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There has been advise to you on erecting a website. This may be an overspecification of your needs.
You could start a blogspot and use it as an information centre regarding your work.It will be less time consuming than a website and less expensive.
Before handing out brochures and pics of your work you could direct customers there, I am sure you have to educate customers when you meet them, articles on the blogspot could do that.

http://www.vistasad.com

Hi

I think that advertising thats based on a educational based marketing campaign will get you more customers then hanging a banner on some website.

In order to break 'the walls' between you and your potential clients/customers - you must supply them with enough information. Everyone is holding back on taking out the credit card today. People will only take it out - if they have enough information about a product or service that will convince them to use.

Hillel Porath

P.S. We recently launched our "Super Website Marketing Handbook" - which explains how to market your information on the web: http://www.iyazam.com/our-book.html

I think a key area being overlooked is word of mouth (WOM). How often do you make a purchasing decision or to at least check out a product/service based on a referral?

I'd suggest that almost all of us now use the web and, more importantly, reviews and comments to make decisions. If you've make a purchase in the last several months, you probably spent a significant time reviewing deciding on where to buy.

The same process holds true for services. The difference comes in the timing of the event. When purchasing new flooring, people tend to take time. The look at colors, they shop prices, they look at model homes, etc... I then think they make a purchase based on comfort/reputation, inventory, pricing and timing of installation.

The comfort/reputation is a big item. Flooring is fairly expensive, disruptive and somewhat permanent. People want to make a decison on the other factors, but don't want to make a mistake on the installation.

So, the biggest challenge is getting the opportunity to be considered as a possible provider. This means you need to capture their interest in the begining of the cycle.

If you have happy customers, you need to get them to talk about you. The spoken word is always best, but having an uncensored (by you) comments section on your web site, a forums area where people can openly talk, etc... are all very good. People want REAL input.

They don't want the corporate marketing mumbo-jumbo. Corporate marketing is just about getting the to pay attention. This means who can shout the loudest to get attention. Which is expensive, abrasive and the ROI is generally quite low.

Here's what I'd suggest:
1 - devise a plan to get noticed. These items should be your corner stone items (yellow pages, newspaper).
2 - devise a plan to drive awareness on specials. Special pricing events - these are generaly a campaign - short term activities (newspaper, radio, flyers)
3 - gain customer comments. When you install a project, mail to them a post card asking for feedback, phone call and ask for feed back, mail a post card with your website address and ask for comments, mail a referral card to them giving the customer a discount on their next project if they refer someone to them (the referee brings in a card from the orginal customer - you then mail the card back to the referral with a discount).
4 - get people to rank (1-5 stars) for the quality of the install, customer experience, value and post this to your site
5 - do a great job in servicing your clients.

Other items:
Set up a twitter account and get people to follow you. When you have promotional offers, send out a tweet!

Bottom line for this is the value of WOM is key. WOM marketing can be spoken or written. The value to your prospective customers is in open and honest feedback from your past clients.

Don't filter comments. Be brave. Be honest. Be good. Your customers will reward you for it.

Best

David

Advertising online is fantastic during these hard economic times because it is so affordable in comparision to other methods of advertising. I've been promoting my art work and paintings online for a while now with www.bizadsplash.com. It's been a great help in exposing my site to thousands daily and it will promote any form of business that you are looking to get out there. Definitely look into Biz Ad Splash.

SweetKitty, I skimmed through your site.
Tahiti has more meaning to me than Secret Journey or whatever the heading was.
The rest of the images seem like any other good travel site.
On the right top you have used a flash image which changes, there are too many changes and with the prices given, a person would have to wait for the image to reappear.

Volunteer abroad and Work Study Travel abroad makes the site different. You can try promoting it through appropriate social networking communities. And you could have some goodlooking human beings not necessarily in bikinis and beach shorts on your page. Personally I like to see human beings on such pages.

You could promote areas to which Americans don't frequent but European's do e.g. Mombasa. You may get a small dedicated traffic for that.

http://www.vistasads.com

Hey Innovative, I understand your plight with the wave of marketing changes happening. I used to be a mortgage broker with a marketing and IT background(EarthLink). When the market dropped this year, 2009, I opened my own web marketing consulting firm.

Now, I will tell you that statistically, most print media is no longer as effective. IE. yellow pages, newspaper, direct mail. I consult clients all the time who no longer get a good return on there marketing dollars. One particular client, was spending over $1,000 a month on yellow pages advertising with 1-2 clients a month contacting them through that marketing channel.

Poor ROM - Return On Marketing

ORGANIC SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
I'll make this basic suggestion for you specifically, upgrade your website with "organic" search engine optimization so that "flooring company (your city)" is on the site at least 3-5 times, etc. A professional seo consultant can help you with this. For a local flooring company you should expect to pay about $1500-$7500.

PAY PER CLICK AD CAMPAIGN
Once you've upgraded your site, then look into "Pay Per Click" advertising on Google AdWords. No, I don't work for them.

Create an AdWords account and pick 5-10 "flooring" related keywords you want the ad to show for and then set a monthly budget. You can see how much each keyword click will cost you here:https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. The tool is free.

Also, make sure to limit it Geographically in your town or city. Otherwise, you'll be advertising nationwide wasting money.

Your pay-per-click ad campaign can be as low as $200-300 per month on upwards. You can set it to whatever budget cap you want so ads will stop running once your budget is reached or you can pause a campaign anytime.

All of the clients I consult with who are adjusting to the new marketplace have found this type of web marketing campaign successful.

GOOD Pay-Per-Click INFORMATION: The reason you want to upgrade the content on your site first is that Google will charge you less per click when the "landing page", your website, you send customers to, is more relevant or of higher quality regarding flooring.

NO FLASH - Don't use flash to make your websites. Search Engines can't read the words in flash. You can use a small flash banner for flavor, but keep it small.

Hope it helps.
SEM Warrior

The most cost effective way to get new clients, is Search Engine Optimization.
all printed advertising is useless, you will probably only cover your ads costs. my suggestion, move to online advertising. Search Engine Optimization.
you will see better results. and you will be exposed to bigger population.

fill this for free website and seo quote.
www.revolutionmediadesign.com

786-285-1907

Advertising generally does not work. Therein lies one of the biggest root casuses of our recession. General Motors and associated dealers have spent more money than any other company, only to slowly fail over the past 60 years. One of the problems is an almost universal disconnect between those that produce the advertising and those that sell the product. Distant deadlines, misprints, misplacement and misunderstandings are very common. Ads actually cheapen a product, and that may be why you don't see ad campaigns for Nordstrom's, but you do for discount retailers willing to pay a dollar a hollar. The effect is that it cheapens the media and therefore the value of the associated ads. And remember that no one ever dropped out of advertising school to become a doctor, but there are many that drop out of medical school and almost every other major to get into advertising. If advertising really works, then let's buy it all. Let's spend the entire stimulus plan on it. Unfortunately there is no way to accuraely measure the value or lack thereof in advertising. The old adage from every expert in the field that only half the advertising works and you'll never figure out which half, is now outdated. Anything that doesn't work even part of the time is not working at all. Would you hire new employees if you knew that only half of them were willing to work? Today it seems that no advertising really works because at no time in history has both the media and the advertising field been so completely fragmented and out of the loop. Today if you study (as I have) what happens to a business when they run a huge ad campaign, you will see an inverse sales, traffic and product reaction.

Of course everything is advertising...from the employee spouses to the doormat in front of your business, but let's focus on the real subject at hand. Advertising is at best much less valuable than it has ever been before, especially with all the free alternatives today. Inherently the ad industry only goes after the under 34 crowd (just look at any ratings survey) and that is the group that never picks up a paper and never listens to the radio and bypasses all the commercials on TV. Companies that are the most successful today have figured out a way to buy little or nothing in traditional advertising and to get free advertising by way of press releases, the internet, cross promotions, special events, etc. Advertising people have been trained to handle objections by their clients, but the smart clients aren't buying them. In most cases ads make customers very unhappy. The bait and switch techniques used by car companies and now even department stores make shoppers mad. For example if a clothing store buys an 8,000 dollar full page ad in a medium market newspaper to advertise a dress that is on sale and that they don't have (you'd be very surprised at how often this happens due to deadlines and delays or whatever the reason) the clothing store chain will defend that as still nothing to worry about since they can bait and switch. In reality, based on my observations, research and whistle-blowing, the sales clerks never even have anyone ask for the dress (or the shoes) that were advertised and the top management just laughs or says someone else made a mistake. This really does happen and it happens on a continuing basis with no real accountability, since at least 100 people have their hands on any given ad at different times. That's part of the problem. They seem not to care or to know who to blame. Yet if that much money is lost in some other way, management and ownership get very involved in bringing it to a stop. The advertising arm, the agencies and the media would only point fingers anyway and it seems there isn't anyone willing to deal with them responsibly.

Just a couple of minutes ago my friend came in from a trip to Talbot's (a high line ladies clothing store) and mentioned she had noticed the ads in the national catalog that promoted a wide range of exercise wear and was told by the store manager that they never got anything the national catalog advertised until several weeks at best after the circular is mailed out. There are those who would say this kind of advertisement at least gets people in the store and that bait and switch will make up for the loss. That isn't true. My friend left and vowed not to return. So advertising doesn't even work when it works. Ask anyone in advertising who their market is (unless you are after the older crowd) and they will tell you the young market under 34 and secondarily those under 49 and then 54. That's one of many major inherent problems with the business, and has been for many decades.

Now, as far as floor covering and what you should use to advertise...just beware of costs. Some things are free and much more effective than the things you buy. Explore press releases (newspapers will run anything you type up), trade outs (even with neighboring businesses, but be very limited in how much and what you trade, leaving always delivery cost or other ways to still make money), co-op and cross promotions or piggy-back promotions, have a great sign out front, utilize free search listings with the internet, and carefully explore other low cost advertising.

Good luck. You can afford to make a few mistakes when you aren't paying for them. Remember that even in a perfect world and in a perfect economy and when broadcasting and newspapers were king, no more than half of the advertising ever worked anyway.