She’s still using the text-on-pink ones she made. I think she thought I was trying to help too much.
My Photoshop Elements won’t work on my new computer. I should have a 2020 version in a few days. (I just got the notice that it had shipped.)
I’ve been going back and forth from my home in the mountains to Denver for a few months to take care of my mother. Three days a week I’m in Denver now. Let’s just say I’m a tad overbooked.
One of my favorite restaurants is luckily in-between her home (where I have set up camp), and where she is at a skilled nursing center. This restaurant gives me a moment of peace. Great food, and relaxing atmosphere.
And they have installed a fucking video screen advertising over the fucking mens urinals in the bathrooms.
I am the most relaxed guy you may ever meet, but for a moment, it almost wasn’t on the wall anymore. Got close to my limit it did. I’m here to piss, not to buy your bullshit.
Put this crap on a restaurant table and I’ll be gone before I order. ~ Johnny, maybe it will work, or maybe it won’t. But I wouldn’t be around long enough to even see the add.
That is my opinion of this type of advertising.
I regularly throw away eight months worth of Valu-Pak envelopes unopened but almost always at least casually look at the ads on the table while waiting for my breakfast skillet or burger.
He gave the price; do you think that’s cheap or expensive? I have no clue what a good price for an ad is.
imho … i’d either trash the table-tents or complain to mgmnt and refuse to be served. what next … people gonna’ place ads on their front doors to their own residence? go figure.
I’d pass, that’s too expensive.
Years ago a friend decided to advertise in a Welcome Wagon promotion given to people in the area who bought homes. If you bought a home, someone from the Chamber of Commerce would stop by and present you with a fruitbasket and a bunch of coupons from local participating businesses. Free car wash, free roof inspection, free restaurant meal, etc. He paid a fortune and in exchange there was a very valuable coupon for his business. He would lose money from anyone presenting the coupon, but he’d likely have a new customer for life. The coupon was on the order of “$50 off this $60 item”.
He was a Welcome Wagon member for three years, then dropped out. There was never a single coupon presented to him, ever.
They’re not table-tents, it’s essentially like business cards laminated into the table top. While not “common”, I’ve seen it in enough family style or small restaurants that it’s not surprising or weird either. I’ve never seen someone throw a fit and refuse to eat over it but I guess it takes all kinds.
This was my first reaction , too.
You have a very niche business…it’s a service that I was totally unaware exists.
But your clients presumably know about it, and don’t need an advertisment to convince them.
You need the ad to convince them to buy from you, instead of someone else.
I’m guessing that you would be better off placing your ads, flyers, or whatever, among your target audience, not just a random place where 99% of the people who see it will ignore it, or be offended by it. A mexican restaurant is a place where people want to eat and chat with friends. They aren’t thinking about diseased feet.
Seek out professional help to see what’s needed instead of trying to do everything yourself, especially since she’s resistant to your help, her refusal to use your flyer and sticking to hers is big problem in terms of marketing. Here’s a link to SBA(Small Business Association), a government agency that has free or low-cost resources. In particular look for a local WBC (Women’s Business Center).
Be prepared though as the answer may be that your wife’s business just isn’t a good idea. As others have stated, she’s in a very niche market and she may have to pay her dues by going back to work for someone else so she try to can establish herself as an independent. As I said above, her’s isn’t the type of business that people will just come knocking for. She has to network and reach out to people directly.
I’m not sure if the nursing home allows this, but maybe she could become a preferred, established provider for outpatient work. That’s part of networking. She has to go where the potential clients are and establish herself, even if that means several more years of working for someone else.
I don’t get what one had to do with the other. You could put announcements in the bulletin without ads, you could put ads in the bulletin without announcements, or you could do both.
But putting ads in the bulletin doesn’t reduce the announcement time.
I assume that the bulletin used to entirely relate to the service and, during the service, they had spoken announcements before or after. Now, they put the announcements in the bulletin so people can go home earlier. The religious service part of the bulletin remains “clean” but the more secular half with the food drives and daycare reminders and bake sales has some local advertising in it as well.
If it’s something new they’re starting, perhaps negotiate a break in the cost, perhaps fifty percent. But honestly, what I wonder is whether an ad for foot care is going to turn off people who are there to eat. Do they really want to think about (or imagine) the foot issues that require one to hire a specialist nurse?
