small business and social media platforms

Tradchef

WKR
Joined
Aug 30, 2017
Messages
1,144
Location
Willow Creek, Montana
I had a question for you all that have your own small business. Do you use any forms of social media for advertising and or gaining business and or clients? If you do what have you seen that works for you and what hasn't? I have had good luck with SubStack, Google pages and ads and website. I don't have a Facebook for anything and I do have a business Instagram but I feel it's pretty worthless overall and I am wanting to just dump that and focus on what works. I guess I was just wanting to see if there was anything else I should look at or focus on. I know we all have different businesses that work with different platforms work for different things. Just curious what you've all had success with.

Scott
 
Depends on the business. I am in finance and group benefits. Most of my leads come from referrals or networking at this point but I did a lot of door knocking getting started.

I am of the belief that *any* form of marketing has the potential to work when properly executed and when you stick with it. Much like diet and exercise.
 
I'm on the artisanal side of construction, high end residential remodeling.

I have used FB and IG a little bit, but only because my wife was managing social media for a supplier I used.

Didn't get any business from it.

I know many people in the same space see results though.
 
I think it's often important to have SOMETHING online. People hear about you and they look you up. Either a website, IG, facebook, something. Pictures of your past work if it applies, some positive reviews, and contact information.
 
Haven't launched my construction business full time yet, but I've seen results from Facebook groups like "residents of x community".
Respond to inquiries when people are looking for your business type and have others that know your business to respond with recommendations as well.
I think I'm going to create some type of referral bonus for those people(like my wifes friends) who spend much more time on social media and refer my name or business on those inquiries.

Agree with above post, I think you need to have some presence online where people can see your work. doesn't need to be social, but at least a website.

I don't see a facebook account alone doing much for some business types because the content isn't engaging or interesting to most people, and facebook won't even show it to them(construction for example)
 
A lot of variation depending of the type of business. If you have a brick and mortar and/or a service area (say, a plumber or a fence contractor), then your Google Business Profile is often going to be the gateway to your website. But, in the simplest sense, it comes down to what type customer interaction your business needs. Will you benefit more from people searching for your type of business -ie "plumber near me" or car wash near me" and easily finding your business? or it customers searching for certain types or brands of products or solutions? Sometimes you just need branding awareness. Sometimes, its a matter of going to head to head with your competition and acquiring their customer base. Sometimes, it is a combination of these approaches.
 
My business is private chef and intimate dining services. I opened it about three years with good success. I’ve been in hospitality for 32 years as back of the house. Michelin and Relais and chateaux mostly. Same as what you all said . I think visually pictures sell and help. And some folks do well on IG and FB. I’ve had luck with wearing out shoe leather putting cards up and flyers. That being said my clientele is high earning millionaires and a couple of billionaires as well. Some of them use the social platforms but most of them don’t have time or have someone do it for them. I’ve also had good luck with SubStack and google ads and website. I have an IG business account but no personal. I want to get off it and basically just focus on what I’ve seen work on my end but I’m always looking for other ways to attract clients. I figured you guys would have some suggestions to look at so I figured I’d post up
 
My business is private chef and intimate dining services. I opened it about three years with good success. I’ve been in hospitality for 32 years as back of the house. Michelin and Relais and chateaux mostly. Same as what you all said . I think visually pictures sell and help. And some folks do well on IG and FB. I’ve had luck with wearing out shoe leather putting cards up and flyers. That being said my clientele is high earning millionaires and a couple of billionaires as well. Some of them use the social platforms but most of them don’t have time or have someone do it for them. I’ve also had good luck with SubStack and google ads and website. I have an IG business account but no personal. I want to get off it and basically just focus on what I’ve seen work on my end but I’m always looking for other ways to attract clients. I figured you guys would have some suggestions to look at so I figured I’d post up


Going through the process of getting Google verified would potentially be very helpful for this business. Google has a verification process of home services that involves background checks. Its a way to inspire some trust with the consumer base since you will be working in their homes.

Despite being a referral heavy business, I'd wager you're still reliant on intercepting people searching for private chef services, so strong local SEO (different from website SEO) centered around a meticulously maintained Google Business Profile with lots of reviews and regularly updated (and high quality) images + the Google verification would potentially be very helpful.

In terms of outreach, I would go with a targeted email campaign. Not an email list, but targeting customers outside of your email list with 7+ figure net worths and expressed interest in fine dining, food & wine etc. I'd recommend something around an initial email blast of 30,000 email addresses with 2 follow-up redeploys for the the opened emails. These should have a 2-3% open rate and should statistically land you some new clients. If you are crazy obsessed with tracking ROI, you could track the success of this campaign through Google Analytics if you have that attached to your website.

I probably wouldn't mess with SEM/paid search/pay-per click for something like this as the budget would get chewed through pretty quickly with low intent customers similar to the real estate industry. FB ads don't allow for financial based targeting so I'd rule those out. Highly targeted outreach will yield the most ROI in this case. Streaming TV ads could also be of consideration, though you would need to invest in high quality film production which could be pricey.

