Official Luthiers Forum!

If any of you have any doubts how much advertisement could mean to your business Here is a little tale of experience.

Four months ago I had a local laser cut vinyl company cut my logo, company name and contact information out of white vinyl and placed it on the rear window of my truck. total cost was $37.50. With in three day I had received four inquires. Within 30 day I had taken an order and with in four months I have taken three orders directly attributable to my vinyl signage on my truck.

Not bad for a $37.50 investment

That is great. Good for you!!

I have always thought that would be a good idea... but it wouldn't look right on my car.

Dave Bland can confirm this, but I think if you do that you can write off at least some portion of your car expenses as a marketing expense.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

when I worked in a restaurant the owners hired a consultant to see how to push public awareness.

#1 on his list was vehicle graphics.

My Dad got magnetic signs (about 18" square) made for his sheep flock. they peel off the car & stick on the truck if he wants to.

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My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

What make vehical graphis and signage great is it travels. Any place you go one person of hundreds of people read it.

When I decided to do this My neibor said it like one of those vanity sigsn where people put their last names in the back window of cars. He said "nobody reads them". I asked him "how many names he could think of that were vinyled on back windows" and he replied that he could name 30 real quick. I then told him, "Well to know that; we know at least one person reads them" "Right?"

Pic

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

I don't have my camra with me but will post in tonight

I thought about doing the same thing when I saw one of my childhood heros doing it....

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John Watkins
CNC Guitar Parts

                    

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John Watkins
CNC Guitar Parts

[QUOTE=John Watkins]

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"Ahaaaa This is the BIGone!!"

I did the same thing a couple months ago and while I haven't had quite the luck Michael has had, I have gotten some inquiries. Actually I stopped driving my full size truck to work due to gas prices just after I got the signs.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I have thought about doing this on my van, but I am afraid it may make my van a thief magnet. I know of some pro players who have been at the same shows and festivals that I attend have had there guitars stolen out of there vehicles. Some when they just stopped for a 1 hour bite to eat. I guess with a magnet or something that is not permanent you can remove it whenever you don't want to attract attention.

If it does generate that much interest....I'll have to give it some more thought.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

It really does of course, depend on the car you're driving.....

Vehicle graphics may be your best advertising bang for the buck. Daily traffic counts on busy city streets typically reach 15-20k vehicles per day. On the four-lane city arterial near my home it averages about 30k per day. It's one of the cheapest ways to reach the maximum number of eyeballs.

And it's not just cut vinyl. The technology has evolved to the point where the cost of wrapping half or even an entire vehicle with full-color photo quality graphics has dropped to within reach of many small businesses. That's why you're starting to see more and more of these wrapped vehicles on the road — and parked on the street side of the parking lot. I work for a company that franchises sign businesses. Talk about the shoemaker's kids needing new shoes! We had the hardest time convincing some of our tight-fisted franchisees to pony up the cost of wrapping their own vans and trucks, but they quickly became true believers after they did it.

At some point vehicle graphics will become so ubiquitous that they will tend to blend into the background like the visual noise that appears on many web sites and they will become less effective. But for now they're hot.

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D..

Ball park, of course, what does it cost to wrap a vehicle? Something SUV sized?

Again, round numbers or ranges are fine.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

For those with signs on their cars you might want to check you auto policies as some insurance companies require a commercial type insurance when using your car for advertising.

Well said Hesh   

 Can't add a whole lot to that.

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Reguards,

Ken H

[quote]People will always be more than happy to waste your building time or distract you at a trade show so that you never get to the real prospect who is checking out your wares and you are busy with someone else...... [/quote]

     On the overall I agree, but you have to be real careful about that. My friend Rick Aveni is alway proud about telling about the time he went into buy his new Mustang. Rick never really dresses very nice. He never really does much nice, except work hard, and I guess that more than makes up for it, but Rick went into Ray Andrews Ford to buy his car and the salesman talked to him as if he was a retard!

     Rick finally went over to another salesman who was quite a bit more friendly after the first had to "take a call"! Rick pulls out Cash! Filthy American money! The other salesman looked like he was going to go cookies up! Rick was absolutly adamant that the other salesman not get the commission!

    Your right, I've gotten a lot of calls about plastic tooling that didn't have a clue about what was involved but I was always straight forward about it and that usually settled the problems then and there!

    If people stopped by I would usually show them around because one never really knows what's up and I also liked talking to most, and most were fascinated, kind of like a digital Disneyland!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

That's an interesting perspective, Hesh.

I'll politely say that I couldn't disagree with you more.   

The purpose of advertising is not simply to persuade a qualified buyer to purchase your product. Sure, that is one purpose, but most advertising is directed at a more general purpose --- branding. Generating familiarity with and interest in your product. Not just to make a sale today by someone who sees your ad for the first time, but to generate name recognition and interest in little Billy with a broken E string too. Because while little Billy may not be looking for a custom guitar today, he very well may be once he's been playing the heck out of that busted-string-guitar for five or ten more years and turns into the next Hendrix.

As for your Rolls Royce story, I don't think that $200 charge is just to weed out the unqualified buyers. In part, perhaps. But I suspect a more significant purpose is to perpetuate the Rolls Royce image by telling everyone who asks for a brochure that "only the very elite can even afford to look at our brochure." That statement itself brands Rolls Royce as a privilege for the super-rich. It doesn't just weed out the looky-loos, it sells the real prospective purchasers on how privileged they must be to belong to the Rolls Royce club.

Now, if you really are sick and tired of people asking you about your guitars, even though they aren't in a position to buy one, then you are absolutely right not to advertise in a way that will generate more calls from them. But frankly, how many of us really get that tired of talking about guitarbuilding with people that probably won't buy one from us anyway? After all, isn't that what most of us come to this forum to do? I love it when neighborhood kids who are just learning to play the guitar asks me about guitarbuilding.

I don't think any of us do this for the money, or for the sales. Those are nice, but only to the extent they justify us in pursuing our love of building guitars.

I liked Michael's idea, and I'm thinking about putting an ad on my truck's rear window. If I get too many calls, I can always have it removed. But somehow I don't think that will happen.

Hesh, I think our posts crossed in the electronic abyss. I was responding to your first post, not your second.

In your second post, you raise a good point about people calling you not to buy guitars but to sell you Amway. It doesn't sound like Michael's had that problem with his ad (at least not enough to detract from the callers that are interested in guitars), but if so, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

And since I can post three in a row at this ridiculous hour, one final thought --- if you need to weed out the looky-loos, then couldn't you just include your website address in the ad, not your phone number? Then you could have the type of screening website Hesh talks about, if that's a concern.