As a "VERY GREEN" RPT in my previous somewhat rural area, I ran a coupon in the local paper for pretty cheap, and was new to the area. Not knowing what would happen, given that the coupon was for $XX dollars for a tuning...NOT $XX amount off a tuning, I was bombarded with business. The downside, you might have now figured out, was that the pianos were horrible, not tuned for many years, and I had to eat a lot of lost income, due to poor wording in the ad. Most of them were not interested in getting their pianos really running, but the cheap tuning was all they wanted. 2 or 3 of them, I had to just plain turn down as they were too nasty to touch! Later, I put a more thoughtful "coupon" for $XX amount off a tuning, and it was a little bit better, but I never got new customers with nice pianos...just more junk. My best customers were and are ALWAYS word of mouth, and I later ended up with the lion's share of the better pianos in the area. Sadly in my previous area, there weren't many high quality pianos to service. That's why I became a CAUT. Now, here in Nebraska, I get calls all the time from outside people. The nice thing is that after finding out what's up with their pianos, can either take them, or refer them off to other techs. I must admit that I don't feel much like tuning after work, so it better be a really nice piano. I really only tune for faculty and the chancellors and deans, who have very nice pianos. One in particular is a new 9'2" Bluthner about 100 miles away! Why? I can take a vacation day, make nearly twice my normal rate, and love the customer and the day off my usual stuff here at UNL...great money for a day off and a get out of the office kind of day. They always give me a couple other tunings in the area, and now have several other really nice grands to work on while I'm there, so it's all GOOD! We're not overloaded with RPT's in NE, so people are willing to pay if they are guaranteed a great technician (not to blow my own horn), but most of the other great techs here don't like to drive that far and I used to drive that far daily for this sort of "fix") Be careful what you wish for, as it will most likely backfire! Good luck with the ad, but you might consider asking for referrals after every tuning. It's free and you'll get better customers from it. Best, Paul T. Williams RPT Piano Technician School of Music 5 Westbrook Bldg. University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE 68588-0100 pwilliams4 at unl.edu From: "Larry Fisher RPT" <larryf at pacifier.com> To: <pianotech at ptg.org> Date: 06/04/2010 01:46 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] advertising Well, Marshall, I haven't run a newspaper ad since my days of servicing outlying areas. The last paper I ran an ad in was in a small town of about 4000 people and it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 for two or three weeks, 5 lines or so, 8 years ago. Sorry but that's all the info I've got for ya. The local paper here charges entirely too much and I don't feel I need to spend money on that type of advertising since I find the Guild search engine and word of mouth are the two most popular sources for new customers for me. I am trying a year of double the expense on yellow pages (two extra books totaling 5). I'm pretty close to considering giving up the idea altogether since most people I ask don't use yellow pages anymore since the internet has become so much more accessible. Post card reminders are by far the most effective revenue generators for me however you have to replace customers that move out of the area with new ones coming into the area so sources like piano dealers, phone books and newspaper ads are the old traditional ways. In my opinion, the internet is generally becoming the source of choice to find a technician in the local area. LAr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100604/51862829/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC