A new business startup called me this week to ask if she could pop in to discuss her advertising. Most of our business is done over the phone and email, and I already knew that Alena was a one-person business so wasn’t sure what she would need to discuss but I am always happy to meet my customers.
Anyway, she brought along some fairly poorly designed business postcards with a glaring error: it said her rates were 10p/per hour. I pointed this out and she said “yes I know it should have been £10/per hour, but it was such a nightmare dealing with the printer. We’d designed our own advert, and sent it to the printer who kept sending it back because it wasn’t in the right format for him so we missed the mistake.” She was asking what were the exact details that we needed ads supplied in.
I explained that usually we design adverts for our customers, and there’s a very small charge (£10) or even free for a long booking. But if she really wanted to design her own, send it over in any format and we’d tidy it up and send back a proof – no charge. She was so surprised she was almost sceptical.
95% of our customers are one or two person businesses. They may be great beauticans, efficient electricians, perfect plumbers or whatever; they aren’t great marketers. And this is the USP (Unique Selling Point) for doing business with a local magazine. We love small businesses, we love helping small businesses and they love dealing with us. We just make it as easy as possible for them to advertise with us… and advertise they do!
PS: Alena phoned this morning to confirm the details of her order and to give me her card details so I could take the money in advance. That’s just one of the reasons we love small business: instant decisions, no signoff process, pay on the spot.