I did a home staging business coaching session yesterday and much to my dismay, the new home stager I was speaking to made two classic mistakes that have cost her money.
- She committed to a Yellow Pages ad to promote her staging business.
- She printed 1000 business cards because “it was a better deal.”
What’s wrong with Yellow Pages advertising for Home Stagers:
- There is no category for Home Stagers, Real Estate Stagers, Home Staging, House Fluffing, etc. So you end up placing your ad under “interior decorators” or “interior design”.
- Home Staging is a new field so the majority of people are going to search on the Internet not in the Yellow Pages.
- It costs about $85 to $100/month whether you get any leads from it or not! And, you’re spending money to promote yourself to people looking for decorators and interior designers, not home stagers!
Why you shouldn’t print 1000 business cards:
- Yes, the cost per card is way lower for 1000 cards than for 250, but where on earth are you going to distribute 1000 cards?! Maybe if you’ve got a major booth at a huge Consumer Home Show. Otherwise, it will take at least a year or two to go through 1000 cards, especially if you’re giving them out to qualified prospects not just throwing them up in the air for anybody to catch.
- The chances of you changing your mind about what’s printed on your card, or how you want it to look are extremely high– especially in your first year! Now you’ve got 1000 cards and a better marketing idea. Do you trash the cards or do less effective marketing for as long as it takes to go through your inventory? As I told my coaching student yesterday, to let your card inventory dictate what you do in marketing is like “the tail wagging the dog.”
- When I started my first company in 1989, to get business cards printed you had to have plates and film made and have offset printing done. It was really expensive to do anything less than 1000 cards and you had to worry about how many colors you used because it dramatically increased your cost whenever you added one. Today, you can get very small quantities printed digitally. It doesn’t matter how many colors you have and since it’s so cheap, you can reprint whenever a better idea occurs to you. My recommendation, don’t print more than 150 to 250 cards at a time. That way you can adapt as new ideas or opportunities arise and you won’t feel guilty about wasting money/cards.
These topics and more are covered very thoroughly in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, in course 2 “The Business of Home Staging: What you need to Start and How to Grow” and course 4 “Staging Diva Sales & Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.”
The September course dates are full (I only take 15 students at a time), but you can still order a full set of Staging Diva course recordings. You also get all the same course notes from me as if you had done the courses live.
One advantage to recordings is that you can relisten to the material. I share so much information compressed into the 10 hour Staging Diva Training Program that you may not fully absorb all of it the first time you hear it. A few months into your business you’ll also hear what I have to say on a different level because you’ll have some experience behind you that you didn’t have the first time through.
Do you have a marketing mistake you’d like to share? We’ve all made them and why not help others avoid the same pitfalls!
Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program. With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.
Read full Staging Diva Home Staging Training course descriptions and schedule