Now, that being said, I would recommend having a strong organic IG and Pinterest game. You don't need to spend money running ads, but showing off your work on these platforms will potentially land you some new clients and this inevitably being a referral heavy business means that any new client has a lot of potential value. Lot of foodie content on both IG and Pinterest and also a lot of wealthy housewives who'd like nothing better than to hire you.
 
My business is private chef and intimate dining services. I opened it about three years with good success. I’ve been in hospitality for 32 years as back of the house. Michelin and Relais and chateaux mostly. Same as what you all said . I think visually pictures sell and help. And some folks do well on IG and FB. I’ve had luck with wearing out shoe leather putting cards up and flyers. That being said my clientele is high earning millionaires and a couple of billionaires as well. Some of them use the social platforms but most of them don’t have time or have someone do it for them. I’ve also had good luck with SubStack and google ads and website. I have an IG business account but no personal. I want to get off it and basically just focus on what I’ve seen work on my end but I’m always looking for other ways to attract clients. I figured you guys would have some suggestions to look at so I figured I’d post up
Willow Creek... I'm assuming your target market is Bozeman?

You need to be networking with owners of other services your clientele uses. Who's doing the ancillary services for the dinners you provide? Find those guys and network. Also where is your clientele going to network? Charity events, etc. You need to be at all of those. Cards and fliers are only going to get you so far. You need to be meeting people. So go to the events they go to. Does that area have "Taste of..." events? Where restaurants and such show off? Do those if your clients attend.

I like the ideas that Poser put together but you aren't getting near 30k emails for your target audience in that area. You might not get that large of a list targeting the entire state.
 
I'm not much help on advertisement advice, just wanted to say that sounds like such a cool gig! Also has some great potential for getting access to killer hunting and fishing through those clients.
 
I like the ideas that Poser put together but you aren't getting near 30k emails for your target audience in that area. You might not get that large of a list targeting the entire state.

If he expanded the service areas to 2-4 hours around Bozeman, you'd be surprised. But, even if the campaign only came back with 7,000 potential email address, with a 2-3% open rate that gives me him a pretty good new customer pool. He could run a initial blast + redeploys for around $1500-$2000 or so. With ~150 opens that are then retargeted, filtered than down to 75 people. If he got 5-10 new customers out of that + another ~2 spinoff referrals, that's a pretty amazing ROI. However, even if he just ended up yielding 3-5 new customers, it would still be worth it.

OP, I attended an annual fundraiser as a guest. It was for the local adaptive sports foundation, but this could apply to any fundraiser that attracts wealth. One of the acuationed items was a private chef experience for a party of 4. I seem to recall that this service auctioned in the neighborhood of $10,000-$12,000 (money going to the cause). You might look into donating your services for a similar type of fundraiser -you could even look into the Ducks Unlimited banquet or comparable. That puts you in a room full wealth and potentially doing a dinner for extreme wealth and while it would cost you (though, you may be able to negotiate your costs into the equation), it demonstrates your level of service to some highly influential people. An old friend of mine was the sous chef on a small, private event for a billionaire family and they liked him so much that he got a call the next day and was hired as the families private chef. He now travels around the world with them on private jets, is on salary with health care and PTO and the family are even paying for my friend's son to go to the private school the billionaire's family all went to. While I suppose that's about like getting struck by lightning, it shows the value of networking in this industry as well as the potential value of any new customer in your client base.
 
If he expanded the service areas to 2-4 hours around Bozeman, you'd be surprised. But, even if the campaign only came back with 7,000 potential email address, with a 2-3% open rate that gives me him a pretty good new customer pool. He could run a initial blast + redeploys for around $1500-$2000 or so. With ~150 opens that are then retargeted, filtered than down to 75 people. If he got 5-10 new customers out of that + another ~2 spinoff referrals, that's a pretty amazing ROI. However, even if he just ended up yielding 3-5 new customers, it would still be worth it.

OP, I attended an annual fundraiser as a guest. It was for the local adaptive sports foundation, but this could apply to any fundraiser that attracts wealth. One of the acuationed items was a private chef experience for a party of 4. I seem to recall that this service auctioned in the neighborhood of $10,000-$12,000 (money going to the cause). You might look into donating your services for a similar type of fundraiser -you could even look into the Ducks Unlimited banquet or comparable. That puts you in a room full wealth and potentially doing a dinner for extreme wealth and while it would cost you (though, you may be able to negotiate your costs into the equation), it demonstrates your level of service to some highly influential people. An old friend of mine was the sous chef on a small, private event for a billionaire family and they liked him so much that he got a call the next day and was hired as the families private chef. He now travels around the world with them on private jets, is on salary with health care and PTO and the family are even paying for my friend's son to go to the private school the billionaire's family all went to. While I suppose that's about like getting struck by lightning, it shows the value of networking in this industry as well as the potential value of any new customer in your client base.
I travel all over. The biggest issue is seasonality out this way. Most of the target audience is only here for a week to a month at a time so it lends itself heavy months then down time. That’s the part I’m trying to figure out. I go to Jackson, Colorado, California, Arizona and back east if need be. And yes, I live in willow creek so I base out of Bozeman and Big Sky.
All great points you had on this post🤙🤙
 
Traveling around makes this whole thing much better IMHO. Targeting events where your customers are is going to be the absolute best bang for your buck IMHO. Be EXTREMELY selective about what you go to so you don't waste time and money on people that can't afford you.

