Advertising presented by

James Weston

You can advertise that you do dog grooming anywhere and recommend that you use the following to advertise as they are all FREE:

• Website

• www.facebook.co.uk

• www.twitter.co.uk

• www.linkedin.co.uk

• www.yell.co.uk

• www.qype.co.uk

• www.upmystreet.co.uk

• www.citylocal.co.uk

• www.touchlocal.com

• www.touchwigan.com

• www.192.com

• www.118.com

All of these are free of charge but you will be asked for a “premium listing” which will cost you anything from £5-£50/month. I my opinion unless you are competing with a lot of the same businesses in the area then you don’t need to do this. Most of your competitors will not be doing this anyway.

There are other alternatives to advertising but they all cost:

• Local newspaper

• Magazines

• Radio

• Directories (Yellow pages and Thomson Local etc)

• Sports advertising

• Leaflet Drops

• Text campaigns

• Email Campaigns

• Cold calling

Websites

The key to a good website is to get the direct domain name and ensure that it is as generic as possible; it might be tempting to get something like www.mikesgrooming.co.uk or www.bethsdogwash.co.uk. But people who want dog grooming will not know your company name. They will be searching for what they want (dog grooming) and where they want it (Wigan), so an ideal domain name would be www.wigandoggrooming.co.uk. If you had this name and somebody searched for this in Google then you would come up FIRST, this is the main aim for internet advertising.

The main rule I would follow is register what people will type into a search engine and you won’t go far wrong.

Our examples are;

animalgroomingcourses.co.uk

animalmri.co.uk caninehydrotherapycourses.com doggroomingcoursesglasgow.co.uk doggroomingcoursesscotland.co.uk doggroomingcoursesuk.co.uk doggroomingjobs.co.uk doggroomingschool.info doggroomingtraining.co doggroomingtrainingcourses.co.uk doghydrotherapy.net hydrotherapyforcanine.co.uk hydrotherapyfordogs.net mriscandogs.co.uk puppyinjections.co.uk puppyvaccination.net puppyvaccinationscost.co.uk smallanimalmri.co.uk smallanimalscanner.co.uk veterinarymri.co.uk vets4petshuddersfield.co.uk vets4petswigan.co.uk vetsbolton.com vetsinsthelens.co.uk vetswigan.com You will not want to spend a lot of money on advertising as you need the business to make money. Here are a couple of websites that supply cheap but affective websites some can even be paid monthly:

• www.1and1.co.uk

• www.ems-internet.co.uk

• www.ekmsitebuilder.co.uk

• www.totalcreation.co.uk

• www.easiwebdesign.co.uk

• www.coleswood.co.uk

• www.amcsinternet.co.uk

• www.ajkendallwebdesign.com

Networking is a good opportunity to put your company out there but can cost a lot. I would only suggest this if you have another business to advertise alongside your dog grooming.

Contacts www.bforb.co.uk

www.bni.co.uk

www.fsb.org.uk

www.linkedin.co.uk

The federation of small businesses is a great facility and can open up many opportunities for you. They offer a range of services such us;

Credit card processing

Networking events

Fuel card

Tax advice

Business protection