WGBH Radio Spot and Discount

image courtesy of tunein.com

As of yesterday, our radio spot on 89.7 WGBH is up and running again. It will run Monday through Friday from now until March, so listen for it!

We're excited to continue working with WGBH in this way. Not only do people get to hear about our moving services on the radio, but we get to help support something we wholeheartedly believe in, public radio. It doesn't hurt that we already listen to the station, either!

This is also a good chance to remind everyone that as a WGBH sponsor we offer a discount to members. If you have a current WGBH membership card you are entitled to the discount. Its best to tell us about it beforehand so we can make sure the movers know about it. Just show them the card during your move and you get a discount.

Also, just another reminder to call Cambridge Lights for all of your tree delivery and holiday lights needs for the Boston area. Cambridge Lights will come with the tree, set it up and even decorate it for you if you'd like. They also do light installations, hang wreaths, etc.

We Joined Facebook (Finally)

Yup, we did it. As of yesterday Intelligent Labor and Moving officially has a page on Facebook. We're totally new to using this site, so right now the page is bare bones, but we'll be working on it, adding pictures and posting news as we get more comfortable making our way around.

Come like us on Facebook or post something on our wall! And I'll try to figure out how to do the same....

Leaving Yelp

So, we've made the decision to stop advertising on Yelp. What does that mean for you? Not too much, really. Obviously you'll still be able to view all of our reviews (including the filtered ones) and post your own. We have nothing to do with that part.

What will be different is the offers and announcements. We won't be able to post any news about the company or offer any deals or discounts through Yelp anymore. That doesn't mean we won't continue to do these things, though. This very blog is a good place to check for all ILAM related news and updates (and moving tips, realtor references, etc) and the company website is always a great place to find information about us. We'll probably continue to post monthly deals on our Twitter account (@ILandM). We may even post short lived deals on there, so check it often!

We encourage people to keep posting reviews on Yelp and other review sites (Citysearch, BBB, CitySquares, etc). We love customer feedback any way we can get it!

Group buying sites addendum

Last week I wrote about our experience with BuyWithMe and about another small business who wrote about their experience with Groupon. Just the other day the Boston Globe ran a story about Groupon and similar companies in regards to Boston area restaurants. Its an interesting read.

Joanne Chang of Myers + Chang and Flour fame had this to say: “These companies are making money off of restaurants that are nervous or low on cash and presenting it in a way that makes it sound like such an amazing deal for everyone,’’ Chang says. “In fact, restaurants are getting a fraction of what they need to actually make any money. And then these companies walk away with a nice check.’’

Another chef had a different take on it: “If you look at it like ‘I’m giving my product away at 25 percent,’ it’s not a viable thing to do,’’ says Andy Husbands, chef-owner of Tremont 647 in the South End, who has worked with Groupon. “If you look at it as marketing, you’re getting people to come see your restaurant. I would say most of them are not regular customers. I believe in my product. I put it out there, and hopefully you’re going to tell people and you’re going to return.’’

There's a lot of varying opinions on group buying sites. What's yours?

Groupon and similar companies

I read a very interesting blog post about a small business that used Groupon and the results of that decision. This post from Posie's Bakery's owner has become quite the sensation since it was posted in September 2010, appearing on sites like The Drudge Report and MSN. I highly recommend it if you also own a small business as the owner, Jessie, makes some interesting points about how to spend advertising dollars. Skip the comments, though, as they quickly get nasty and are frequently off topic.

Anyway, reading Jessie's post got me thinking about our own attempt at Groupon. We originally heard about Groupon through a friend of ours that uses the site often. We contacted the company a few times but never received a response. As I'm sure you know by now, Groupon has spawned quite a few similar sites. One of those, BuyWithMe, was interested in talking to us about a possible deal. Ultimately, we decided against offering a deal through BuyWithMe or any other similar site because the math just didn't make sense to us.

At first the deal sounded fantastic. Wow, we get paid to advertise through you? That's awesome. Of course, that was the first thing we heard from the sales rep and things started to go down hill from there. We were told that customers much preferred deals that were 50% off or over, which was our first red flag. That not only wipes out our profit margin but also means we're losing money. Still, we thought, it might be worth it. We had a new service we were offering and we thought it would be a good way to drive in some business during our really slow winter months. The sales rep was enthusiastic about the idea. We talked about how many coupons per person to limit the offer to and how many coupons one customer could use at one time. We talked about price and profit margin and how to make the deal attractive to BuyWithMe consumers. Things seemed to be progressing nicely.

What worried me was that I couldn't figure out how BuyWithMe made money on this whole deal. This is not a charitable organization just looking to help businesses in a bad economy, its a business itself. I tried asking the questions a few different ways but didn't get a satisfactory response. Finally, after several phone calls and e-mails back and worth over the course of a week or two I got the answer. BuyWithMe was going to take 50% of the money paid for each coupon purchased. So, we were going to offer a steep discount and then BuyWithMe was going to take another 50% of that from us. For instance, our offer was going to be half off. We were going to provide two workers for two hours for $100 and hour. It was an hour free. Take another 50% off that and we were only going to be pulling in 25% of our normal rate. That's a lot of money to lose. Plus, our sales rep wanted us to agree to travel up to 20 miles away from our warehouse for any coupon. This would produce some very unhappy customers as travel time to 20 miles away would eat up almost half their coupon.

In the end, working with BuyWithMe just didn't make sense for us. They wanted too much from us that we just couldn't afford to give. There's no way we were going to ask our guys to take a pay cut or work for free half the time to make this offer financially viable. I know the point of sites like this (they claim) is to drive in new business and that those new customers will hopefully become repeat customers. We love repeat customers and we get a lot of them already. That's based on our good work and reputation. We love new customers, too, and we'd like to meet as many of them as possible. Honestly, though, we were worried that trying to get new customers through this BuyWithMe deal would seriously harm our business financially to the point that we might not have been around to see repeat customers.

We're glad we didn't end up taking the "deal." Our sales rep had a hard time letting go, but I suppose that makes a good sales rep. It is clear that BuyWithMe and similar sites appeal to certain businesses and it works our very well for a lot of companies. It just wasn't going to work well for us.