Neon Signs aren't suitable for Construction Businesses

If you are a small construction business and you are looking for ways to advertise your business during the hours when you aren't available, don't even consider installing neon signs. They will put you into debt so fast your bank manager is likely to add your name to the local football team!

Neon signs around a construction yard are a sure recipe for disaster. Just think of all that materials that gets loaded into trucks and the back of your Ute and how often you have to swing it around to make it fit in.

BTW, for all those non-Aussies, among us (welcome :-) ) but I had better explain what a ute is. It is short for Utility and it is a vehicle like the picture below:

These are very versatile vehicles both for work and for joy riding. They are number 1 choice for many people living and working in the rural areas and for construction workers who often have to carry awkward loads.

Overseas workers targeted for Queensland flood rebuilding program

Overseas workers targeted for Queensland flood rebuilding program: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

The rebuilding of Queensland Australia is an enormous job. There is so much work to be done here to repair the catastrophic flood damage caused by the one in 200 year floods that inundated 75% of Queensland.

Houses, Mines, Industrial estates, roads, railway lines, port facilities all have to be rebuilt ASAP.

Queensland URGENTLY needs as many qualified tradespeople as we can get hold of!

As if the floods didn't do enough damage, the category 5 tropical cyclone Yasi came along and had a go at finishing off the rest. Our "beautiful one day, perfect the next" climate decided to make us pay for the privilege of living in such a beautiful environment. So we are paying and if you want a job, why don't you come and earn some of the proceeds? You may as well benefit too while rebuilding our beautiful state?

Besides, once you get here, you may decide never to go home again. Bring the family with you and stay awhile....you won't regret it, guaranteed :-)

Advertising Mix - Things to Consider When Choosing a Radio Format to Advertise On

If your small business is in the construction industry, the best advertising mix for you to consider when choosing a radio format to advertise with will be the one that the people you want to reach actually listen to.

There is one thing about most small construction businesses and that is that many of them spend a lot of time listening to a radio. 

If not actively listening to a radio over the noise of electric drills and the general banging going on around a construction site, there is often a radio on somewhere. Tilers and Painters in particular, like to have a radio playing in their workplace but how much they actually concentrate on what the announcer is saying, could be another matter. Unless, of course, it’s the latest sports results and then they seem to actively listen. 

Whether this is because sport is a big conversation topic among them and their mates and everyone likes to be able to take part in the conversations around them, or is it because they are genuinely interested?  Either way, the important part to remember here is that many construction contractors do actively listen to these sports news items. 

So if you are a construction contractor working in the building industry and you are thinking of doing some radio advertising to project managers or builders because you want more sub-contract work, then the best time for your radio ad to be the most effective for you will be to make sure that your ad is read or heard as close as possible to the time slot of these sports broadcasts. Either just before or just after is the best time.

You can place your radio ad to be heard at your nominated times but sometimes, you may have to pay a premium to get your wanted ad-time. Most radio sales reps have packages of time slots that their station want to fill and these will often consist of a mixture of random times. 

When buying radio ads, you are actually buying air-time. This is the product these sales reps are selling and if they sell you a radio package where many of the time slots may be cheaper to buy (while still being very expensive!) your radio ad will simply not be heard by those you are wanting to reach. This is as useless to your small business as fly-screens on a submarine!

Radio air time is very expensive and today doesn’t have the same audiences as it had twenty years ago. Even with a radio switched on, it has simply become a background noise that unless someone is actively listening for something, your ad simply won’t get noticed. 

So if you decide to try radio advertising, make sure your ad begins with a noise that gets their attention. But be careful when doing this because some noises are so ‘real’ today they can cause distress or give someone such a fright their first response is anger. This is not a good introduction for your business. 

If you do decide to give radio advertising a go, make sure the time slot you choose to use matches the audience you want to reach in the format that you are comfortable using to introduce your small construction business to your targeted listeners. 

How to Make a Good Flyer

How to make a good flyer will depend on what you want to achieve with the flyer. There are any number of ways to make a flyer that is most likely to achieve what you want it to do, but there is absolutely no point in making one type of flyer when another type would have been more suitable for the target audience.

I believe most of us are familiar with the term “pearls before swine” which is not being derogatory to anyone just that it best describes what I am trying to say.  Trying to make an all-singing, all-dancing flyer for someone who just wants to know where they can reach a plumber for example is more likely to succeed if it is a simple black text on white paper.

On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to build an expensive house by picking a Builder that you came across from a black and white flyer in your letterbox. A better way to describe this type of flyer would be “horses for courses”. In other words, you don’t send a Pony to run a Steeplechase.

If you are a handyman looking for those extra little jobs locally then all you need is a white paper flyer with all your details written in black, easy to read typeface. These flyers are usually 3 to a page of A4 size paper and can be placed horizontal or vertical depending on what you want to say in your advertisement.

Now if you are a Builder wanting to build the next town mansion, you want to start off by displaying your capabilities and class. After all, would you give a building project to any business that was too frugal to pay for an expensive full sized, glossy and coloured flyer? No, neither would anyone else.

