Suggestions on Starting Up

[villain2]

I've got some questions about starting up a new design company. I should probably lay out what's going on:

1) 4 designers, 2 flash and programming web designers, 1 photographer, 1 print/logo designer: between us we also do 3D work, coding and also handle budgeting and legal work from our work experiences.

2) We're competing mostly local at the start, with the idea of suggesting redesigns for most of the major businesses in the area (entertainment mostly) that have subpar websites (in our opinion).

3) We're developing a flash website for advertising our site, showing off most of our skills with downloads for wallpapers and screen savers, portfolio, purpose and contact info etc. etc.

4) Solid business plan that focuses on aggressive promotion including newspaper ads, mail out brochures and tv commercials.

5) Company is listed as sub of my close corporation

Any other suggestions? I can go into more detail but it's not necessary for this one post.

[ej0c]

So what were the questions?

If you've got money for TV commercials, you can't be doing too bad...

[rafiki55]

TV commercials are rarely effective (for web designing companies at least). Your target audience is so small, that you'd have to play many, many, commercials to get any results. The money is better spent on other promotional stuff....i.e. print ads, free goodies, etc.

[villain2]

Well, to clarify ...

The commercials are just running locally on cable during SportsCenter (a show a lot of business people watch according to stats) and it costs $55 a spot. Not too much for advertising.

We're using a humorous commercial spot for it, something that will get attention. We're probably only going to run commercials on cable for a few months.

We have to promote ourselves too. And I'd say that the market for people wanting websites is pretty big ... EVERYONE I know wants a website but is afraid of the cost. We're going to do high end and low end sites, so even someone who just invented a new waffle maker can have a website from us that looks pro.

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

Damn, if I could get TV spots for $55 a pop I'd be advertising just for the fun of it!!

How come so cheap?!?

[villain2]

Hmm, maybe y'all should look into this. I don't know about specific areas but I'm in Metro Baltimore, MD and to advertise via Comcast Cablevision is REALLY cheap. Your commercial goes to the local area or up to four or five counties and you're looking at $50 and up depending on what show it is.

Like, to run it during southpark or MTV's TRL it's around $50-$70 a spot. For something like Monday Night Raw or CSI (on cable) or SportsCenter or some popular SciFi channel movie, it's a bit more, but nothing too outrageous.
Maybe tops between running about 33-50 spots a month about $1000, which is the same cost for me to run a full page ad in the local City Paper for one week.

You have to produce your own commercial, and obviously as Flash designers the graphics and motion are no problem using Adobe Premiere, After Effects and even Director as well.

The thing is, it's going to be lower quality video (everything must be done with Beta) so it'll look like a local commercial, but if you have enough skills designing (which we all do here I assume), and you have some creativity, you can make a damn good commercial people will take to.

I'd call your local cable company and see what their advertising costs are. It's likely that they're just as cheap.

[hurricaneone]

I used to work for Comcast in Philadelphia, placing ads in the local seven-network Greater Philly DMA and if you let the schedulers put you anywhere in the time slots, they'd almost pay you to put a spot on. Of course, the only people who'd see your ad were insomniacs and speed freaks, but you were still on the air.

(Of course, when you decided to fix a spot in a particular show, now that's when it gets a little more expensive).

[IgotDreams]

You can enter contest like the one in my signature!

I think you have way to many guys. You have to move alot of clients to pay everyone well. Your gonna have to get a sales guy.

[villain2]

I should clarify again, there are four of us total. One is a photographer, one is a logo designer and two are Flash/HTML designers and coders.

It's not eight of us!