You probably have some really good repeat customers that you consider friends at this point. Conversations with them about where to start would be my first step.
 
It's basically just another form of advertising. Depending on what your business is it could either be very lucrative or you could never get a single call off of it. I work in residential and commercial low voltage /construction and maintained a website and some limited social media for years, even advertised in local design magazines, the only calls I ever got from any of it were people looking for a VCR repair shop. Learned a long time ago that it was better to focus my time on building relationships with architects and builders.
 
Scott,
I have 3 businesses. All are completely different. Target marketing is the key.

1) I am assuming all of your clients would be local- so that should be numero uno
2) All of your clients will be top 5%, so again use something that targets that crowd

Something like Google ads- which I use sometimes- can be tweaked to focus on a specific area BUT Google's Lagos puts your message in a lot of places that don't make sense for you....though it does for them as they can charge you more for those ads- its their MO. Google probably isn't the best for you.

My guess is a local high end Real Estate publication, or Local guide type thing with a quality ad [professional pictures] along with your extensive bio would be productive.
 
Traveling around makes this whole thing much better IMHO. Targeting events where your customers are is going to be the absolute best bang for your buck IMHO. Be EXTREMELY selective about what you go to so you don't waste time and money on people that can't afford you.

You probably have some really good repeat customers that you consider friends at this point. Conversations with them about where to start would be my first step.
I do have about 98% repeats all of the time and the extra 2% are newer referral 9 times out of 10. That is what I'm trying to do is to not waste time with the ones that will never even bother using me except for an instagram like or something of the like. I just want to target properly without wasting a lot of time on the wrong areas to target. I do talk to them about stuff a lot and that does help.
 
I'm not much help on advertisement advice, just wanted to say that sounds like such a cool gig! Also has some great potential for getting access to killer hunting and fishing through those clients.
It's got some perks like that yes. Honestly man, a lot of hunting opportunities are more from my local farmers and ranchers. That's always been a great source along with the public lands as well.
 
It's got some perks like that yes. Honestly man, a lot of hunting opportunities are more from my local farmers and ranchers. That's always been a great source along with the public lands as well.
Yeah that seems to be a regional thing, opportunities with locals are rare around here. Gotta have generous friends with land or other connections.
 
I used to be in nicer than average remodels and new construction, and agree some don’t get much out of spending time on it, but a few do. One friend probably loses money on his social media because he comes across like an asshat. Another guy I did some work for pays a friend of his son to post regularly and take a lot of pictures, but she doesn’t sell the business, she’s just not a salesman, and they aren’t followed by many people, and she isn’t smart enough to know that. It’s nice if you can put a FB, website, or other social media on your business card for folks who don’t know you well.

What does work is using social media to increase awareness of a business - one local construction company does many different kinds of jobs and they just snap a few pictures every couple days to show what they’re working on. The gal in charge of it is also very active in the community so has a lot of contacts that it gets shared with, which is key, and some jobs trickle in, which can lead to bigger jobs. She sells the company, and social media is just her touching base with people she already knows.

New clients are stalkers today.

Back when I was active on the Fine Homebuilding forum I didn’t solicit jobs, but I wasn’t shy about the location and the kind of remodeling my company specialized in. To my surprise I was approached about a one year project from someone out of state. They said the job was mine if I wanted it because they had read 5 years worth of discussions and knew me better than anyone they could meet for lunch, or read off a company webpage.

Other clients knew of me from word of mouth, but it seems everyone googles you and searches FB, Linkdin, and probably instagram and Tic Toc. Social media may not sell something directly, but it gives a positive spin to what you do. Think about - google yourself, search around and see what comes up. If there are negative things out there you definitely need some positives.

The last 5 years before I left construction, my wife loved to snap pictures and say what’s happening at home with our remodel - I bet every month one of her friends wanted something built at their house, but those small jobs don’t usually make enough money to get excited about, at least if you’re well established.

A carpenter friend knows how to hustle up work. Anyone who meets him likes how he comes across and he does good work. One year he moved to a ritzy part of Napa Valley and simply put ads in Craigslist and at the time you could list yourself on google maps for installing doggie doors for a low fixed price. That gave him a foot in the door and the same people who didn’t have a handyman were now using him for all sorts of remodeling projects. Following his lead, when I moved I’d simply posted a professional carpenter good at fixing what others screw up. The first three responses kept me busy for over a year.
 
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