This is the third time someone has mentioned this and I find it sort of weird. I don’t think about rotting leaves when I see business card-sized ads for gutter cleaning or expressing anal glands when I see ads for pet grooming. It’s just (in my mind) “Oh, an ad for an in-home foot care specialist”, not reason to start imagining all sorts of blighted feet.
In any event, that seems more like the restaurant’s problem than her problem. If the thought of needing in-home foot care puts you off your nachos, you probably weren’t in the target market anyway. I guess we should pity the gutter cleaning guy who won’t get his ad read when you abruptly leave the table 
Exactly. In the Episcopal church, announcements are usually made after the peace and before communion. So, rather than the endless parade of people getting up to speak about the food drive, the homeless breakfast, the flower guild, etc, all that is now in print and the cost of printing a larger bulletin was subsidised by advertising.
But the actual service itself on the first couple of pages is kept without any advertising. That would be beyond tacky to see an ad for Nancy’s Pancake House in the middle of the Gospel reading!
I raised the concern over a foot care ad on a dining table, and the possibility of getting crank calls. Mrs. L.A. decided to advertise. I guess we’ll know in a few months if it pays off. FWIW, it’s $1,045 for a 4" x 2" ad, which they will design, for at least 28 months.
For some, seeing something long and thin like worms or snakes while eating spaghetti will freak them out. Personally, I can see maggots on TV while eating rice and it doesn’t bother me. But even the mention of something foot related while I’m eating or not turns my stomach. If I saw a picture of a foot (hopefully the company Johnny L.A.'s wife if using will be tasteful in their artwork) on my table, I’d definitely cover it or even walk out if my stomach churned.
Strangely, it’s something that just happened on day and I have no memory of the trigger. When I was young, I used to love eating at Japanese restaurant in the mall. They had giant stylized koi (carp) painted on the walls and I actually liked it. Then one day, when I went there, looking at them, my stomach churned (it’s churning right now just thinking about it), and I never went back to eat there again. Same thing happened at another favorite restaurant we used to go to. There was a giant undersea mural on the wall. I was thinking of eating fish, but looked a the mural and ordered a steak. We went back there a few more times, but I always made sure to face away from the mural.
Make sure that her business is easily google-able. Her business should be one of the first listings if someone searches for “foot home care cityname”. If people notice her ad, they may just remember the basics that someone is offering in-home foot care, but they may not remember much else. You want them to be able to find her business later. If she doesn’t currently have a website, get it up and indexed by the search engines before the ad goes live.
Along those lines, a better use of the money could be to put it towards Google ad words. That’s where you pay for positioning in google searches based on what search they do. So then when anyone searches for “in-home foot care cityname”, google will put her ad in the results. That would get you customers from the whole city rather than just those who go to that one restaurant.
The real trick as far as I can tell to marketing is accurately determining what your market segments are, and targeting them effectively.
So for home foot care, I’d imagine that your market segments are going to probably be in two main groups:
[ul]
[li]Elderly people- I suspect that’s the primary market. I’d go so far as to point out that elderly women are probably a little more specific- they tend to be the caregivers.[/li][li]Caregivers to the elderly- that’s likely middle-aged women.[/li][/ul]
So with that in mind, where do you best advertise to middle-aged and elderly women? Is a small ad on the table at a Mexican restaurant a good choice for that in your community? In the Houston area, home-cooking/breakfast places (like this) would be a better choice for aiming at the elderly. Similarly, advertising on Tik-Tok would be a pretty poor choice for either market segment (but would be awesome for 15 year olds).
That’s the real question, not whether or not people will be repulsed by a foot-care ad on a table.
Substitue countyname for cityname, and that’s how some of her patients found her.
Elderly people are her primary market. Here’s the catch: She wants patients who can’t, or find it hard to, get out to see a podiatrist. Some of her patients do get out and about though. While potential patients may go out for Mexican food, I think the main audience would be their caregivers. Some of these are middle-aged women, but there are also sons and grandchildren. They are more likely to enjoy a night out. Up here, dining options are limited. There’s the Mexican place, a pizza parlour, a Thai restaurant, a hot dog/sandwich stand, a diner, and an ice cream parlour. There are a couple of other options nearby (four miles away, where we live), and places in Lynden, Everson, and of course Bellingham. Given the dearth of restaurants, unless you go to the city, I think it’s likely that there will be caregivers – or eventual caregivers – that will go out for Mexican food. It’s a popular place.
Sounds like your advertising venues are pretty limited, and this would be as good as you could hope for.