If I had unlimited money, I'd probably still suck at advertising.

If I had unlimited money, I'd probably still suck at advertising.

There's been thousands of challenges, and likely millions more I haven't encountered yet, since I started SimplySharp. By all accounts I seem to be doing well. I have a good customer base, people like my product, business is growing and I'm tracking well against goals and milestones I've established. But trying to figure out how to advertise and promote my business, it just a black hole of expense, doubt, and dubious return.

I specifically earmarked money each month with the idea that I needed to learn how to advertise and market my business. So if you're starting out with your small business here's what I've learned 6 months into it.

For background, I started SimplySharp, a mobile knife sharpening business in Atlanta, GA. I have some big aspirations for the business, but at its core I go to people's homes and sharpen their knives. I imagine it has much of the same dynamics as any home services business. My number 1 expense is people (just me for now), #2 was fuel (I bought an EV) but now it's a car payment, and #3 is advertising. I spend about $250/month at present. Not a lot, but I feel enough to learn something.

My findings in order of effectiveness

1. Referrals

Probably unsurprising, but cultivating raving fans that will go out of their way to help you promote your business is even more powerful than I'd have initially thought. Over 60% of my business comes from this. However, it's probably the hardest option. Why? Glad you asked

The first reason it's hard is you have to ask for it. It isn't as simple as asking directly "would you please refer me", so here are my tips to getting referrals:

  1. Provide the customer with a great experience. My knife sharpening could be sub par (I really hope it isn't), but I try to be the highlight of my customers' day. Whether it's just being friendly, or spending the time to talk to them, teaching them something, or just making their lives just a tad easier, when I leave I want them to think "what a great guy". I'm extroverted and a chatterbox, so I can talk to anyone. But it takes time, often more than the actual sharpening, and it can take a lot of energy to be relentlessly positive and pleasant, especially on a long, cold, wet day. But people are great, so my cup is continuously filled.
  2. I ask how they heard about me, and try to mention that people being very kind to me on social media or other avenues has been the life blood of getting started. Invariably they all indicate that they'll be sure to post as well. Most do and it's great. I'm not smart or organized enough to track this, but I'd guess on average each customer gets me at least one more. This isn't especially hard, but you can't be shy. For some reason I had to work up a bit of courage to start doing this.
  3. I followup and ask for a review. As of today, I have about 30 Google and 10 Facebook reviews. It's about 10% of customers that reviewed me. But, what they much more often do is go on Facebook or Nextdoor and post something nice. Way harder to track, but it happens ALL THE TIME! I don't have some automated system for this. Maybe one day I will, but I like the personal touch. I manually text each customer a few days after they're sharpening to follow up with them. During this followup I ask for a review.
  4. Events. It's surprising to me, but a number of customers reach out and ask "would you mind if I organize 4 or 5 of my neighbors to get their knives sharpened?". The answer of course is a resounding yes, and I've done it so many times I have a template to make them a special page on my site to book the sharpenings. I chalk this up to people genuinely wanting to be helpful. I try to promote these on my social media channels so that other prospects see this and get the same idea. I'd estimate 15% of every knife I've sharpened as been due to some sort of event like this.

2. Facebook/Meta/Instagram/whatever they call it now

This starts to get a bit into the squishy math of evaluating the efficacy of these platforms. There's sooooo many numbers and metrics that allegedly make sense to someone who knows what they're doing, but I focus on clicks (the number of times someone clicked to view my website). On average, if I spend $100 I will get about 500 link clicks. In addition, I get some number of followers that will continue to see what I'm up to.

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Meta's Business manager is very easy to use, and while Facebook can often annoy me, they make it very very easy for a small business to advertise, and the price isn't exploitative (looking at you google). Even if you don't wind up advertising on their platform, you need a Facebook page for your business. If for no other reason you make it easy for all your wonderful customers to refer you to the page.

Facebook also has a whole booking platform that works well. I don't use it much as it doesn't play nice with my CRM and booking platform, but I could make a real case to forgo a website and booking system and just use Facebook's. I plan to revisit their booking platform in the future.

