a logo design business owner. Being that the work was performed for free makes it an awkward situation when we’re not pleased. We’ve tried working with them to get the cards closer to where we want without being pushy or ungrateful, but they still aren’t good enough. We’re now having another graphic design business owner friend look at redesigning the cards for us. And again, we are putting ourselves into an awkward situation with not using one’s design and having yet another free design we may not like. We may end up insisting that we pay for this one to avoid any further issues.
I already knew that service-trades and free work from friends was a bad idea, but it’s just so tough to pass up as a cash-strapped start-up!
Going forward: The top line will include a description of the business service offerings, the website will be listed, and it will include ”Packages start at just $200!” in order to address concerns about price.
Note: The $200 price is our entry-point, but is below both of the other competitors.
We will also be using these as an advertisement in the local kids and family publication I mentioned. Kerry is feeling pressure to advertise very soon due to the competition. However, I’m not going to advertise until we have an ad worthy of advertising. An ad that nobody notices is a waste of money. Hopefully over the next month we’ll be ready and able to get the advertising in. We’ll also be looking for ways to further serve our customers needs and make our services unique.
