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GREETING SERVICE
Starting a Greeting Service in Your Town
 Community Greeting Service
By Kelly Land, © 2006-2008, All rights reserved.
Local businesses will pay you to prepare gift bags filled with their brochures,
coupons and freebies and deliver them to people who have just moved to the area
or who are celebrating a special event (birthdays, anniversaries etc). This is
REAL fun and easy to do.
Getting Started:
Drive around and ask (or send out a flyer to small businesses) if they would be
interested in advertising their business through a community greeting service.
Basically, you would take their own flyers, coupons and freebies (or you could
offer to make a flyer for them) and put them in a cute decorative bag (you can
do this however you like) and distribute them to new neighbors or special
occasions. People will be happy to see you knocking on the door, you are not
selling anything, just giving them a bag of goodies! Then you would charge the
company a flat monthly rate of distributing their ads. I would charge anywhere
from $30-$50 per month per business. If you had 10 businesses participating at
$50.00 per month that is $500 a month! Not to bad! Plus you can take your
children with you! You can also get your older kids to help out, by packing the
bags and even going to the door with you. Adds a nice touch! Your Expenses If
you have a computer with a good printer you are already half way there.
Advertising costs (by mailing out or handing out) flyers to businesses will be
pretty low. You can get copies made really cheap. Also consider doing a an ad in
local newspaper (classifieds) or the Internet .You need to buy the gift bags and
any additional decorations you would like to add (confetti, bows, balloons etc).
If the business wants you to make a coupon or flyer for them that will cost you
to make, print and copy. Charge accordingly! Businesses eat up this service, so
expect to get business right away. Don't be shy! The best thing to do is make a
gift bag and show it to the businesses in the community. That way they see it
first hand and will most likely want to be a part of it!
Link:
Greeting Service Class
Copyright 2006-2008. All rights reserved. Any reproduction of this article in whole
or in part without written or verbal permission is strictly prohibited.
More on starting a welcoming service...
How to Start a Welcome Service
By Jessica Hughes
First, let’s cover our bases. What exactly is a Welcoming Service? A Welcoming
Service serves two purposes: 1.) to welcome newcomers to the area & 2.) to
support and market area businesses. This service involves soliciting sponsors
from area businesses, creating a pretty gift bag, compiling a list of newcomers
and making the delivery. Sound easy? Well, it is, in theory. Putting these ideas
to work can be a little more complicated.
Basically, what the consumer (newcomer) gets is a nice, friendly welcome from
you & a beautiful gift bag filled with goodies from area businesses. Since
Welcome Services are individually owned and operated, you can choose what types
of ‘gifts’ you want sponsors to include. Some welcome services allow sponsors to
include coupons or generic advertising flyers and such. Other, more selective
welcoming services will only allow promotional items or gift certificates. It is
generally up to you how to approach this. Some businesses may not have
promotional items available, and this might be a chance for you to team up with
a promotional items company and earn some commissions from those businesses.
From a consumer standpoint, the advertising that will stick out in their minds
will be the gift certificate and promotional items. Those don’t generally end up
in the trash like junk mailers often do. I know from personal experience that if
I get a nice fridge magnet or a pen, I am not going to just throw it away.
Flyers and coupons, in my house at least, get tossed upon arrival. Experienced
Welcome Services will usually advise you to stress the importance of actual
gifts to your sponsors. That said; please use common sense when approaching the
sponsors about their items. You certainly wouldn’t want to lose a sponsor simply
because you are too stubborn to bend your rules here and there.
Sponsors are paying to advertise in your bag. A good businessperson will
understand the importance of gaining the newcomers as customers. If they can
catch them before their competitors do and they provide excellent service, it is
highly likely that they will gain a loyal and repeat customer. Most
businesspeople will tell you that it is much easier to keep existing customers
than to solicit new ones. From my experience, most businesses are very receptive
to this idea of personalized advertising.
Think about a time when you were new to an area. What kind of businesses or
services were you interested in knowing more about? Doctors, dentists,
pharmacies, churches, beauty shops, daycares and plumbers are just a few of the
businesses that newcomers will need to know about. I suggest thumbing through
the Yellow Pages or even looking at your local Chamber of Commerce’s website to
make a list of potential sponsors. The possibilities are endless and you should
always be on the lookout for new sponsors. Joining your local Chamber of
Commerce is also a great networking tool.
