"Sales job" for students/pupils.....where to advertise?


1

We have a new product, which is targeted at wearers of eyeglasses. We sell quite nicely via our website, but we figured it was much more efficient to approach wearers of eyeglasses directly....by people handing out flyers to people wearing eyeglasses (in front of shopping malls for example). Where is the best place to advertise jobs like this?

Marketing Sales Job Offer Jobs

asked Mar 28 '10 at 01:51
Blank
Philobus
116 points
Top digital marketing agency for SEO, content marketing, and PR: Demand Roll

5 Answers


2

Very simple: do it yourself for a day. Spend a day at the mall handing out these flyers with coupons. See what happens. You'll be able to track the results thanks to the codes.

Then do the math: if it brought you 0 customers, you know that it's not worth paying someone to do this. If it worked really well, then taking a small discount into account (because the owner handing out flyers will probably do a better job than a minimum wage dude), you can decide if it's worth it. Then scale.

This approach by the way, is similar to the minimum viable product. Just do the minimum to find out the answer, rather than trying to guess from the comfort of your couch.

answered Jun 11 '10 at 02:48
Blank
Alain Raynaud
10,927 points
  • Hey Alain!:-) This is exactly what we did in the meantime. We had some success. And we found out that we have incredibly much success, if we do everything for the prospect immediately: show and explain the product and take the data necessary for ordering. Now we are looking for many many more people doing this for us, commission-based (realistic average hourly commission-earnings are around $30). But where can we advertise "jobs" like this?? We know now, we can provide hundreds of very nice "jobs" like this. – Philobus 14 years ago
  • +10 internets if I could. Do the experiment to verify, refine it yourself then roll out on mass if works. Read books like Lean Startup, Built to sell and (if you can get through it) E-Myth revisited which talks more about this approach. – Ryan 12 years ago

1

There are a couple of different ways to drive business other than what you are thinking about. You say your web site gets pretty good traffic, have you tried using a "refer a friend" code there? This might be something like an offer where you give the referring party and the new customer a discount. Articles,. Blogs, Tweets. They can all generate some business as well.

There is a very good article on sales generation at the MSBC Business Center:

How to Maximize Productivity Today and Opportunities Tomorrow.

answered May 4 '10 at 03:44
Blank
Rebecca
107 points

1

I think it is worth a try -- too often start-ups get caught in one mode of marketing and you need to try them all. In my start-up, we do a little bit of all kinds of marketing. I'm sure people will tell you that direct mail does not work and is not worth the time, but I have found that it is a worthy investment in the niche we work in.

No disrespect, but Zuly does not know your market, what you are selling, and etc. Why not try this direct approach and see if it is economical? Either way you will get an interesting story to tell and you will get good feedback from potential customer.

I'd really advise you to try this on your own first. If you haven't done it yourself, you will not know how it goes, what to say, etc and you won't be able to instruct your workers. Maybe take a small team out to trial it and see if it is viable alternative to standard Google AdWords etc.

Running a start-up is about being different and gutsy. Don't follow the crowd. Try it and let us know how it goes!

answered Mar 28 '10 at 03:58
Blank
Simon
165 points
  • Simon, thank you for your valuable comment - I have exactly the same opinion. We tried Adwords extensively, but 99% of our potential customers don't even search through google, because they don't know, that such a product like ours exists. Then, someone like the big optical chains do not "yet" want to carry our product, because it replaces much more expensive solutions offered currently. So no possibility to even place ads there... – Philobus 14 years ago

0

Honestly, I would stay away from this type of marketing for three reasons:

  1. You will get very little return on your investment. Marketing like this can get very expensive. Have you budgeted how much you think it will cost you?
  2. The people you hire will have no interest in doing a good job. These people will be outsiders who won't care if a single one of those flyers gets you a customer. They'll hand out flyers to people because that's what you're paying them to do, but they won't go out of their way to be friendly or to try and talk to people about your product. And what's to stop them from handing out flyers to people who don't wear glasses? Or taking the flyers and dumping them somewhere? This leads me to point #3.
  3. It'll be hard for you to track the success rate of this. As a business owner, it's important to be able to track how much you spend and what your return is on that investment. That way you can get rid of the things that aren't helping your business and increase the things that are. It's going to be hard to track how many of those that got a flyer actually went to your website and purchased your product. Unless you offer a discount for using a particular coupon code and track that code.

My advice, try something like Google Adwords and place ads on websites that people who wear eyeglasses would go to, such as Pearl Vision and Lenscrafters.

answered Mar 28 '10 at 02:29
Blank
Zuly Gonzalez
9,194 points
  • Zuly, thank you for your valuable comment. We were thinking about flyers with coupon codes. Each person handing out flyers has its personal code. They would earn a commission from each real purchase. – Philobus 14 years ago
  • Sorry but far too broad a proclamation IMHO - all marketing (including adwords has to be experimented, measured and refined) and Adwords, by definition will only work on things that people actively search for. – Ryan 12 years ago

0

Why not target eyeglasses stores? I don't know what your product is or if it competes with those stores. If it doesn't compete, offer the store a share of the revenue for displaying your ads or flyers.

answered Mar 28 '10 at 07:11
Blank
Gary E
12,510 points
  • Gary, we tried this already. They say its a good product, but it rivals more expensive solutions. They prefer to sell these. – Philobus 14 years ago
  • Here is a link to the product: http://bit.ly/cd06cJ About 30% of all people wear eyeglasses. What's the best way to reach out to them? E.g. we could pass flyers to them (with voucher codes on it) in front of shopping malls....the potential customers are easy to spot...wearing eyeglasses :-) – Philobus 14 years ago
  • They don't have to allow your product in their stores (you have a very endearing product, btw). Do a trackback analysis of the websites of your local opticians and optometrists. A very basic analytical approach will yield hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to target their customers. – Publicrelate 13 years ago

Your Answer

  • Bold
  • Italic
  • • Bullets
  • 1. Numbers
  • Quote
Not the answer you're looking for? Ask your own question or browse other questions in these topics:

Marketing Sales Job Offer Jobs