How do you advertise?

[A.M.Detailing]

How do you advertise? What do you find successful for your business and not so much? I run a Mobile Detailing business in Denver and advertise alot with craigslist which is where MUCH of my work comes from. I would say craigslist is my #1 new business bringer, then repeats, referrals, etc. However I get ALOT of calls from reps pitching me their advertising and I'm not sure what really works and what doesn't. Anyone use Google, local news websites, Door-To-Door sales reps etc?

 

[Nth Degree]

Most of my advertising is simply approaching people and talking about their car. I think Craigslist varies by location. Where I am there are so many posts an ad can disappear to the bottom in about 2 hours so it isn't likely to be seen. Plus I hate all the spam I get from it. I would be cautious with the salesmen pitching advertising space. I don't think I would try any of those unless they were to give me an incredible deal to do a trial period and see if anything comes from it. The way I see it I would rather spend 2 days on a full correction for free that will likely result in referrals rather than spend the equivalent amount of money on paper advertising.

 

[Richard Grasa]

I find that most people looking for a detailer will google for auto detailing in their area or ask a friend. So make sure you have a professional looking website that's listing towards the top of the search results, and list yourself on all the free online directories like yelp, google places, yellowpages.com, etc. Google Adwords was a waste of money for me, but can help while it takes a little time for your website to start listing higher. I've gotten a few reviews on yelp so when someone searches for detailing in my area, that's one of the first things they see, and then they see the 5 star review icon and will click on the link for more info. Whenever you have a happy customer, ask them to please leave you a review on yelp and that helps with the search results. And since google lists it own results on top, get people to leave reviews on your places page too, though Google is being a ***** right now updating the place pages since I think they recently made some changes and messed alot of things up.

Paid advertising has been a waste for me, I get most of my business through free advertising. If you're not on Twitter, get on there and start following everyone in your area, I've gotten a few customers just by doing that.