3. Farmers Markets

If you have don't want or know how to use a computer, this is the best way to market yourself. The exposure is tremendous, the engagement (you get to talk to people) is unbeatable, and it's great networking. At every one I make at least 3-5 times as much as it costs me to participate, but more importantly, I average about 7 or 8 bookings per market. It is at the heart of my expansion strategy for 2023.

If you have something you can sell from under a tent, do it. My biggest struggle is 1. they aren't open in the winter and 2. So many of them are at the same day/time. They are also time consuming and you're at the mercy of the weather.

4. Google

The short version, it works, and you kind of have to do it, but it is stupidly expensive and by a million miles the hardest most frustrating platform. $100 spend will get me about 40 link clicks. Most of the long version below is a rant, so feel free to skip, but if you are having challenges with google, maybe it will make you feel better that you're not alone.

The full version:

Even before the hubbub of Chat GPT, I was convinced google is the dinosaur in the room and are well on their way to Yahooing themselves out of business. Other than the fact that it works, I have nothing positive to say about the experience trying to advertise with google. My best guess is they get kickbacks from the legions of google consultants so they make it really hard to use or make sense of. Among the things I, and my peer group, constantly struggle with:

  1. Many, many customer reviews never get posted. You'll get screen shots from your customers, but they never, ever appear. Any there isn't any discernible way to learn more about this or fix it, just mumbo jumbo about their vaunted algorithm's and weeding out fake reviews. It's absolutely infuriating every time one of your customers goes out of their way to review you, but nothing. I feel guilty every time.
  2. Linking your ad campaign to your website is a nightmare. I couldn't start my ad campaign for almost a month (bye bye free $500 credit) due to some still unresolved issue. Basically, you keep getting an error message that something is wrong with the link. Call the support line, they tell you it will clear up in a few days. It never does. Delete the campaign and start over? Nothing. Give up and just link to your Google Business listing and move one.
  3. It is INTENSELY EXPENSIVE!

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I get palpitations everytime I look at this!

$2.12 for every click or call. And I did not book 246 sharpenings from this. For comparison below is by far my most expensive Facebook campaign. I reached 6x more people and paid 80% less per click.

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So given all this, why in the world do I still spend money with them? Because, when I ask people how they found me, many still mention they found me on google. I have no way of knowing how much of that is organic (i.e. they would have found me anyway) vs. paid, but I don't have the information to validate this yet, so I keep chipping away. Plus A LOT of people aren't on Facebook nor Instagram.

5. Yard Signs/Sponsorships

I group these together because they are kind of the same thing. I sponsored a neighborhood Octoberfest. I had three yard signs made up for this and put them out according to the directions of the event staff. The ROI on this was not immediate. In fact, I think it was well over a month later that I got my first customer that heard about me from that. But, as time has passed, I've received quite a few more bookings, but more important was general awareness. At present I've booked about 4x as much business as I spent on it, but there was a brand awareness factor that I'm not smart enough to assign a value to. But it was impactful enough that I'm now sponsoring the high school baseball team and looking for more opportunities.

Plus, I know have some yard signs that I occasionally barter with customers to put up. I usually get a few appointments from them each time, and again, brand awareness.

6. Nextdoor

Get your phone. Set it up to video yourself. Get two $100 bills. Start recording. Light the Benjamins on fire. Post that video to your favorite site. Congratulations you're just spent that money MUCH more effectively than advertising on Nextdoor.

I've paid Nextdoor three times for advertising. I have more fingers and toes than I do link clicks from these campaigns. It's much more effective to just post under your personal account and flaunt their rules on promoting your business because their advertising does not work.

However, all your raving customers saying nice things about you on Nextdoor is amazing. I get a lot of customers (many more than google) that heard about me from someone posting about me on Nextdoor. So much so, that I kind of feel like blowing $200 or their horrid ad platform was just a nice way to thank them for building a platform that enabled my customers to say nice things about me and get me more business.


So there you go. My experience as a new business owner trying to advertise and grow. Hopefully it helped at least one of you out. Would love your feedback on any of this, or cool alternative ways to market SimplySharp.


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