If you are a Builder and want to build quality homes then you will need a good flyer to display your capabilities. A good way to do this is to ask the owners of previous homes that you have built for their permission to showcase their home on your coloured, glossy flyer. Most people would be delighted to know that they are living in a ‘show home’ because it gives enormous prestige to them among their friends and family. Pride can be a wonderful asset when massaged correctly.

These high-class flyers must be printed by a printer and they are expensive. It is more expensive though to cut-corners and try to make them cheaply. A good flyer of this calibre is not put into letterboxes. It is usually provided to Architects and Engineers in your city and nearby towns that you are willing to work in. These businesses then keep your flyer on their books and ask you to quote on their jobs as and when they come up. These are a good source of work and as time and your reputation increases, so do the offers and the prices you are able to charge for your work.

So the best way to make a good flyer is to design and print it aimed squarely towards your target market.  

How Computer Aided Drafting Can Help in Your Quest to Build the Perfect Structure

Computer aided drafting can help to build the near impossible structure or solution to a product or building problem. Computer aided drafting is where a computer and a special CAD programme is used to draft a plan of how to do something with materials matching the strength required to make the product or structure safe and effective.

It takes years to understand precisely how to use the programme most effectively and a continuous progression of staying current with the new building materials constantly being developed.   

Many innovative small trade businesses have great ideas but seem to waste money on making those ideas work. Having an idea as to how something could work to seeing it actually working can be a very expensive exercise in frustration.

Many trade contractors are innovative people and are frequently asked to manufacture and install solutions to near-impossible building requests. These jobs cause frustration both to the customer and the trade contractor and when expensive materials are used, someone usually has to wear the loss.

By drafting a detailed plan on a computer screen first will save a lot of money and frustration.

Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) programmes are used today by most Engineers and Architects to design buildings and everything that has to be strength tested in some way or another.  CAD programmes are also used by many industrial designers and numerous other trades but it is not all the same programme as over the years, these programmes have been developed for trade specific jobs. The intention of what the programme is needed for hasn’t changed; just the method of achieving how each design is arrived at.

CAD programmes for industrial designers and other users of the technology differ from how an Engineer or Architect will use the technology. In the “old days” pre-computer, Engineers and Architects used a slide rule. This worked pretty well but often doors were placed and overlapped walls or opened the wrong way. All kinds of wrong instructions were put in the plans for the builders to have to try to follow or sort out. The theory or plan on paper often didn’t match the practical reality when a builder or plumber tried to put the instructions into practice.

Over the years, these incorrect building instructions built up a lot of resentment between the architects and the tradespeople following those instructions because it was usually the builder who ended up out-of-pocket. Even today, a good builder will still do their own check. It still pays to do this to save money on the job. Trust is hard to get and easy to lose.

Over the past decades many new building materials have become available for all trades who use a CAD programme and all of these new product and building materials come with specifications for how and where they are to be used.

The ramifications of misusing any type of material in a product or structure today are huge. Many lawyers make a very good living from these types of lawsuits.  To stay out of trouble you are well advised to use a Computer Aided Drafting professional in your quest to build the perfect product or structure.

Small Businesses - How to Get Financial Advice

Some small business owners will start off in their business financially blind. By that, I mean that they have seen a good idea and found the perfect location, but then jumped into setting everything up except their finances. Sounds weird, but some small business owners have done little more than a few figures on the back of an envelope.

So, before starting off your latest business project, how well have you done your homework?

Are you a small trade business and been offered what looks like a good private contracting job? Or has the offer simply come as a “this is what I’m willing to pay” type offer? Many people would be amazed at how often a plumber or tiler or any other trade contractor will take on one of these type jobs. Sometimes they won’t even do the estimate for themselves on the back of an envelope! Think I’m joking? Ask around any construction site and see for yourself.

The best place to start with for financial advice is often at home.  Many small trade businesses have a wife and she is usually the one who does the books and runs the home. She knows how much it costs to live and what the going rate is for materials that your trade needs. She is usually the one too who is more computer literate because she does the accounts every week.

Between the two of you, do up a spreadsheet and enter all the relevant cost estimates to complete the job. Once you have all the relevant information included (including all your tax and payroll liabilities) along with when and where the progress payments are due, you will then have an idea of the financial viability or not of the contract.  This is the essential step for any small business.

Then hopefully, you already have an accountant. The accountant’s job is more than doing up your tax returns every year. Today they act as a first stop financial advisor and have all the contacts with bank managers, financial institutions and lawyers in your town or area. It is a good idea to drop off your newly created spreadsheet to him/her so they can go over it checking that there are no omissions.

Tax laws change frequently and to stay abreast of all of them is your accountant’s job. They are the best ones to advise you as this is critical financial advice that every small business needs.  Once he assesses and agrees the figures are correct and then it is safe to proceed.

If you need a low interest loan or overdraft to complete the job, then a bank manager or loans officer is more likely to look more favourably upon your request because they can see for themselves that you know what you are doing. When a loan applicant looks more like they know what they are doing, the loan is more likely to be repaid, and that is all a bank or financial institution wants to know.

By doing your own cost estimates professionally, then having them checked by your accountant prior to approaching your bank or other financial institution is the best financial advice you can get.