Though prices vary, it is up to you to set a price for sponsors who wish to
advertise. You want to be sure you are making a profit after all of your
expenses, but at the same time you do not want to overwhelm the sponsors.
Another good rule of thumb is to set your prices at a decent rate in order to
allow yourself some room to increase that price in following years. Always take
into consideration your gas prices, prices for any lists of newcomers you may
have to purchase, and gift bag materials. I have seen sponsor prices range
anywhere from $2.00-$3.00 per bag delivered.
Another great method of selling your service to sponsors is the monthly delivery
list. You should prepare a list at the end of each month detailing your
deliveries. The family’s name, address and phone number should be listed here.
Not only does that serve as an invoice to the sponsors, it also provides them
with a little extra marketing tool. You should ask them not to abuse this
information, but they can use it to mail promotional and information items in
the future.
When calling upon sponsors it will be important to have a rough estimate of how
many bags you will deliver each month. Several sources are available, depending
on your area, to find the names of newcomers. In some areas, the water or
electric departments area good source. The courthouse always keeps records of
new people moving into the area. If you have any connections with real estate
agents, those may be good sources too. I know some people who use title
companies and pay a monthly fee for access to their lists. If your area has a
newspaper with a good website, many times you can find these names and addresses
in the Real Estate section. Having a rough estimate of how many newcomers move
in monthly will be a deciding factor to many sponsors. Some may not want to
spend a lot of money through this form of advertising, while others will want to
reach as many people as possible.
I would also recommend having some businesses cards printed up. You can find a
few websites that offer free business cards, others are very inexpensive or you
can buy business card stock and print them up yourself. It may also be wise to
print up some informational letters about your business. Keep it simple and to
the point, and use bullets to highlight your services and what it will offer the
sponsors. Remember: to businesses, the bottom line is what you can do for them,
they don’t really care about the rest.
After you have a good estimate of the number of bags you will deliver monthly
and you have some sponsors set up, please be sure to have the sponsors sign a
contract. In your contract, you should state the purpose of your Welcome
Service, the fee-per-bag, when and how you wish to be paid. You will also need
to set up a time on a monthly or weekly basis to meet with your sponsors to pick
up their promotional material. Once you have all of your bases covered, you are
ready to start putting your bags together.
You can make your bags as simple or as elegant and you wish. I recommend
scooping out a dollar store of some kind and find some attractive bags to use.
Ribbons and tissue paper should also be purchased and any other inexpensive
ornaments you desire to spice up your bags too. You should aim to make your bag
attractive, yet don’t go overboard since these expenses cut into your profit.
After you have your supplies and promotional items in hand, feel free to arrange
your bag in any manner that you see fit. Simple elegance is a sure-fire way to
impress just about any newcomer.
It
is recommended that you attempt to contact the newcomer prior to the delivery. A
quick phone call to say hello and tell them who you are is an easy way to set up
a meeting time. If you cannot find a contact phone number, you can always drop
the bag off without notice, however, this should only be done in extreme
circumstances. Be friendly and open with the newcomer; most will be glad to see
a smiling face in an area that they don’t know anyone. They will be very
appreciative of your gifts and may even ask you questions about the area. Be
prepared for them to ask you some common questions such as shopping centers,
daycares, doctors, churches, etc. The point of your visit is not only to bring
them the gift bag, but also to sincerely welcome them to the area and make them
feel at home.
Your income from this business can vary greatly, but mostly depends on your
drive and determination. Don’t assume that just because you live in a very rural
area that it can’t work. Likewise, don’t assume that because you are in a
metropolitan area that you will breeze through the processes. Take your time in
learning about area businesses, look at local newspapers to see who is
advertising. Getting a good feel for your market area is a necessary first step.
Let’s say for example you are charging $2.50 per sponsor, per bag delivered and
you secure 20 sponsors. You have a rough estimate of 20 bags a month to be
delivered. Before the costs of the bags and accessories (which should be
minimal), you have a gross total of $1,000 per month. That, in my opinion, is a
very good income for such a very part time and flexible job. This is just an
estimate – profit may be more or less depending on what you put into it.
Author: Jessica Hughes - VirtuallyUncovered
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