One Survival Tip You May Not Want To Hear.

Alright guys, I've been scrapping for about a year now and in addition to that I Co-Own a large construction company with my wife's step-Father. (Does that make him my Step-Father-In-Law? I swear two in-law parents are enough.) And with the money I've made, I've opened a fairly successful non-ferrous scrap yard.

When I first started up, I went to my Head of Marketing and asked him what I should do to make this yard immediately popular. What he said were these three things right here:

Visibility - Let me explain as he did. One of the main ways customers decide on a service or product is brand recognition. This means that if they've seen your sign or your building, you're a lot more likely to get their business over someone that they've never heard of before. This means you need signs and ideally a business location on a main road. My depot, an old factory, is on the busiest road in the city and the day I opened sellers and clients poured in. I used a grand opening sign to let people know what day we were opening and they loved it, I probably had 150 people stop by. If you're not on a main road, or even if you are, try to budget for a billboard of some sort purely for the brand recognition. Get quality work for all of your signage done by a graphics designer.

Community Involvement - Get out there in parades and fundraisers. Do collection events. Sponsor a local high school football team or drama club and be on their sponsors list or in their program. Best $250 I've ever spent is doing stuff like that. Get out there and talk to individuals in the community. It all goes back to networking and visibility. Are you sensing a theme?

Finally, the one you didn't want to hear: SOCIAL MEDIA - Here's the thing about social media. I believe that its a huge proponent that make society screwed up as it is. Rather than focusing on their own lives, many, many people just want the gratification of someone having liked their picture or smarmy comment. It's ruining the youth and shortening attention spans, but, it's an EXTREMELY effective marketing tool. As much as I hate to say it, get on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and all the other major social media sites that you can. The youth love being able to google "scrap yard" and have a lot of results. I hate to say it but social media isn't all bad. It's just the way millennials are wired. The best thing you can do for yourself is promote your business all across the internet. Do you know what it ties back to? Yup, you guessed it!! VISIBILITY!

In this world recognition is everything, studies show that a hefty percentage of voters in presidential elections vote for the name that they hear and see the most. Get out there and get involved spend money to make money. Wise advertising techniques really drum up business and my Head of Marketing says that this is really what works.

I use social media sparingly BUT you bring up a begrudgingly excellent point...thank you.

Sounds like your killing it .

have you gauged the actual reach of social media... real world, not just the numbers facebook feeds you, try having a facebook word of the day promotion... "extra penny a pound for every customer that uses the phrase that pays at the scale". I know I found reach to be poor, and reach to new customers none existant...

one thing though negative reviews are bad, so watch for them and nip them in the rear ASAP

V/r HT1

I definitely notice an increase in customers after a period of having used Facebook. I'm one of those people that tries to do it regularly but I can accidentally go a few weeks. The thing is I don't notice the slow dwindling of average customers but after a spell of having used Facebook, I get not only the average people who recycle cans once a month or a computer or two every couple years, I open business accounts then too, seeing as I buy ewaste and non-ferrous at this depot, I notice an increase in opened business accounts and it's not in my head either, I've checked the sheets.

On the average day, I open a business account six times a day, after my most recent round of using Social Media, I've opened 10 a day. I'm sure some of that is word of mouth and It's been a trend that if I forget to use social media for a while it would die back to the number one greater than, I was using before. Say it started at six times a day, went up to ten or eleven times a day, it would go back down to about seven times a day.

My Head of Marketing claims that it generates 37 percent more business for the construction company, so I suppose my figures are about the same.

ChD- Have you ever thought of writing a book and getting it published?? You could be the Thoreau of the early 21st century....

Common sense one bad customer can kill you on the internet! Or Ebay or whatever... some scrappers get there Curb Alerts from the internet posted to there phone! Us old folks will need some time to figure this out! LOL In the meantime let the youth prosper!!!

If you stick to social media, you can typically delete poor reviews/comments and often times when you get a bad review that could be easily fixed, you can resolve the issue with the customer right there in the comments! That can be a great thing because it projects an image of excellent service.