Florist News

I asked recently asking for advice on how to start up my own florist business from home and had some good tips from Susan Levy who is now a friend.
Iwouldn't mind some extra tips on the best way to promote youself , local
paper advertising seems very expensive . Is there a better and cheaper way
to get clients I am not expecting things to happen over night I know that it is a long term thing . but how is it best to kick it of initially.

Sarah

Hi Sarah, and welcome, I started off from home initially a few moons back, Heres what I did, I used a local advitiser to promote myself and I bought a van and and got it painted up with my logo on it also I put the name of the business on the front wall and it worked. Thats the plus side, the reason I decided to do it from home was my children were small and I wanted to be there for them, And I must say I was kept busy we have a nice bit of land so we got a primises built with the intention of doing wholesale as we have to travel two hours of so to the nearest w/salers. Here comes the negative..........I was burnt out, I was mashing potatoes in between bq. potty training while doing bridals bq, my house was no longer my own, customers calling all hours knocking on doors, no day off, even Sunday chill in your pjs.. not a hope.. so I decided to move to town it was the best decision that i ever made and to be honest I should have started in town but I was too scared, but would not admit it even to myself.. but look, I not meaning to put you off just be aware that while there are up there are more downs..do whats right for you... hope this helps.x t

__________________
Thorny Wire

Not knowing much about your location - rural, town? Its difficult to be exact, but you could look at things like Parish magazines - anything that is local and gets delivered door to door. Advertising in these is very cheap and targetted.
Or do a swap with a non-competitive business close to you - a hairdressers for example - you give them 100 leaflets to hand out for you - and in turn you hand out leaflets for them....
Just a few ideas..

Hi Sarah, I work from home too, and focus mainly on wedding flowers. My biggest priority was to get as much free advertising as possible, to make sure my start-up costs were as kept low. If you log on to the yellow pages website, you can get a free listing online which will be published in the next yellow pages too. I've also built a website very easily from home, with a host that's free for the first year. I've found that's been the key to lots of free advertising - loads of wedding website allow you to list in their directory for free as long as you have a reciprocal link to their website. I also had some car magnets made with my details on which are great..they were free to from an online printing comany (can give you the details if you want them!) which I've had lots of comments on when I'm out an about. I also spent £150 on a local wedding fair - loads cheaper than a lot of advertising packages and a very targeted audience!! So far, touch wood, it's all paying off. I know it's all very wedding focussed, so sorry if that's not so appropriate for you Once you've built a small customer base, you can't beat word of mouth either. Good luck! George