Open Letter About My Business to an Inquiring Mind
My 3-pronged marketing strategy
Hi Devin. Thanks again for reaching out. It’s been 2 weeks since I opened the store and my life right now is pretty chaotic. Building out the store cost me much more than I imagined and my cash flow is flirting with $0. The good news is my business was already breaking even before I started building out the store, and pretty much all of my problems can be solved with sales.
Prong 1 — Google, Instagram, Facebook
The business has been growing with minimal advertising. I’ve spent roughly $300-$600 a month mostly on google searches and a little on Instagram. I still have a giant untapped well in Facebook that I plan on tapping in January, mainly because it is so expensive to advertise on FB in December.
Prong 2 — Leasing office door-to-door
The other way I reach customers is by going to apartment complexes (especially high rises) and trying to get my flyers into their building. Most of them put me in the move in packages but really the prime real estate is the elevator and the mail room. I actually only started going door to door to these places again this week.
Prong 3 — Super Seekrit Google Map Hack
I have a google map hack that I plan on employing but it is somewhat expensive so I’m going to wait until I have more cash flow. It involves renting a virtual office in an office building and opening it as a delivery only location. The effect is it shows up on the map to people close to that office building. I already have one location (other than my store). The office is $50/mo. and advertising each location costs $100-$200 a month.
My issue at this exact moment is that I can’t afford to pay my employee if there is no laundry to do so I have to send her home when there is no work. Which results in me manning the store, and having to close the store to make deliveries. I had this grand vision in my head that my store would be open 8am to 8pm everyday but it turns out to be much different in reality. But again, this problem is solved with sales.
As far as my website I built it myself and I like it. I’m not interested in changing it at all right now because it would devastate my workflow. I am interested in getting more Dallas based website traffic though.
Anyway, that’s the snapshot of it all right now. Here are some graphs you might enjoy -
This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a Dallas startup called Feather Laundry. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.
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